Masters in GEN PSY Fall 2010

[johnmalcom]

Hey folks,

I am an engineer 2003 pass out, working since, planning on a career shift towards Psychology. To be eligible for a PhD program, I am planning to apply for masters first. I am close to Florida State University and am planning to take three courses as a special student:

1. Gen PSY

2. Behavioral Statistics

3. Brain and Behavior

Any suggestions are welcome. Could any one point me to the good schools for a masters program. I have done some research and have come down to:

1. NYU

2. Boston College

3. SUNY Buffalo

4. Boston University

Are there any chances of getting a scholarship for an MA program.

And what about Canadian programs, are they good ? And do they accept non psych students. On the applications page every university mentions that non psych background students are welcome, but do they actually accept them.

Would I need to do something extra, to have a strong application.

Thanks.

[pathanalysis]

Look at funded programs, such as:

-Wake Forest

-William and Mary

-Mt. Holyoke

-Montana State

-South Alabama

[johnmalcom]

Thanks.

[MacDuff]

Hi, johnmalcom.

In my Ph.D. program there are students who've entered with undergraduate majors in mathematics and physics. If you're coming with a strong background that includes science courses, you should be just fine. Your plan to supplement your current knowledge base with some core psychology and statistics courses is perfect.

Best of luck to you!

[johnmalcom]

Hi Mac,

Which PhD program are you in ?

[MacDuff]

johnmalcolm -- Sent you a PM. Cheers!

[liszt85]

Hey John,

I'm going into Psychology too (Cognitive). My ug degree is in Physics. The Professors at the grad school have assured me that the coursework there will cover all the stats and basics that I need to know. So that is almost never a problem in some subfields of Psychology (eg: cognitive). Clinical might be a whole different story. I was recruited by this particular professor because his work involves some analysis techniques incorporated from Physics, namely, nonlinear dynamics which I had gained some expertise in through some independent projects I'd undertaken in my ug days. So the only thing you need to look for is research that you can contribute to and research that you want to contribute to. These research areas are getting more mathematical by the day and they always welcome people with strong backgrounds in physics and math and with a demonstrated interest in the field (as told to me by professors of the Dept of Linguistics in Northwestern where I received an offer from). Good luck with your search!

[johnmalcom]

Thanks, but I was wondering would I need to do that for Maters as well. Start going through the research of various professors and match it with my interests and strengths. Will that help ? I have time on my hands and could start doing that. And sure you would have had a strong UG profile to get a call from Northwestern. My GPA is ok and am pretty confident I will get a very good GRE score. LOR should not be a problem as well. No related research experience mind that. Do you think I have a shot at direct PhD ?

[liszt85]

Thanks, but I was wondering would I need to do that for Maters as well. Start going through the research of various professors and match it with my interests and strengths. Will that help ? I have time on my hands and could start doing that. And sure you would have had a strong UG profile to get a call from Northwestern. My GPA is ok and am pretty confident I will get a very good GRE score. LOR should not be a problem as well. No related research experience mind that. Do you think I have a shot at direct PhD ?

If its a PhD that you want to do finally, I think its prudent to start looking for research interest fit. Apply to maybe a few MA programs if you think your research experience is weak as that is a very important factor in PhD admissions but if you've done research that has used, say, analysis techniques that might help you do well in research of a certain kind, then a professor involved in that kind of research would be interested in your application. To be more specific, I can tell you about my case. I did not actually work on anything related to psychology in my ug days. What I did was to use certain techniques (nonlinear dynamics, fractals, etc) to analyse music (randomized frequencies, durations, etc) to see how these visual patterns (a log-log plot that showed 1/f behavior) changed as randomization parameters were varied.

Now the research that I'm expected to carry out for my PhD is on memory. I have no knowledge about it (other than that I have a very poor memory!). I've been assigned some preliminary reading which I'm doing now. However, the focus of my work will be on using those nonlinear dynamics techniques that I'm familiar with to probe certain aspects of memory (which already has been started by this professor's group). He expects me to explain certain plots physically and make sensible interpretations for my MA thesis. It is not an easy problem but this kind of thing can be done only by somebody who has had a strong background in physics and math. So if your research interests somehow find such a fit in some research group, I'm sure getting a PhD acceptance is realistic!

BTW, my GPA was poor (7.0/10 at the time of applying and 7.2/10 when graduating. However my grade sheet showed steady and marked improvement..they love rising trends. So even if your grades sucked in your first few semesters and you did badly in courses that aren't relevant to your intended field of study at grad school, it won't really matter in a lot of places). The reason why I got a call from Northwestern was this research experience + a writing sample I'd sent them (from my cognitive linguistics course that I'd taken as an elective.. I did well in that course). So they were convinced about my research abilities + interest in cognitive linguistics. That is all you need to be a competitive applicant to a graduate program (in addition of course to good SOP, LOR's etc).

[johnmalcom]

thanks liszt85. Let me think and I will sure be back with some more questions