Perception and Cognition Fall 2017 Applicants

[socrate4se]

Hi everyone! I haven't seen any love around these forums for people with interests in perception, cognition, vision, attention, memory, etc etc etc. Thought I'd get one going!

I've applied to Berkeley, Davis, San Diego, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Brandeis, NYU, Tufts, WashU and U of Delaware.

Been quite a journey. I'm so pumped that the applications are finally out of my hands, and I've made a number of good connections with POIs, but I'm not looking forward to the wait to hear back!

[TommySotomayor]

I currently attend UIUC.  Just out of curiosity, did you apply to the Visual Cognition and Human Performance (VCHP)  or Cognitive division?  I'm in the Cog Neuro division, btw.  Anyway, good luck with your apps.  Those are, obviously, all stellar schools you applied to.

[Azsy16]

Great thread!  

Applying to Brown, NYU, Yale, Columbia, Pittsburgh, CMU, Emory, Stony Brook, and Northwestern, mainly the reasoning/cognition side of things.

Being an international applicant, I'm as anxious as can be. Not sure if I should've applied to more schools...

Best of luck to everyone!

[FeelTheBern]

Good luck to you all! I know how stressful this process can be. My SO went through it last application cycle.

I noticed that @socrate4se & @Azsy16 applied to NYU. My SO is a 1st year doctoral student in the C&P program and he is loving every second of it!

I assume you both applied to Cognition & Perception, so if you have any questions at all about the program/professors. Feel free to ask on here or PM and I would be happy to talk with you! Best of luck

Edited December 3, 2016 by FeelTheBern

[superlative_high]

Hi, another cognition/perception person here!

I applied to UCSD (Psych and Neuro), Stanford, Columbia, NYU, Princeton, Brown CLPS, Harvard and MIT BCS. Currently finding it very nerve wracking that so many other schools/departments are sending interview invites already!

Good luck to everyone

[elzuap]

How come there are so few posts in this topic in comparison to clinical, i/o, social, etc.? I've been spending way too many hours anxiously awaiting interview emails.

Applied to cog neuro programs at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt, Rochester, Ohio State, WashU, NYU, UCSD, Delaware, and Toronto. Have received emails from OSU, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, and NYU to come for in-person interviews. 

Best of luck to everyone!

[Toren]

Applied to UCSD, Princeton, UNC, UIUC,  WashU/WUSTL, Brown, and Duke all in cog-neuro.

Received an interview invite for Princeton and Duke.  This is already beyond anything I expected to accomplish this time around, honestly if I'm not accepted anywhere after interviews I think I'm OK...haha.

Good luck everyone!

[netwerk]

Applied to UNC, Vanderbilt, UMN, and UMiami for cog-neuro/developmental psych, and received a skype interview and interview invite for UNC all in one week. Feeling really good about the POI -  UNC's been my #1 pick from the start. 

[brainz]

Yay, happy to see a cognition/perception thread! Applied to Princeton, Hopkins (PBS), Brown (CLPS), UCSD (Cog Sci), CMU (Psych), Duke (CNAP), MIT (BCS), Harvard (Neuro), WashU (Psych), Yale (Psych), & Stanford (Neuro).

Just got an invite to visit Princeton! Pretty ecstatic - I'm amazed to get any interviews coming straight from undergrad. Sounds like I've maybe already missed out on Duke & CMU interviews though.

[suryarajan]

Hey people

Good to see so many cog sci applicants. I have applied to NYU, Duke, Northwestern and McGill. Hoping to get a few interview calls!

All the best to all of you! 

[Professor Proton]

On 12/20/2016 at 6:17 PM, elzuap said:

How come there are so few posts in this topic in comparison to clinical, i/o, social, etc.? I've been spending way too many hours anxiously awaiting interview emails.

Applied to cog neuro programs at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt, Rochester, Ohio State, Washington, NYU, UCSD, Delaware, and Toronto. Have received emails from OSU, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, and NYU to come for in-person interviews. 

Best of luck to everyone!

Just curious to know when you submitted your CMU application. I am hoping they're still extending interviews and are doing so in order of application submission, but it'd be nice to know either way...

[elzuap]

@Professor Proton I submitted my CMU application (Psychology PhD) Nov 29th and got the official invite from the department on Dec 14th. Hope that helps.

[OhSoSolipsistic]

One reason for the lower frequency or seemingly lower interest in this psych subdiscipline is because engineering has... er, hijacked the applied side of it within the past 10-20 years. It's a great hybrid and we're producing a lot of tech innovations, but now you'll see a lot of institutions calling their cognition/perception research "Human Factors" or "Human Computer Interaction" or "Human Systems Integration". I have a MA in Experimental Psych and some experience in HCI/HSI professional field, and more than half of grads entering the research/development workforce in this area come up through the engineering departments. This may be too overly simplistic, but I believe many academic institutions who have kept their cog/perception/neuro psych research unadulterated tend to be more theoretical (I'm sure neuro overlaps with med depts quite a bit too).

Here's a few grad programs in this area: https://www.hfes.org/web/Students/grad_programs.html

ETA: not that people in this field don't already know this collaboration with other depts, just trying to provide explanation for others who may not be as familiar

Edited December 31, 2016 by OhSoSolipsistic

[OhSoSolipsistic]

5 minutes ago, TenaciousBushLeaper said:

I don't know, I don't think engineering will ever hijack cog-neuro or cognitive science, a lot of the top researchers in cog-neuro are people who are deeply invested in the theory and are also pretty good at hacking things together to build software and or have interest in computation, but I doubt any would purely stick to "engineering" or would even call their work engineering. IMHO this "applied" side of cog-neuro is not cog-neuro, it's interdisciplinary w/e you want to call it. I believe cog-neuro is deeply grounded in understanding the mind and brain, which along the way necessitates computation and software engineering.

