Boston University BBC Program? Unsure About Profile, Experience

[reipls]

Based on my experience/qualifications I don’t know if I should even apply. I’m having really bad bouts of Imposter Syndrome, and it’s been interfering with my ability to make decisions, so I don’t know if I’m beating myself up too much. At the same time, though, I know that BU is quite prestigious, and looking through accepted students’ profiles, they have a few more years of experience than I do. Here’s my profile:

Undergrad Institution: Rutgers University - NB

Major: Cognitive Science (neuroscience track)

Minors: Philosophy, Korean Studies

Overall GPA: 3.52, Major GPA: 3.76

• GPA is a bit low-ish because of personal things during my first year and a half. Thankfully, I’ve gotten A’s in most of my core classes (B+’s in others) so I’m hoping that fact will help a bit.

Honors: Dean’s List, High Honors in Cognitive Science, cum laude

GRE: 160 V, 158 Q on practice exam taken in July (I’m taking the actual thing at the end of October though, so fingers crossed for a 325-327!)

Research Experience: Will amount to about 1.5 years by December, two labs. One is at my undergrad lab, where I worked for credit for a semester, then volunteered until now. I’m in the process of getting hired there to work full-time as a “Technical Specialist,” lol. I worked on and off on about 3-ish projects, all neuro-based (very technical, immunohistochemistry, microscopy, mouse genotyping, etc). However, I’ve been remote for about 6 months now due to COVID-19, and waiting on getting hired officially in order to come in, hopefully sometime in September. The second lab is a developmental psychology lab (just started August 2020), having to do with children’s representation of numerology and cardinality. The project I was assigned to has to do with ability to keep track of beliefs. As evidenced, I’m very interested in the intersection between neuroscience and cognition, and would like my future research to be interdisciplinary.

Should I bite the bullet and apply? Or leave it till next year? I’m only applying to about 4-ish schools (UCSD, University of Maryland - College Park, and Rutgers New Brunswick, Boston University) due to...the circumstances we are in currently lol + I’d like to just test the waters this year. Any kind of advice is welcome, thank you!

 

[PsyDuck90]

Do you have any posters/pubs? Overall, your profile looks pretty good. However, only applying to 4 schools (and pretty prestigious programs to boot) is partially shooting yourself in the foot just due to statistical odds. If you are serious about trying to get in somewhere this cycle, I would definitely add more programs to that list. The average applicant applies to 10-15 programs. 

[reipls]

 

1 hour ago, PsyDuck90 said:

Do you have any posters/pubs? Overall, your profile looks pretty good. However, only applying to 4 schools (and pretty prestigious programs to boot) is partially shooting yourself in the foot just due to statistical odds. If you are serious about trying to get in somewhere this cycle, I would definitely add more programs to that list. The average applicant applies to 10-15 programs. 

I don’t have any posters/pubs, I was gonna be working on a paper with a postdoc at one of the labs but COVID-19 really messed with those plans (visa issues on her end). I do have a lab meeting presentation, though, and I’m planning on writing a paper to provide as a writing sample that encapsulates my work done thus far at the lab. Thing is, I’m not too sure about this cycle. I was pretty confident-ish initially, but I feel like, after doing my fair bit of reading on the ~PhD life~ that I need a bit more experience. I also don’t think I can afford submitting 10 apps this cycle, unfortunately. That being said, I would like to submit a few to know where I stand. Which schools would you consider to be the most prestigious (I’m guessing BU and UCSD)? Are there less prestigious ones I should consider? 

Also, I forgot to specify in my original post, but for UCSD and UMD-College Park I’m applying to their Cognitive Science programs!

Edited August 29, 2020 by reipls

[PsyDuck90]

If you are hesitant and money is a factor, you may want to not apply this cycle and instead focus on the technical specialist position or finding a research coordinator position and find some way to maybe at least get a poster submitted to a conference. Many of them are online lately due to COVID like EPA, and that will strengthen your application. Would you be able to use some data from 1 of the labs you've been working in? PhDs like to see research products since a big part of doing research is disseminating it to the scientific community.

All 4 of them are R1 research universities, so they're all ranked pretty highly. Research fit is 1 of the biggest factors faculty look at during admissions, so if you want to expand the list, it would more so be based on where the people are doing research you want to do. I'm not familiar with your area of interest so I wouldn't really be able to give you suggestions. One way to find more potential programs is to look at journal articles (the more recent, the better) and see where the authors are based out of, and then checking to see if those faculty are still involved in that line of research. 

[reipls]

15 hours ago, PsyDuck90 said:

If you are hesitant and money is a factor, you may want to not apply this cycle and instead focus on the technical specialist position or finding a research coordinator position and find some way to maybe at least get a poster submitted to a conference. Many of them are online lately due to COVID like EPA, and that will strengthen your application. Would you be able to use some data from 1 of the labs you've been working in? PhDs like to see research products since a big part of doing research is disseminating it to the scientific community.

All 4 of them are R1 research universities, so they're all ranked pretty highly. Research fit is 1 of the biggest factors faculty look at during admissions, so if you want to expand the list, it would more so be based on where the people are doing research you want to do. I'm not familiar with your area of interest so I wouldn't really be able to give you suggestions. One way to find more potential programs is to look at journal articles (the more recent, the better) and see where the authors are based out of, and then checking to see if those faculty are still involved in that line of research. 

True, I think focusing more on my job would be the way to go, I’ll definitely think more about it. I’ll look into online conferences as well, I think the prelim data we have currently can definitely be turned into a poster. Would POI’s scheduling calls with you be a good sign, or would that only increase the chances slightly?

[PsyDuck90]

50 minutes ago, reipls said:

True, I think focusing more on my job would be the way to go, I’ll definitely think more about it. I’ll look into online conferences as well, I think the prelim data we have currently can definitely be turned into a poster. Would POI’s scheduling calls with you be a good sign, or would that only increase the chances slightly?

I think that's a good sign in that they see a potential for working with you and are interested in talking further, but I'm not sure if that's a significant boost in chances.