2015 - Social Psych

[informant]

Not that I applied at Berkeley or anything (just out of curiosity), but when you say "ones with a high rating are passed on to professors," what constitutes a high rating? All that meet a certain threshold for GRE, GPA, etc.? The top n (10, 20, 50...) applications per professor on these scores? Feeling of fit with a lab?

 

Grad student committee ranks each applicant on a scale of 1-5, 4s & 5s are passed on to the next round.

~110 apps this year.

 

Out of curiosity, what else do you know about their process? Are they looked at in a certain order? Are they passed on to professors all at once, or in waves? How are applications rated?

What do you want to know? They are looked at in waves, in alphabetical order (the way the system orders them). Rated the way an adcom would, based on SoP, letters, etc. GRE is really not as big a factor, FYI.

 

Ha, the slightest hint of an insider scoop is like blood in the water to the sharks here.

 

Frankly I find it weird that the students take first pass. Must be some Berkeley hippie collectivist crap

Other big schools do the same. UMichigan, for example.

 

Is this normal? I had no idea we had to get through grad students first. That kind of creeps me out. Knowing grad students and being one myself, I'm not sure I trust those people.

 

(For people who lack a sense of humor, that was supposed to be sort of funny.)

It is normal when you have a very high volume of applications. Professors are busy people.

[informant]

I was around last year... you can look up my previous post(s) as to why I am here and what I know.

[psych face]

Hey Informant! So what is the deal with SOP and Personal Statement, are they only looking at SOP or are they equally important, or what is the deal with having them both - because a lot of schools only want SOP. Thanks in advance, Informant!

[_intrigue_]

Thanks for the scoop, Informant. Do you know how the various parts of the application are weighted, besides GRE not being very important?

[AvatarPsych]

 

It is normal when you have a very high volume of applications. Professors are busy people.

 

I want to chime in here to note that one thing I didn't fully realize and I think people take for granted is that grad students are very much so part of the process. Yes, you're applying to work with a POI but you're in the lab as a grad student, and you have to be able to work well with and mesh with the grad students. 

 

Furthermore, when a program gets 600+ applicants (I'm in clinical psych), that's a LOT to ask professors to do. 

[informant]

Everything except GRE is weighted pretty heavily. GPA is a factor but not as important as a lot of the other stuff. I can only speak to the first round (student panel) however. Already we have seen one student who has a great application, but is interested in working with someone who is not a good fit for them - someone else in the department would be far better (should have done their research)! Someone else applied to a POI who is not taking students. Other people have terrible SoPs, which pretty much eliminates them immediately. One had no (or at least mentioned no) research experience in their SoP.

Edited December 2, 2014 by informant

[FinallyAccepted]

Everything except GRE is weighted pretty heavily. GPA is a factor but not as important as a lot of the other stuff. I can only speak to the first round (student panel) however. Already we have seen one student who has a great application, but is interested in working with someone who is not a good fit for them - someone else in the department would be far better (should have done their research)! Someone else applied to a POI who is not taking students. Other people have terrible SoPs, which pretty much eliminates them immediately. One had no (or at least mentioned no) research experience in their SoP.

All of us definitely appreciate the feedback. I applied to work with POIs taking students, POIs who were a good fit, and I have some research experience. So I probably don't have one of those terrible SOPs.

What about publications? Do a lot of applicants have publications? Are there many who apply who have a non-psychology undergrad? Masters degrees?

[psych face]

Everything except GRE is weighted pretty heavily. GPA is a factor but not as important as a lot of the other stuff. I can only speak to the first round (student panel) however. Already we have seen one student who has a great application, but is interested in working with someone who is not a good fit for them - someone else in the department would be far better (should have done their research)! Someone else applied to a POI who is not taking students. Other people have terrible SoPs, which pretty much eliminates them immediately. One had no (or at least mentioned no) research experience in their SoP.

 

If the SOP is so important, do you guys even look at the Personal Statement, which is separate at that school? Or is it just something only some people look at, like grades.

[informant]

I came here because I genuinely wanted to help you all. There are a lot of things, especially about specific professors, that I feel prospective students have the right to know. But you guys, by talking about it to YOUR professors and generally calling attention to it, have compromised my identity. I am not thrilled that you would use me that way. You'll get no more information from me.

[psych face]

I came here because I genuinely wanted to help you all. There are a lot of things, especially about specific professors, that I feel prospective students have the right to know. But you guys, by talking about it to YOUR professors and generally calling attention to it, have compromised my identity. I am not thrilled that you would use me that way. You'll get no more information from me.

 

You're really wierd and uninformed about reality if you think this is a private location to say private stuff.

Edited December 2, 2014 by psych face

[Eigen]

There's a difference between posting stuff on this forum, pseudonymously, and you, as an applicant, bitching about information posted here to your advisor, who then calls the department in question and gets someone in trouble. 

