Interviews?

[Remember]

Hey all,

I'm rather new here, and I don't know if this has been addressed before. I did a forum search and didn't find anything, so here we go:

I know some psychology Ph.D. programs require interviews (as specified on their website). However, there are some schools that don't explicitly say whether or not an interview is required. I know that the school where I am completing my undergraduate degree doesn't require interviews of prospective graduate students, but instead invites them to an optional "recruitment weekend," where the prospective students have basically (if unofficially) been accepted, and we are just trying to sell them on our program...

I talked to my research advisor, and she said that when she was a prospective graduate student none of the schools required an interview, but that it is becoming more common.

My question is this: Just how common are required interviews for psychology Ph.D. programs? If the school's website doesn't explicitly say they require an interview, would I be safer to assume that the do or do not require an interview?

For people who are already graduate students: what schools did you apply to and which ones required interviews? Which ones had recruitment weekends, etc.?

[neuropsych76]

It depends on the program. It seems that clinical psychology programs almost always have a required interview but experimental programs may not. I had 3 interviews and one optional visitation day in which I was already accepted.

[Mr. Tea]

Sometimes "recruitment weekends" are informal interview weekends. For one school I received a call from a prof telling me that I was accepted prior to their recruitment weekend. For another, there were over a dozen of us invited to a "recruitment weekend" and the school ended up giving offers to four prospective students. For another, I had a visitation weekend (couldn't make official recruitment) but it seemed more like they intended to give me an offer before I arrived (I withdrew my application before this happened because I heard back from my top choice). Pre-acceptance interviews are becoming more common because there is generally less funding available and a large pool of talented applicants, but they aren't universal.

As a general note, and to put it bluntly, don't be arrogant and don't be an asshole. Everyone or almost everyone who is invited to an interview weekend is highly qualified. My strong impression is that an important part of the interview process is to find out which of the qualified people are assholes who no one wants to work with for 5+ years.

[gradschoolguru]

In my experience, required interviews are quite common for Psychology Ph.D. candidates and can be extremely important in a final accept/reject decision.

Learn more about interviewing for grad programs in Psychology here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/grad-school-guru/201104/interviewing-part-1-the-basics

[LuckyCat]

I applied to social psych programs and these programs all had different processes: some had required interviews, some were recruitment weekends following formal acceptance, and some were straight out acceptances without a visit weekend. While it is standard in clinical programs to require interviews (which makes sense given the clinical component of their training), it is becoming increasingly common in social programs to require interviews.

An additional note not yet addressed in this thread: Some programs also first perform a phone interview with select applicants after the AdCom creates the short list of applicants. The aim of the phone interview is to whittle down the short list to an even shorter invite list for interview weekend. What professors are looking for is how you talk about research and your prior research experience(s). That is, how well you understand the research aims, methodology, and, if yet known, the results of your research projects. This helps profs to assess how involved you actually were in the research process.

For those of you who have completed senior or honors theses, or independent research projects, I recommend writing down how you would answer this question, and practice saying it out loud so that it sounds natural. You don't want to read it over the phone verbatim; your aim is to be able to speak intelligently, yet concisely, about your research. The prof will ask you to expand on any parts that s/he is interested in. Also be prepared for the question: "How do you, or would you, plan to extend this work in the future?" This is most relevant if what you aim to study in grad school is related to what you have previously researched.

Also, it's okay if your research projects didn't work out. You can speak instead to how it fueled your interest in getting the design (or whatever didn't work out right the first time) correct next time [this demonstrates your resilience and passion for research] and you can talk about what you would do differently next time [this demonstrates that you've thought critically about your research project].

Good luck to all those applying this season!