mrmedian

I read on the website that they send NetIDs via snail mail in early April. It seems rather arcane to me, alas! Considering how large Cornell is in general, I'm also surprised at how deserted it is. Has anyone found an apartment yet? I'm planning to fly up sometime in May to look, but I'm worried that is cutting things a bit close.

Anyone headed to Cornell this Fall? I will likely be heading there (admitted, but haven't made up my mind). Anyone else have trouble submitting their response? I keep getting redirected to the application website.

I don't know if anyone is still waiting on Northwestern or Emory at this point, but I emailed the coordinators at each school a couple of weeks ago. They've already held their recruitment events. Emory won't send official rejection letters until late March or early April, and I suspect Northwestern is on a similar timeline. Edit: I applied to NU's BBC program and Emory's Cog&Dev program, but I'm pretty sure what I said also applies to the other programs in their psychology departments...

I have had one interview so far, and I did send a thank you email to my POI, a couple of other profs whom I met and "hit it off" with, and the staff member who was responsible for coordinating the schedule & travel arrangements (everything about the visit went so smoothly). They weren't purely "thank you" emails, as I also asked a couple of follow-up questions about the program and also the conversation we had during the visit. I don't know if the notes helped, but they definitely didn't hurt. All of the people I emailed sent friendly replies, and I received an acceptance to the program (a couple of weeks later)! It might be nice to at least send a thank you/follow up to your POI. It's courteous and it helps maintain an open channel of communication.

A couple of questions: Could you possibly make a good enough impression on professor who teaches the cultural/development course to ask that person for a LoR? What other ways could you maintain contact with the I/O professor so that he might be willing to be your letter writer in the next cycle? Chances are, if he was willing to be your letter writer once, he'll be willing again (think about it, the letter is already written--just sitting on his hard drive). If you take a class you aren't interested in, your lack of interest might (or might not) affect your performance in a way that is a detriment to your LoR to him. My recommendation: Take that class that interests you. I can see cultural/development as being more related to cog. psy. than I/O (cultural neuroscience / social-cognitive development are my research interests). Regardless of what course you decide to take, let your I/O professor know that you plan to reapply next cycle. Again, I doubt he would refuse to be your letter writer, and he may even have some advice as to ways to improve your application.

So I was just accepted to Brandeis. They are giving me a 10 month, 20k stipend. Where I'm from, 20k would definitely be a livable stipend, but that seems cutting things close in Boston. Is it really possible to live in Boston on 15k?

I had to conduct a pretty extensive literature review as a component of my undergraduate thesis. When the time came to apply to graduate school, I just went back and looked at researchers who had published work that I found compelling. I just looked them up, and found out where they were doing research. Doing that gave me a decent list (~10-15) of schools. From that I further narrowed the list down based on how good of a fit I thought the program was more generally (other faculty member research interests, location). I also cut out a couple of programs where, although I found the POI's research interesting, my research experience was only tangentially related to what they do. Ultimately I ended up applying to 6 schools. I've heard positive things (interviews, but no official acceptances yet) from 2 schools. They are both great programs that I am really excited about, and I am really happy with the way things have gone. I think my method for selecting schools was good, but perhaps incomplete. I think that applying to six schools is a bit on the low-end of the recommended number, and since applying I've discovered a couple of other programs that I might have liked to apply to.

I'll be seeing you at Cornell!