 

It's like prospective graduate students who want honesty from current students when they visit, get told things in confidence, and then go back and gossip about what they were told. It's bad form, and will result in less available information for the next wave of prospective students to use to make decisions off of. 

[psych face]

There's a difference between posting stuff on this forum, pseudonymously, and you, as an applicant, bitching about information posted here to your advisor, who then calls the department in question and gets someone in trouble. 

 

I'd appreciate it if you didn't make up things and attribute them to me as if I did them. Also, I don't appreciate your wording. Moderators should post under fake accounts if they are going to say things like that.

[Eigen]

You said in your other thread that you told your advisor.

Also, I was using the general "you" to those on this thread who did just that, as evidenced by the problems informant is now facing.

[psych face]

So I'm a little confused now about the perception that when a person shares information, that they know they aren't supposed to, on a public forum - they somehow feel justified blaming anyone on the face of the earth if it comes back to them. Both Eigen and Informant both seem to think I didn't have the right to have mentioned this now PUBLIC information to anyone (which was already public, seeing as how many people here already knew). More than that, it seems that I am to be freely blamed for sharing this public information, which was shared by someone who implies they never should have shared it in the first place.

 

I wish I could live, walking around, blaming everyone else for everything stupid I did all on my own - breaking rules I was supposed to follow and then saying someone else is responsible. Gosh, just doing things I'm not supposed to be doing, and then saying it was someone else's fault if it came back to bite me in the ass - that would be great. What a conscious-free existence.

 

Which also brings me to a suggestion to anyone applying to Berkeley: that's the sort of person that is apparently screening your graduate applications down to the 100 or so that get to the committee (according to Informant's post - which they will now yell at me for repeating, even though they posted it). So, people who don't think they should be held responsible for their own actions not only get into the program; but they also have power over which applications make it to the professors there. Think about that.

[TakeruK]

So I'm a little confused now about the perception that when a person shares information, that they know they aren't supposed to, on a public forum - they somehow feel justified blaming anyone on the face of the earth if it comes back to them. Both Eigen and Informant both seem to think I didn't have the right to have mentioned this now PUBLIC information to anyone (which was already public, seeing as how many people here already knew). More than that, it seems that I am to be freely blamed for sharing this public information, which was shared by someone who implies they never should have shared it in the first place.

 

No one is arguing that you did not have the "right" to share information. No users on this board has any authority to say what you can or cannot do beyond the GradCafe.

 

However, having the right/ability to do something does not always mean that you should. In Eigen's post, he explains that actions like yours cause people with useful information (like informant) to be adverse to sharing their useful information. I agree that there is no direct evidence showing that it was specifically and solely your action that cause informant to write that they will not share further information. However, I think that your action affects the GradCafe community negatively because if other members of the community feel that certain people will use information on this board and compromise their identity, our community will suffer. 

 

Everyone has responsibility over their own decisions. It was informant's decision to share the information in a potentially risky place. But it was also psych face's decision to take an action that jeopardizes another friendly user's anonymity. All users, moderators or not, are part of the GradCafe community and it's on the community members to decide what kind of environment we want our community to have. Speaking as both a moderator and a regular user, I think it is a bad decision that hurts our community when other users do things that jeopardizes each other's pseudo-anonymity. 

 

Finally, this practice of not freely sharing everything your colleagues say to you (especially if they are trying to help you at their own risk) is not new to the Internet or even academia. For example, both the "Astronomers" and "Young Planetary Scientists" Facebook groups have a pinned post reminding users that discussions within those Facebook groups are meant to be closed discussions so that people can speak relatively freely although not anonymously. Even though Facebook is obviously a public place.

 

Like GradCafe, users on these Facebook groups are still responsible for what they post, but the expectation is that colleagues will respect each others' privacy and make sharing decisions that do not hurt the community. We're all on the same side here!

[Eigen]

Just to add, while the forums are a public place, anyone who's been here for a while knows that information is primarily being shared with applicants. 

 

Informant didn't share anything wrong or secret, but just because something isn't wrong or secret doesn't mean it's something everyone is happy with, or that people want to share widely. 

 

Posting it here in a thread directed at 2015 Social Psych applicants is different than broadcasting it, say, at a conference. Very few advisors are reading these threads, so likely would not get information contained here unless someone brought it to them. 

 

Telling people about what's posted here isn't against your rights, and informant didn't have some ironclad expectation of privacy, but that still doesn't make it a healthy thing for encouraging them, or anyone else, to share here if they experience negative consequences for doing so. 

 

Every year during vista (and application season), lots of threads pop up with people complaining that none of the grad students told them the department was toxic when they visited, or steered them away from bad faculty members, or was honest about what grad school was like. 

