social psychology class profiles?

[jrg]

Hello everyone!

Been browsing the forums for a while now and thought I'd finally sign up and make a post!

I'm looking for a run-down of class profiles for social psychology programs. Information concerning number of applicants, number of admission, number enrolled, average GPA, etc etc.

SIOP has this type of information for basically every I/O Program in North America, and it also seems like most clinical programs post this information on their websites... yet I can't find much for social.

I'm located in Toronto, Canada so information geared towards Canadian programs would be the most useful but I'd also like to see the stats for US programs.

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A little about myself:

I'm a 3rd year undergraduate honours psychology student that attends York University in Toronto, Canada. I currently have a GPA of about 3.7-3.75 (my school is on a 9-point scale.. haven't converted). I will be writing my honours thesis next year, and I currently volunteer in a social psychology lab. Next year I should be working and volunteering in two labs with two different faculty members. I will also be studying/writing my GRE this summer.

I plan on applying to I/O programs, but I was thinking that I'd apply to social programs as well as "back up" considering there are only about 5 I/O programs in Canada.

Thanks for your help! I look forward to further discussion with you all

[repatriate]

I can't help very much with the statistics, but I wouldn't recommend viewing social psychology as a "back up." In general, social psychology programs are highly competitive for admissions. On the other hand, if you have an idea of the research you want to do and there are social psychologists doing that kind of research, then you should definitely apply to their social psychology programs. You might find organizational behavior (generally in business schools) or social decision sciences (I think generally housed in psychology or in interdisciplinary departments) programs to be good alternatives, depending on your research interests. I have very little knowledge of Canadian schools, so I can't point to specific programs.

[lewin]

A few resources...

Your best bet is the CPA guide to Canadian graduate programs:

http://www.cpa.ca/cpasite/userfiles/Documents/Graduate%20Guide%202009-2010.pdf

There's a 2010 PSPB (Nosek et al.) that ranks social psychology graduate programs (U.S. and Canada) by research productivity.

A 2005 American Psychologist (Norcross et al.) gives stats for U.S. psychology programs by subject area, but not broken down by university.

...and looking at that first link I'm glad I didn't go into clinical psych. The acceptance rate at my university last year was 3%. Wow.

[ErichFromm]

you might also want to look into the APA Graduate Study in psychology book..it has basically every psychology program in the USA and Canada, lists # of applicants/# admitted/ average gpa/gre, etc.

[psychapplicant2011]

I am not sure if admitted stats really tell that meaningful of a story. After all, there are stats that show that among people applying to, e.g., Harvard, the average GRE's and GPA's of those admitted are not much different than those rejected.

From what I understand, as long as GREs and GPAs are in some sort of acceptable range, they don't matter too much. Of course, what is acceptable probably varies from program to program. What matters the most is research interest match, letters of recommendation, and applicable experience.

My non-expert word of advice: Shoot for a minimum of 80th percentile on all GRE sections and a GPA of at least 3.7. Anything below these stats may raise a "red flag," at least at some of the better programs.

[jrg]

Thanks for your responses guys!! Really appreciated! I'm going to use all those resources. Thanks for your input as well psychapplicant, you make a really good point.

@ repatriate: I guess I should elaborate more.... There are only roughly 5 english graduate programs in Canada. After coming to these forums I see most of you guys apply to an average of about 8-10 schools. Considering there are many more social psychology programs in Canada, I figured I'd apply to all 5 I/O programs as well as about 5-6 social psychology programs. Also, some of these social psychology programs would be at lower tier schools.

Aside from that I also valued your input as well. Thank you!

Edited January 7, 2011 by jrg

[cwe93]

jrg,

Could you elaborate on what your research interests are? A lot of times, these research interests can span so many different specialties in psych; for example, I'm mainly interested in JDM and emotions, and there are professors that specialize in that within social, cognitive, I/O, organizational behavior, marketing, etc.

As far as applying to back-ups outside of I/O, I think it kind of depends on how your final profile shakes out. The reason I say this is (and just for your reference, I applied to 7 social psych PhD's and 7 marketing PhD's for fall 2011, so I've been forced to explore this a lot) that business schools often require more quantitative qualifications than psych programs -- like higher Q GRE scores, some math courses, stats, etc. So if you absolutely destroy the math part of the GRE, business schools might be a good back-up for you if you can find faculty that would match with your interests. If this is not the case, I think I would echo the sentiment of other people on this thread to say that you should probably stay away from social psych PhD programs as back-ups: Social psych is probably the most competitive field in psych outside of clinical, and often times, you could improve your chances if you applied to faculty in cognitive or developmental (you'd be surprised because a lot of times, faculty can be cross-listed in multiple fields and have very "social" specialties, even if they're not technically social psychologists).

If you'd like more info., PM me or ask away. I'm in the process of waiting right now, so I feel your pain lol. Good luck!