DarwinAG

I would give them time to reply. Then follow up in a week.

O Splendid a social psychology thread. Ditto with what Angua said. I'm currently a first year social psychology student at University of Michigan. Feel free to contact me about the process since it it still relatively fresh in my memory.

I dropped out of college for about 3-4 years. It wasn't a big deal in my application process and it didn't really come up at all in my interviews. We have similar GRE scores and your GPA is way better than mine. I think you'll be fine. Also, there are tons of sexual prejudice and gender expression faculty at U of M, although I think they are in Personality and Social Context.

I don't know anyone that does all those 3 things, but I think I applied to similar professors. Who are the self-regulation folks you're applying to?

Good luck to everyone. Applications are exhaustingfuly fun and rewarding. Feel free to message me if you have any questions about the application process and/or University of Michigan's social area. This applies to anyone, but mostly social psychologist since that is the area I am most familiar with.

http://www.src.isr.umich.edu/content.aspx?id=data_resources

I took the Psyc GRE to off set my low GPA. In the end, I am not sure if it actually helped me at all. The only way I think it can moderately help is if you have an 800 or score in the 99th percentile. I assume your GPA is on your CV then? Personally, I would bring it up. Going againts the advice of my mentors, I actually mentioned my low GPA as a weak part of my application packet. Most people dismissed it. Most people didn't care about. But I think they appreciated me being direct about it.

I work with Dr. Mark Geisler, one of the only psychobiologist at SFSU. It's a tough call because from what he tells me, they tend to have strict GPA cut offs. Your GRE scores and other academic record should offset that. My advice is to actually contact the people you'd want to work with for the program and plainly ask what your chances are given your academic record. It may be uncommon for someone to get looked at with a 2.9 GPA, but I have met people who entered Ph.D. programs with lower than a 3.0 because they were amazing at everything else.

O but it's an easy issue to address empirically. I assume your "film" focus in your profile is fake and that you applied to experimental psychology programs because I am restricting my claim to phd experimental psychology programs (mostly social and cognitive and clinical). If we define most as a simple "majority of" and we look at the top 50 (or 100) phd experimental programs in psychology, I would best that most require some form of interview. And we have access to most of the data in these forums in a different thread that posts the interview/recruitment weekends for many universities. The rest of the data can be obtained easily other ways. Haha we just need to find someone who wants to do that work because neither one of us Id imagine wants to.

False. Most experimental psychology programs (social, cogntiive, etc) require an interview. It has been a recent trend in the field, but most of the programs that I applied too, with the exception of one, required an interview before an offer or acceptance. Terminal masters psychology programs typically do not require an interview process, but I think it is also moving in the direction of having one before acceptances.

To me, a lot of the interest you mentioned falls in the realm of social and i/o psychology (unsurprisingly); however, I would focus less on the area of psychology and focus more on the actual people conducting research on your topics. Lewin mentioned Dunn. I actually do work on the relationship between money and happiness (well-being). Here are a few other names: -Ryan T. Howell (my adviser) -Tom Gilovich at Cornell -Peter Caprareillo (I forget where he's at, but he graduated from University of Rochester) -Amit Kummar at Cornell. Works with Gilovich. -Travis Carter. Graduated from Cornell -Leaf Van Boven. Graduated from Cornell. He is now at Boulder, Colorado. He may have moved away from this research but check out Van Boven & Gilovich (2003). If you do a forward literature search of this article you can see who else is doing reserach on this. In terms of goal-setting research and motivation: -Edward Deci and Andrew Elliot at Rochester -Faculty at NYU (I don't remember their names offhand...Gollowitzer I think and someone else). Now to do research on your own on the topic. I highly reccomend just looking at each field and looking for a review paper or meta anaysis, then start looking at the faculties cited. That is probably the best way to figure out who the people are in your area of interest.

Since interviews are winding down and offers are being made, I thought it may be a good idea to share each other's decision process. I actually would like to know what variable you think is the most important. What's least important? I actually plan to sit down and really think it through. I figured I owe it to myself to really consider my options and not just go with the peripheral route, so that I won't think question my decision in the future. Here are a few things I will consider when making a decision in no particular order: -Adviser personality fit -Research fit -Graduate student culture -Oppurtunites for collaboration with other faculty/students -Grant writing training/support -Mentorship and academic service oppurtunities -Quality of life -Availability of kareoke bars and dance clubs -Oppurtunites to learn new methodology -Teaching oppurtunities -Funding What's on top of your list?

My friend interviewed at princeton. Hes in the cognitive area though but i think its deparmental wide interview.

I think you're focusing on the wrong things. If your POI publishes regularly, that's a huge plus. So what if he isisn't super well known (and google search results is a terrible indicator of that imo), but is he doing good science based on your readings? I think you need to shift your focus to the quality of science he's doing. I highly reccommend shifting your focus, at the very least, away from prestige. It may really negatively color the perception of your visit and you'll miss an oppurtunity to work with incredibly astute, bright, and amazing scientists. I really only applied to places I could end up in regardless of prestige. The people I applied with are all doing amazing work that I'd like to be a part of. If prestige is something really important to you then the best people to ask are your advisers. They know the people in your field.

"darwinAG- easier said than done! i guess i need to take all those stress management techniques i learned in class and start administering them to myself, but i'm really too high strung to wait. in college, when i was waiting for college decisions, if the mail was late i would make my family drive me around to find the mailman so that we could get the mail directly from them. i made my sister drive me around once and she got a flat tire. she wasn't happy. i'm just going to throw myself into my epic to do list today and just try not to think about anythin" Yikes. What an interesting coping mechanism. Admittedly, I initially get worked up as well, but now I find myself just letting go of things I can't do anything about. There's a tibetan proverb that I recite to myself when I am figuring out how to handle a problematic situation which echoes Lewin's sentiments about letting things go after you turn them in: If a problem can be fixed you shouldn't worry about it. If a problem can't be fixed worrying will do nothing. In this particular instance, I actually think a friend who can emotionally regulate for you would be helpful, i.e. someone reappraising the situation for you.