 

That's because of the increasingly pervasive worry that the applicants will not be discreet with that information. If I'm having a conversation with an applicant in a bar, it's a public conversation. People can here. But I'm giving specific information to a specific audience that I hope has some discretion in how they will share it. 

 

If I don't have that hope, then I don't share information, and that hurts everyone, but mostly the incoming students. 

 

Graduate students everywhere are low on the hierarchy, and can well experience negative repercussions for being honest and helpful to prospectives, or even other graduate students. An environment in which they experience said negative repercussions is a toxic one, and I'm personally of the opinion that we should minimize that competitive, dog-eat-dog side of academia as much as possible- as TakeruK says, we're all on the same side here. 

[juilletmercredi]

In addition to what Eigen and TakeruK already said, your post (and your issue with this) strikes me as incredibly naive.

 

Graduate students have an impact on admissions at all programs.  Berkeley's situation might be unconventional in its formality, but not in its practices.  I have been asked my opinion on applicants and I have known that my opinion mattered and was factored in, particularly when the applicant was going to come into the lab.  Labs are an ecosystem and incoming students need to be able to get along with everyone.  Besides, I am thankful that the professors and staff in my program treated me and my fellow grad students like a junior colleague and not like a "minion."  They trusted our judgment.

 

Graduate students also play a role in hiring professors, too, btw.  In some departments, there are one or two grad students formally on the search committee.  In others they aren't, but they attend the job talks and give input on the candidates - which is taken seriously.  A formal lunch is scheduled between the grad students and the candidate.

 

This is no different from the non-academic world.  Co-workers often help make decisions about who to hire in their department.  Sometimes, subordinates are on the interview panel for their future managers.  In my last position, I was on the committee that helped hire my own boss.

[FinallyAccepted]

I kind of wonder how SPSP will impact the timeline for those of us in social psychology. In 2014, it was two weeks earlier than it will be for 2015. Will we be finding out later than last year's applicants?

[rufio]

I'm so curious to know if the UCLA social psych invites are still rolling out or if they're all done. If anyone has insight, I'd much appreciate if you would share it. 

 

If you got an invite and are willing to PM me your POIs, that would be greatly appreciated as well!

[psych face]

I kind of wonder how SPSP will impact the timeline for those of us in social psychology. In 2014, it was two weeks earlier than it will be for 2015. Will we be finding out later than last year's applicants?

 

I'm actually really bummed about the date, I'm TA-ing for a class that will have a component that week I don't think I can miss.

[Illvm]

I kind of wonder how SPSP will impact the timeline for those of us in social psychology. In 2014, it was two weeks earlier than it will be for 2015. Will we be finding out later than last year's applicants?

What do you mean by SPSP impacting the timeline for social psych admission? Could you explain it in more detail?

[FinallyAccepted]

What do you mean by SPSP impacting the timeline for social psych admission? Could you explain it in more detail?

If profs want to meet applicants at SPSP before making decisions (which makes sense), they wouldn't make decisions until after. Last year they could have made these post-SPSP decisions mid-February. This year, they couldn't make a post-SPSP decision until March.

I doubt all profs would necessarily wait until SPSP, but I wonder which ones might.

Get what I'm saying?

(Apparently UCLA Social Psych didn't want to wait... How about that "results page," huh?)

[Illvm]

If profs want to meet applicants at SPSP before making decisions (which makes sense), they wouldn't make decisions until after. Last year they could have made these post-SPSP decisions mid-February. This year, they couldn't make a post-SPSP decision until March.

I doubt all profs would necessarily wait until SPSP, but I wonder which ones might.

Get what I'm saying?

(Apparently UCLA Social Psych didn't want to wait... How about that "results page," huh?)

Got it! I did get official notification from grad coordinators at some of the schools that they will be sending out interview invitations early January. Keep my finger crossed..

 

p.s. We have UCSB in common! 

[FinallyAccepted]

I didn't apply to UCLA (other programs were a better fit for my interests), but I did check out their website. They have all of their interview weekend dates already posted, which I wish the programs I applied to had done. Indiana listed theirs, but the rest are a mystery to me unless I email specifically.

Why don't more make it clear which weekend you have to keep open if you receive an invite? Is it uncertainty in the planning of interviews or an attempt to keep us from crashing?

[psych face]

I didn't apply to UCLA (other programs were a better fit for my interests), but I did check out their website. They have all of their interview weekend dates already posted, which I wish the programs I applied to had done. Indiana listed theirs, but the rest are a mystery to me unless I email specifically.

Why don't more make it clear which weekend you have to keep open if you receive an invite? Is it uncertainty in the planning of interviews or an attempt to keep us from crashing?

 

OMG, I am laughing so hard because I didn't even think of doing this... evil laughter.

Especially given how one of my teachers said they got into their program: walked in and said "I'm going to grad school here, what do I have to do."