Future cognitive applicant

[JuneTree]

Hi,

I would like to apply to PhD programs next year. I'm interested in the brain and more scientific aspects of psychology, still too interested in everything to be specific.

With 2 semesters left to graduation (BA in psych), is it worth it for me to take Bio and Chem I this coming semester, then Bio and Chem II? Or can I get into cognitive or behavioral neuroscience PhD programs without it? What about advanced statistics/programming classes?

What I have:

1. A bit of research experience: One year as research assistant in neuro lab, hopefully more to come in other labs.

------Do test norms count as a publication? If so, I may be better off

2. 4.0 psych/ 3.98 general GPA

------I'm nervous about Bio and Chem lowering my GPA, but is there a choice?

3. Head of Psychology Club and member of professional organizations

------Does anyone care about this?

4. Passion for research

------Just like everyone else Seriously, I know some of the disadvantages, but love it too much to not try anyway.

What I am yet to achieve:

1. GRE

------Not so worried about this, am studying and generally a good test taker. Aiming for 1400+

2. Actual research experience

------My college has not been helpful and jobs are not plentiful.

3. A's in science - related classes

------Don't know if I need them and how much

4. Statistics/ Programming knowledge

------Plan to teach myself Python this summer

------A+ in college in basic statistics

5. PUBLICATIONS

-----It's hard to get them as an undergraduate! I'm not a minority and have not been in luck with such opportunities.

Thank you for your advice!

Edited July 5, 2011 by JuneTree

[cogneuroforfun]

- Bio and chem will help, sure, but they may or may not be essential. I got into neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience programs with one year of biology and no chemistry, but I applied to systems labs, not so much behavioral/pharmacology.

- The same is true for advanced statistics; if you're running behavior and pharmacology studies with rats, basic stats may be enough (t-test, ANOVA), but other research topics require more in depth understanding (GLM, likelihood stuff). My own area does, so I took a couple stats/data analysis courses for graduate students.

- Research experience is a must. If you apply this upcoming fall and have 1.5 years in a relevant lab, you'll be in decent shape. The most important thing is being able to talk about it intelligently, both in your application and on interviews.

- Your grades are fine. Even if you get a B or two in the fall, you'll have >3.9? Don't stress about grades anymore.

- Extracurricular activities don't matter. If you have to ditch those to spend more time in the lab, do it.

- Publications are nice, but are not necessary. What is necessary is solid research experience and the ability to display a real understanding of what you did, why you did it, how you could improve it, etc. You'll be talking about your research at interviews, not listing off your publications.

- Programming is very helpful, but just like the courses, it is very dependent on your research interests. Many labs don't use anything more than Excel (although that is rare in cognitive neuroscience). Others use custom written programs in low-level programming languages. Many are in between those extremes.

- You need to develop some specific interests, even if they're relatively broad like "working memory" or "visual psychophysics." In most psychology programs, you'll be entering one lab right away that you will work in for the entirety of your PhD. While collaboration is certainly possible, you are essentially applying to specific labs, even though you're sending your apps to a department. If you want to do "social neuroscience in autism" and apply to departments with no one doing that, you're not going to get in!

- Hopefully you've noticed the theme Find some papers that are interesting to you. Do you feel comfortable with the statistics they use? What about the biology or chemistry they throw around? What computing packages do they seem to use? Do that group's other papers and research topics seem interesting? Do they adhere to some theoretical or philosophical positions that you like or dislike? Most of your questions are completely dependent on what research topic you'd like to pursue, so it's impossible to answer them if you don't have any idea yet.

[carlyhylton]

Looks like you are shaping up well. I think you probably need to get some research experience.

But I'm only a second year undergrad so I'm no authority.

Regarding the psych club and professional organizations....

I have gotten the feeling from grad students, profs, prof who have supervised my RAship and research projects that listing or putting forth that you were the pres of your psych student association (I was) would not necessarily be bad depending what the position involved. In my position we held seminars, and did more psychy and less social types of activities. If your psych club was the same, then I really don't think that would be a disadvantage. If you go into academia doing this sort of thing among faculty is necessary for tenure and if you want to become a chair. Obviously don't dwell on it at all, though.

Organization membership can be mentioned somehow if you attend/present at an organizations conference...

- Bio and chem will help, sure, but they may or may not be essential. I got into neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience programs with one year of biology and no chemistry, but I applied to systems labs, not so much behavioral/pharmacology.

