Remote interviews Fall 2021 admissions cycle

[psychapplicant21]

Hey guys it's encouraging to see the changes some graduate programs are making in light of the pandemic in terms of admissions procedures - I just read that Stony Brook will hold interviews remotely for the upcoming cycle and if offered a place applicants can then schedule a visit. The huge advantage of this is that applicants will save a lot of $$ on traveling but my concern is remote interviews are not fully representative of the graduate experience/program. I'm interested to hear of other peoples' thoughts and perhaps ways in which applicants can try to ensure they get a representative account of their potential graduate program via online interviewing?

[PsychApplicant2]

1 hour ago, psychapplicant21 said:

Hey guys it's encouraging to see the changes some graduate programs are making in light of the pandemic in terms of admissions procedures - I just read that Stony Brook will hold interviews remotely for the upcoming cycle and if offered a place applicants can then schedule a visit. The huge advantage of this is that applicants will save a lot of $$ on traveling but my concern is remote interviews are not fully representative of the graduate experience/program. I'm interested to hear of other peoples' thoughts and perhaps ways in which applicants can try to ensure they get a representative account of their potential graduate program via online interviewing?

This is one of my concerns as well. It's also hard to get a sense of the campus location and university life when we can't do in-person interviews! It must be harder for the PI to get a sense of every applicant online. I would rather do in-person interviews. I'm hopeful that a treatment/vaccine will be made available by then, but I guess we never know. 

[PsyDuck90]

It's not ideal, but it looks like you can arrange an on-site visit once accepted so you can still gather that data before making a final decision. My suggestion would be to make sure you can speak to a few current students as well, and make sure at least 1 is a current student working with your PI. 

[higaisha]

U Rochester and FSU are both holding online interviews this year