Profile Evaluation - PhD I/O Psychology

[chto]

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a reality check of sorts on my chances for an I/O PhD program. Any feedback would be fantastic.

BS from "public ivy" university
GPA: 3.8 Overall. 3.7 in Business Analytics (aka watered down Operations Management), 3.96 in Psychology
GRE: 163 Q (87%) 161 V (87%)

No grad work.

Research Experience:
Two and a half years of RA work in Psychology department (My university's business research program is located on another campus)
Undergraduate Thesis
Paper to be submitted by November to moderately high impact journal as primary author
Paper in preparation to be submitted to same journal as last of four authors.
Two posters to be presented at large national conference (One as primary author), 2 posters to be presented in local conference (One as primary author), 3 posters in university conference (All primary).

Work Experience: None. Spent all my time in research
letter of recommendation: One very strong letter from psychology professor. One strong letter from psychology professor. One very strong letter from business post-doc.

Possible Schools (Not final): Each of these schools I have at least 2 faculty who match my research interests
George Washington - I/O

CUNY Baruch - I/O

NYU - Social

Penn State - I/O

Columbia - I/O

Michigan University - Social

Michigan State - I/O

DePaul - I/O

Purdue - I/O

George Mason - I/O

Maryland - I/O

How do you guys think I look? Any feedback? Should I apply to anymore schools? Are there schools within my range? Should I cross some of these schools out? Overall what do you think my chances are?

Thank you for all your help, I appreciate all of it! And of course, thank you all in advance!

[Engali]

What are your research interests?  This is pretty much going to be the crux for you as far as where you end up; fit with a professor's research interests is key.  Another consideration that you really shouldn't underestimate is how your personality fits with your professor's. That's something you probably won't find out until visitation weekend, although some professors will call/Skype you early on.

 

You have the stats to be competitive, but after seeing more than my fair share of application cycles I will tell you that the market is rough for applicants.  Penn State, for example, in the last few years has had double the amount of their normal, average number of applications prior to the spike.  It's been like that for a lot of good schools.

 

Bottom line is that you are competitive for all the programs you're applying to more or less.  Some schools on your list have idiosyncrasies in the type of students they accept (based off of my research into their student profiles) I've noticed that you really can't do anything about at this point, so don't stress over that stuff.  Having said that, you might want to consider putting in some safeties just to be safe, frankly.  If you think you already have, then you're underestimating how competitive applying to I/O programs has become.  Again, not a comment on how "competitive" you are, just letting you know some information from the trenches.  I feel like people are fleeing the job market in droves and hoping to hide out in academia for the next several years.  That doesn't make you any less objectively competitive, just relatively so given the increased pool of applicants that schools can choose from.

[paiged2]

I agree with Engali that at this point it depends on your research interests.  It's all about fit, because you have good "stats" in terms of what top programs are looking for.  It looks like a solid list, but that is a large number of programs to be applying to, in terms of both time and money.

 

Engali is also correct in terms of the spike in applications, at least at PSU. I don't know about other programs.