- The same is true for advanced statistics; if you're running behavior and pharmacology studies with rats, basic stats may be enough (t-test, ANOVA), but other research topics require more in depth understanding (GLM, likelihood stuff). My own area does, so I took a couple stats/data analysis courses for graduate students.

- Research experience is a must. If you apply this upcoming fall and have 1.5 years in a relevant lab, you'll be in decent shape. The most important thing is being able to talk about it intelligently, both in your application and on interviews.

- Your grades are fine. Even if you get a B or two in the fall, you'll have >3.9? Don't stress about grades anymore.

- Extracurricular activities don't matter. If you have to ditch those to spend more time in the lab, do it.

- Publications are nice, but are not necessary. What is necessary is solid research experience and the ability to display a real understanding of what you did, why you did it, how you could improve it, etc. You'll be talking about your research at interviews, not listing off your publications.

- Programming is very helpful, but just like the courses, it is very dependent on your research interests. Many labs don't use anything more than Excel (although that is rare in cognitive neuroscience). Others use custom written programs in low-level programming languages. Many are in between those extremes.

- You need to develop some specific interests, even if they're relatively broad like "working memory" or "visual psychophysics." In most psychology programs, you'll be entering one lab right away that you will work in for the entirety of your PhD. While collaboration is certainly possible, you are essentially applying to specific labs, even though you're sending your apps to a department. If you want to do "social neuroscience in autism" and apply to departments with no one doing that, you're not going to get in!

- Hopefully you've noticed the theme Find some papers that are interesting to you. Do you feel comfortable with the statistics they use? What about the biology or chemistry they throw around? What computing packages do they seem to use? Do that group's other papers and research topics seem interesting? Do they adhere to some theoretical or philosophical positions that you like or dislike? Most of your questions are completely dependent on what research topic you'd like to pursue, so it's impossible to answer them if you don't have any idea yet.

Edited July 6, 2011 by carlyhylton

[JuneTree]

- Bio and chem will help, sure, but they may or may not be essential. I got into neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience programs with one year of biology and no chemistry, but I applied to systems labs, not so much behavioral/pharmacology.

Quick Q - what are systems labs? I am definitely more into the pharmacology (don't want to do MD because I don't want to take care of patients, only research). I could get interested in behavioral as well but haven't had the opportunity to see that.

- The same is true for advanced statistics; if you're running behavior and pharmacology studies with rats, basic stats may be enough (t-test, ANOVA), but other research topics require more in depth understanding (GLM, likelihood stuff). My own area does, so I took a couple stats/data analysis courses for graduate students.

As an undergraduate or in graduate school?

- Research experience is a must. If you apply this upcoming fall and have 1.5 years in a relevant lab, you'll be in decent shape. The most important thing is being able to talk about it intelligently, both in your application and on interviews.

This is a strong point - I have a need to fully understand things and love talking about them.

- Your grades are fine. Even if you get a B or two in the fall, you'll have >3.9? Don't stress about grades anymore.

Won't it look like I have senior slump if I do that?

- Extracurricular activities don't matter. If you have to ditch those to spend more time in the lab, do it.

OK, but can I use it as filler if there are a few months that I don't have a research position?

- Publications are nice, but are not necessary. What is necessary is solid research experience and the ability to display a real understanding of what you did, why you did it, how you could improve it, etc. You'll be talking about your research at interviews, not listing off your publications.

Good to be reminded of. I really need a position where I can be part of the research, but may have to take a gap year in order to do that.

- Programming is very helpful, but just like the courses, it is very dependent on your research interests. Many labs don't use anything more than Excel (although that is rare in cognitive neuroscience). Others use custom written programs in low-level programming languages. Many are in between those extremes.

- You need to develop some specific interests, even if they're relatively broad like "working memory" or "visual psychophysics." In most psychology programs, you'll be entering one lab right away that you will work in for the entirety of your PhD. While collaboration is certainly possible, you are essentially applying to specific labs, even though you're sending your apps to a department. If you want to do "social neuroscience in autism" and apply to departments with no one doing that, you're not going to get in!

Thanks. So I'm hoping SAS and Python will be enough. My school just doesn't have opportunities for research people, so I've been very much on my own.

As for developing interests, that's hard because I really am interested in everything! I feel that experience is important for me to make such decisions.

