A Program with No Current Graduate Students

[Quantitative_Psychology]

I am currently in the process of selecting Quantitative Psychology programs to apply to in the Fall. In doing this research, I came across a program that has one professor accepting graduate students. His research interests and mine work well together, and I thought this would be a good program to apply to. However, I realized in searching the website that there are no current quantitative psychology graduate students listed. This seems very unusual to me, but their admission statistics suggest this is a distinct possibility. Would you apply somewhere that doesn't have other graduate students in your area? Is this a red flag? I'm not certain how to interpret this.

[TakeruK]

It depends on the size of the program. During my Masters degree in Canada (the standard route is BSc -> funded MSc -> funded PhD here), I was the only student in my (specific) area out of 12 or so students for the entire 2 years I was there. But I still got a lot out of the program because I was working with one of the best people in my area in Canada! My supervisor was the only professor in this area (out of 7 or so in astronomy).

There are certainly downsides to being the only student in your specific area. For one, the classes that would have been great for me were only offered once every 4 years, so I never took any relevant courses in my 2 year program. Colloquium and seminar speakers that visit would generally be about different areas of astronomy, not my research interest. Maybe 1 or 2 speakers per year in my field. Similarly, at paper discussion groups, journal clubs etc. people would be presenting about the other areas, not mine.

My area of research is pretty small though. At the time of my MSc, the area that I was working in probably had something like 20 students in the whole country. And the department itself was small, about 7 faculty with about 12 students in total. So it wasn't a "red flag" to me to be the only one. However, I was very happy to move to my PhD department, in the US, where the field is a lot bigger (field basically invented by the USA) and I was in a department of about 24 students all in my area.

In your case, I would consider the overall opportunities for people in your area before determining if it's a red flag or not. If the number of admitted students is small or the total number of students is small, then it might just be happenstance that there's no one in your area. If you have good research fit with a professor, then that might be worth the downsides I listed above that I experienced.

For the application stage, my advice would be to not worry about being the only student in your area for now. If you think you would work really well with the professor, I think it's worth applying. If you get accepted, then visiting and/or talking with other grad students would be a good way to find out what it would be like to be the only student in your area at that particular school. If you really want to search for it now, try looking up what courses have been offered in the last few years, what the seminar schedules are like (who's speaking, on what topics etc.). Otherwise, you can also ask for these things once you get an offer from them.

[AP]

There is a girl in my program that applied with no graduate students above her. The department decided to open that field and she got in and accepted. She was given a lot of incentives to come and stay, especially with funding that was not available to other students. Now her caucus has about five students (it's a lot in our program, especially for a new field). Her advisor is a well-known scholar, so her LRs may be strong. I am not familiar with her field or yours, but it sounds that it is not so bad to apply for a place where you are the only student.