(ps. this is coming from a tech who primarily works on the engineering side of things in a cog-neuro lab at MIT)

That's true, theory will and should stay rooted in cognitive science. I guess I was trying to say the recent rise and focus of HCI/HSI seems to partially explain why there may be less of a focus and/or interest on theory-based cog sci research within psychology, even though I'd argue that necessitates more interest and funding.

[TenaciousBushLeaper]

33 minutes ago, OhSoSolipsistic said:

That's true, theory will and should stay rooted in cognitive science. I guess I was trying to say the recent rise and focus of HCI/HSI seems to partially explain why there may be less of a focus and/or interest on theory-based cog sci research within psychology, even though I'd argue that necessitates more interest and funding.

I would agree if it were the case that engineers were applying to cog-neuro programs (and I honestly have no idea, though I don't doubt some were, and that the rise of interdisciplinary programs would certainly be more appealing). From my experience applicants to cog-neuro programs primarily come from psychology backgrounds, and it would be interesting to know, given that you have experience with these interdisciplinary programs if the applicants there come from psych departments or engineering or a mix, though I would tend to think that these program favor engineers / math majors over psych.

[suryarajan]

4 hours ago, TenaciousBushLeaper said:

I would agree if it were the case that engineers were applying to cog-neuro programs (and I honestly have no idea, though I don't doubt some were, and that the rise of interdisciplinary programs would certainly be more appealing). From my experience applicants to cog-neuro programs primarily come from psychology backgrounds, and it would be interesting to know, given that you have experience with these interdisciplinary programs if the applicants there come from psych departments or engineering or a mix, though I would tend to think that these program favor engineers / math majors over psych.

I  am one of the few engineers applying to cog-sci! That said, i am looking for a pure science perspective rather than an interdisciplinary one!

[OhSoSolipsistic]

22 hours ago, TenaciousBushLeaper said:

I would agree if it were the case that engineers were applying to cog-neuro programs (and I honestly have no idea, though I don't doubt some were, and that the rise of interdisciplinary programs would certainly be more appealing). From my experience applicants to cog-neuro programs primarily come from psychology backgrounds, and it would be interesting to know, given that you have experience with these interdisciplinary programs if the applicants there come from psych departments or engineering or a mix, though I would tend to think that these program favor engineers / math majors over psych.

I'm not (yet) privy to pools of student applicants, but from my limited perspective the engineer/psych integration overall hasn't been great across industry and government sectors. I know a few people who have crossed from undergrad to grad, but it’s been in those linked ^ interdisciplinary applied cog sci/human factors concentrations. Objectively speaking, I think psych would be wary of an engineer without some degree of experimental design and stats knowledge, and engineering would be wary of a psychologist without some degree of modeling/programming/industrial background. As you said, some academics are skilled in both but it seems like there’s far fewer outside of schools - especially in engineering-heavy industry - which is a big concern when looking at it from the perspective of conducting and analyzing cognitive or behavioral research appropriately.

Edited January 1, 2017 by OhSoSolipsistic

[Kodel]

Hi everyone,

Great to see a group on Perception. I have applied to UIUC, Harvard, UCSD, Johns Hopkins and Dartmouth. No news from any of these universities yet. So, do we expect an interview call around the same time as last year? I hope to be getting one from Hopkins at least. Should arrive in a week or so (according to last year) if I am lucky. 

Can anyone throw some light on the admission procedure at Hopkins, Psychology and Brain Sciences? Does the PI select a candidate (has autonomy in selection)? or does our application go through a committee and everyone has a say regarding the decision?

Thanks and all the best!

[Kodel]

I noticed a couple of interviews for UCSD Psychology on the survey page. Can someone here claim them and if possible PM me the name of their POI?

Thanks.

[superlative_high]

Hi the post wasn't me but I also got an email from my POI yesterday. However, I know that official emails haven't been sent yet (they're supposed to be sent sometime today) so I wouldn't stress if you haven't heard anything. 

[Dante26]

Applied to University of Montana, Purdue, WUSTL, UCD, UCSB, Louisiville, Binghamton, PITT, and K-State all under the cognitive umbrella in one regard or another

Have heard back from WUSTL, PITT, UCSB, and Louisville. The first 3 have sent out interview weekend notices but it was all done after personal correspondence between myself and one of the faculty so I would not worry too much if they haven't gotten to you yet, the interview weekends are still a month or so out.

[cogdog]

Anyone else apply to UChicago Psych? Seems to me like they should be sending out interviews soon but it's hard to tell because they changed their interview weekend from the end to the beginning of February (4th-6th). In past years their interview emails went out about a month before the interview weekend. Anyone else have guesses on this? 

[Kodel]

Anyone heard back from Johns Hopkins? Should be sending out interviews anytime now I guess.

[psycbcs]

5 hours ago, Kodel said:

Anyone heard back from Johns Hopkins? Should be sending out interviews anytime now I guess.

I emailed the program coordinator and they replied that some faculty might still be making decision on who to invite to the interview. 

[elzuap]

Have heard back from UCSD, University of Washington (unofficial Skype with POI, haven't sent out official interview notices yet), and Delaware. Does anyone know when Harvard will be sending out notifications, or if they even have an interview weekend?

Edited January 13, 2017 by elzuap