- Hopefully you've noticed the theme Find some papers that are interesting to you. Do you feel comfortable with the statistics they use? What about the biology or chemistry they throw around? What computing packages do they seem to use? Do that group's other papers and research topics seem interesting? Do they adhere to some theoretical or philosophical positions that you like or dislike? Most of your questions are completely dependent on what research topic you'd like to pursue, so it's impossible to answer them if you don't have any idea yet.

Well I find everything interesting! If I don't understand something I look it up on wikipedia and generally understand it (not as true for advanced statistics, but generally.) I like things that make a practical difference most.

[JuneTree]

Looks like you are shaping up well. I think you probably need to get some research experience.

But I'm only a second year undergrad so I'm no authority.

Regarding the psych club and professional organizations....

I have gotten the feeling from grad students, profs, prof who have supervised my RAship and research projects that listing or putting forth that you were the pres of your psych student association (I was) would not necessarily be bad depending what the position involved. In my position we held seminars, and did more psychy and less social types of activities. If your psych club was the same, then I really don't think that would be a disadvantage. If you go into academia doing this sort of thing among faculty is necessary for tenure and if you want to become a chair. Obviously don't dwell on it at all, though.

Organization membership can be mentioned somehow if you attend/present at an organizations conference...

Thanks for sharing your opinion - it is always good to hear another perspective.

[cogneuroforfun]

By "systems labs," I meant systems neuroscience, basically bridging the gap between behavior and neural circuits: how do particular networks of neurons support behavior/cognition? Things like in vivo electrophysiology, quantitative model-based fMRI, and computational modeling fall under this umbrella.

For graduate stats, you can certainly take them as a senior, which is what I did. There was a two-part seminar on general linear models and using SAS, plus another seminar on common methods in analyzing spike train data. Both were graduate courses and were incredibly useful and helpful. They helped me show I could handle stats and quantitative analysis, which may have been pretty crucial since I only had math through Calculus I. However, if you're more interested in pharmacology, I would worry less about this. I think taking more chemistry and biology would serve your interests better.

You don't need to worry about a senior slump, unless you're going to blow your last year completely. Getting two As and two Bs in your senior year would be fine, especially if (1) you are doing other impressive things like research, (2) the Bs are in less relevant courses. But really, once your GPA is above 3.7 or 3.8, I'm not sure anything else helps too much. Higher is better, but ad comms would easily take a 3.7 with better research over a 3.9 with mediocre research. It is nice to get fancy latin words to put after your GPA though I guess when I said don't worry about grades, I didn't mean stop trying. But definitely focus on perfecting other aspects of your application, since no matter what happens senior year grade-wise (within reason), your GPA will be excellent.

Extracurricular activities are fine to include on your CV and aren't a negative at all. But they're not the boost that they're sometimes sold as. Being an officer in Psi Chi, for example, is much less important than working on another research project, serving as a TA in a related course, or taking an extra relevant course. Something more substantial, like volunteering at a rehab clinic if you're into addiction or clinical, can be helpful and give you something extra to write and talk about. If you have time to do everything, extracurricular activities aren't going to hurt you or anything. However, if you're strapped for time and are figuring out what to ditch, they should be probably be the first thing.

Narrowing down your research interests is essential, and you're right that it will likely happen once you've actually tried working in a couple areas. If you're asked at an interview what interests you, you better not say "everything." What that says is you don't know or you don't have a deep enough understanding of the material or that you don't really care about the field. It is totally fine to appreciate other research areas; working on one topic doesn't mean you can't read about anything else. A PhD is 5-7 years of working on one relatively narrow topic, though, so you need to know (and interviewers need to know) that you are really, deeply interested in it, that it isn't a passing interest that will bore you in a year, and that you care enough about it to persevere through problems and setbacks. Especially since you'll be joining a lab right away, you can't come off as "interested in everything," since each lab is going to have some specific primary topic of research. Applying to join a memory lab with a personal statement that says "I love memory, addiction, audition, and motor systems" is going to get you a rejection.

[JuneTree]

By "systems labs," I meant systems neuroscience, basically bridging the gap between behavior and neural circuits: how do particular networks of neurons support behavior/cognition? Things like in vivo electrophysiology, quantitative model-based fMRI, and computational modeling fall under this umbrella.

Thank you! This is actually closer to my area of interest, I just didn't know how to summarize it into systems labs and thought pharmacology would explain better my interest in how the physical neural circuits relate to behavior (and how medications influence that).

