repatriate

I had another of these moments recently....

Neighbor: What do you study?
Me: Psychology of religion
Neighbor: Oh, then my prayer came true! I prayed for a good Christian neighbor.


I didn't want to lie or to disappoint her (I'm an atheist), so I just stared blankly until the topic changed. Probably could have handled it better, but I was totally not expecting that response.

Don't worry; you're in the right place!

Your GPA won't exclude you from graduate school, but it will probably be a concern for graduate programs. FingersCrossedX's advice to offer a narrative explanation is a good idea. I'll emphasize not focusing on psychological or academic disability in this explanation. If you can afford it (in terms of tuition and delaying work), the extra quarter might look good. Even a couple of points above 3.0 move you that much further from the danger zone. Another option is to take additional courses after graduating while working.

You definitely have enough time left to make contacts and gain research experience. Start browsing the faculty webpages at UCSD. Many of them will list opportunities for undergraduate research involvement on their websites, or you can contact them asking if they are accepting undergrad research assistants for the next term. Obviously, try to find work that interests you, but also keep in mind that, given your GPA, you may need to cast a wide net for opportunities. Many of the labs in my department, for example, will not take undergrads with less than a 3.0. This past semester, my lab took one with a 2.5 GPA on the personal recommendation of another graduate student who had been this undergrad's TA. So far, he has been a great member of the lab, but I know that he was rejected by other labs before being recommended to us.

If you struggle finding research opportunities in the psych department, you can look in related fields that use similar methods (e.g., education, business, etc.)

Some professors will be open to cold-emailing from students at other unis and taking on volunteer research assistants. However, in my experience, this is pretty rare. Most professors I have worked with prefer RAs who will be held to some kind of agreement (i.e., credit or employment) and who will stick around for at least a couple of semesters. It probably won't hurt to try, though.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

I agree with most of what you said, but this is incorrect. In order to closely approximate a test-taker's "true" score, you need questions at many levels of difficulty. Each question is associated with an approximate level of ability at or above which a test-taker will answer correctly and below which a test-taker will answer incorrectly. You must provide questions at many levels in order to come up with a good guess of someone's actual level of ability. This is why the computer adaptive nature of the GRE is important: once the computer program figures out that you are above or below a certain ability level, it starts serving you questions in the range it thinks you are so that it can discriminate more finely among people close in "true" score.

So, let's say abilities range from 1 to 100, and people with a true ability of 50 or more will generally get a certain question right, and people with a true ability of less than 50 will get the question wrong. Then, this question only divides people into two bins: at-or-above-50 and below-50. By including questions at all different ability levels (and preferably a couple at each), you make those bins smaller and smaller.

So both easy and hard questions are necessary for a standardized test like the GRE.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

I agree with most of what you said, but this is incorrect. In order to closely approximate a test-taker's "true" score, you need questions at many levels of difficulty. Each question is associated with an approximate level of ability at or above which a test-taker will answer correctly and below which a test-taker will answer incorrectly. You must provide questions at many levels in order to come up with a good guess of someone's actual level of ability. This is why the computer adaptive nature of the GRE is important: once the computer program figures out that you are above or below a certain ability level, it starts serving you questions in the range it thinks you are so that it can discriminate more finely among people close in "true" score.

So, let's say abilities range from 1 to 100, and people with a true ability of 50 or more will generally get a certain question right, and people with a true ability of less than 50 will get the question wrong. Then, this question only divides people into two bins: at-or-above-50 and below-50. By including questions at all different ability levels (and preferably a couple at each), you make those bins smaller and smaller.

So both easy and hard questions are necessary for a standardized test like the GRE.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

I agree. We ought to write accessible text. That is a separate issue from what texts the GRE should sample from. The GRE should sample from the kind of texts you will read in graduate school. Unfortunately, many scholars do write like this. You will need to be able to read such writing in graduate school, regardless of whether or not it ought to exist.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

I agree. We ought to write accessible text. That is a separate issue from what texts the GRE should sample from. The GRE should sample from the kind of texts you will read in graduate school. Unfortunately, many scholars do write like this. You will need to be able to read such writing in graduate school, regardless of whether or not it ought to exist.

You're a graduate student now.

Not an instructor, not an adjunct, and not a professor, for sure.

All three are hired positions *separate* from teaching duties as part of a graduate school assistantship. That makes your official title "Graduate Student" or "Graduate Teaching Assistant". If you want to be formal, you can have your students address you as Mr./Ms., but that's about it.

Even if you used to be an adjunct, I'd think it would be worthwhile changing the page address so it doesn't look like you're overreaching.

I imagine some profs give everyone the top list and others suggest schools that are a better match for the particular student who is consulting with them. It also depends on what you asked for, exactly. If you want to know what your professors meant when you talked to them, ask them about your chances at each of those schools and how well they think those schools match your interests. It'd be so much easier and more reliable than us speculating on the forum.

Actually, it's about spreading out test scores for a good resultant range.

You have the "average", which is a reasonable understanding of reasonably complex writing. Then as you tend to the higher scores, the writing is more artificially convoluted to see if the reader can keep up.

For most disciplines, a nice 500ish V score would be considered "solid", and the writing really isn't that twisted at that level.

But any good test should spread out the scores such that you can see definite striation at the high ends of the test- separate out the "average" from the "good" from the "very good", so to speak. Using artificially convoluted passages to do that may come across dry or artificial, but it serves it's purpose.

I don't know why you feel that the passages should be "realistic" in relation to a selection of academic writing- whether they're dry or drab doesn't matter, really, for testing purposes- just the accuracy of understanding relative to the degree of convolution in the writing. Nor do they need to be "passages representative of academic writing".... The GRE doesn't claim to measure someones ability to do well in graduate school, but rather an objective measure of reading comprehension, writing ability, and basic mathematical knowledge that can be evenly applied across the board, and it does that rather well.

I take it like this:

We expect you to be able to both write concisely and clearly and be able to comprehend complex and twisted sentences.

The two aren't mutually exclusive- and in fact, I find one of the things academics spend a lot of time doing is taking complex and twisted writing, processing it, and putting it in a clearer and more concise form- ie, teaching.

And the better able you are to comprehend difficult passages, the higher your reading comprehension is. To some people, the passage you keep citing makes perfect sense with a single read through. To others, they have to re-read it a few times to make sense of it. This will likely differentiate their scores in the verbal section, as the former group has better reading comprehension than the latter.

Your argument is kind of like saying "If all word problems set up the equations you need to use, people would get them more easily"... Which is true, but having to think your way through a complex passage separates people according to their abilities. Some people read a problem through and know the answer almost right away. Some people have to struggle over how to frame it. One group should get a higher score than the other.

If the problems on the GRE were easy enough that everyone could make sense of them right away, it wouldn't be a very good test.

Everybody can understand 'Miffy went to the zoo'. There have to be things that are difficult to understand (i.e. which require good reading comprehension), because otherwise everybody will get the same score.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

I agree. We ought to write accessible text. That is a separate issue from what texts the GRE should sample from. The GRE should sample from the kind of texts you will read in graduate school. Unfortunately, many scholars do write like this. You will need to be able to read such writing in graduate school, regardless of whether or not it ought to exist.

This article is a terrible example of the clear writing the author so wishes we would all create. It's full of strange digressions (such as the salaries of bankers), and the author is using the GRE as a vehicle for a broader complaint about academic writing styles that really has nothing to do with what the GRE should test.

Whether or not we ought to write accessibly (we ought), the GRE should test the ability to read the scholarly literature that is available. In the world we live in, scholarly literature is dense and convoluted in style. In most graduate classes, instructors will expect you not only to read and understand this literature without help but also to lead discussions on that same material. Why should the entrance exam test your ability to comprehend a totally different kind of prose than you will encounter in graduate school?

This is a complicated question, but I will tell you what I have learned (and other people may say I am dead wrong!)
I would say that PhD programs in I/O psychology are easier to get into. For one thing, I think there are fewer applicants and therefore less competition, but I have also seen schools where they take a proportionally higher number of students into the I/O program. However, these programs weed out a lot of students with comps/quals. At my undergrad university, about half of the I/O grad students did not pass their comps and ended up leaving with a masters. With a masters in I/O psychology you can still get an awesome job, especially if you are looking for something outside of academia.
I haven't seen any social psychology programs where many students leave with just a masters, most of them tend to take fewer students but see them all through to getting their PhDs.
If you are dead set on getting a PhD, you can probably succeed in either area. If your interests are between social and I/O, it's probably a good idea to apply to programs on both sides.

Is there a chance you will be funded? If so, use the email as a way to show you're interested and will await funding news. If not, well, thanks are still in order though expressing reservations about the funding seems fair too.