I would be interested in running trials on psychoactive medications.

For graduate stats, you can certainly take them as a senior, which is what I did. There was a two-part seminar on general linear models and using SAS, plus another seminar on common methods in analyzing spike train data. Both were graduate courses and were incredibly useful and helpful. They helped me show I could handle stats and quantitative analysis, which may have been pretty crucial since I only had math through Calculus I. However, if you're more interested in pharmacology, I would worry less about this. I think taking more chemistry and biology would serve your interests better.

I am learning SAS at my current research internship. I didn't take Calculus I since I tested out of the math requirement and got an A in stats.

If all I have by graduation is Chemistry I and II, and Biology I and II, will that be enough?

You don't need to worry about a senior slump, unless you're going to blow your last year completely. Getting two As and two Bs in your senior year would be fine, especially if (1) you are doing other impressive things like research, (2) the Bs are in less relevant courses. But really, once your GPA is above 3.7 or 3.8, I'm not sure anything else helps too much. Higher is better, but ad comms would easily take a 3.7 with better research over a 3.9 with mediocre research. It is nice to get fancy latin words to put after your GPA though I guess when I said don't worry about grades, I didn't mean stop trying. But definitely focus on perfecting other aspects of your application, since no matter what happens senior year grade-wise (within reason), your GPA will be excellent.

Thanks. My worries are more in the getting an A- area, yes I am a perfectionist

Extracurricular activities are fine to include on your CV and aren't a negative at all. But they're not the boost that they're sometimes sold as. Being an officer in Psi Chi, for example, is much less important than working on another research project, serving as a TA in a related course, or taking an extra relevant course. Something more substantial, like volunteering at a rehab clinic if you're into addiction or clinical, can be helpful and give you something extra to write and talk about. If you have time to do everything, extracurricular activities aren't going to hurt you or anything. However, if you're strapped for time and are figuring out what to ditch, they should be probably be the first thing.

got it. Now I have to find a research position in a systems lab - I think that is what I need now.

Narrowing down your research interests is essential, and you're right that it will likely happen once you've actually tried working in a couple areas. If you're asked at an interview what interests you, you better not say "everything." What that says is you don't know or you don't have a deep enough understanding of the material or that you don't really care about the field. It is totally fine to appreciate other research areas; working on one topic doesn't mean you can't read about anything else. A PhD is 5-7 years of working on one relatively narrow topic, though, so you need to know (and interviewers need to know) that you are really, deeply interested in it, that it isn't a passing interest that will bore you in a year, and that you care enough about it to persevere through problems and setbacks. Especially since you'll be joining a lab right away, you can't come off as "interested in everything," since each lab is going to have some specific primary topic of research. Applying to join a memory lab with a personal statement that says "I love memory, addiction, audition, and motor systems" is going to get you a rejection.

I would tailor my application to the faculty I want to work with.

Another Q - I have worked at 2 places so far, both doing radically different research. For this coming year, I hope to work someplace doing research totally different from both of theirs.

Will working in so many different areas be bad for graduate school, especially since I don't have publications from any (and if I do have, it will be from a private project related to none) or can I just play it as "I wasn't sure which field and now I know"?

[honkycat1]

you can't play, you can't pretend. you need to know what you want to do, know what your getting yourself into, and be honest with yourself on this one. here are a few reasons

1) they can see through people that pulls a few quotes and say they are interested

2) if you pretend your way into a program, you will hate it, so do your self a favor. see through the flashy "phd" title, and really know what your getting yourself into. talk to your profs, talk to grad students,

secondly, phd programs are all about research, if you are as passionate as you say you are, you need to show it. especially in cognitive psychology, where is soooo competitive, you need to show why your special, why your are a good FIT, and why they want to pay you for 5 years for your original thoughts and ideas in science.

Edited July 25, 2011 by donnyz89

[honkycat1]

also, I don't mean to come off harsh but I know a lot of people that hate grad school because they didn't know what they were getting themselves into...

as for making yourself competitive, there are certainly quantifiable things you can do but in the end, in a field like cognitive science, most professors have funding for 1 or 2 students over 5-6 years, so ask yourself, if you were a professor, and you can hire one grad student to help you with your full time work and publication, what kind of qualities would you be looking for? and what makes you stand out from the other potential applicants. talk with professors and other grad students would be a good start. if they don't think you know what your getting yourself into, the best GRE, GPA, won't help you.

good luck