General Questions About Getting a PhD in Psychology

Graduate School
1

I’m currently a 2nd year student at a community college, and I will be transferring to a UC this fall (currently leaning towards UCI). I plan to get my B.A. in Psychology. I am pretty sure at this point that I want to continue my education and get a PhD in Cognitive Psychology.

However, I am not familiar at all with PhD programs. I am the first in my family to pursue a PhD and I do not have any older friends/acquaintances to fill me in about how to get into a PhD program or what it entails once I get there. So here are my questions:

-Will going to a lower or higher ranked undergrad school affect my chances of getting into better PhD programs?

-I understand that graduate programs look at GRE scores, GPA, research experience, letters of recommendation, and application essays. Which of these are the most important, and is there anything else I should be concerned about?

-I have a few questions about research experience- what kind of research do they expect? I’ve been doing a lot of research at community college, mostly making do with the resources that I have at CC by conducting my own literary research and presenting at every research conference available at my college. I’ve also had one of my research abstracts published in a journal by UCI. However, I have only conducted one experimental research project, which was done as part of a class.
I’ve heard about lab research, and I plan to get started on that as soon as I can when I transfer. How do I get a position in a research lab? What is it like working in a lab? Do you get paid for it, and how much time will you have to commit to it? Will I be working alongside only undergrad students or also grad students?

-Also, how much research experience do PhD programs expect of their applicants? I’m afraid that I will be “behind” in lab research experience when I transfer as a junior, and I want the truth of whether or not I am disadvantaged in some way.

-How will I pay for graduate school? I am receiving financial aid from FAFSA, but to my knowledge, that runs out after 6 years, and I’ve read that getting a PhD takes about 5 years. I’ve heard the terms “stipend”, “assistantships”, “fellowships”… what exactly do these all mean?

-What is it like being a PhD student? Do you still go to classes and take exams? Or is it similar to having a 9-5 job? Should I expect to be earning some kind of income as a PhD student?

-What is a dissertation? What is a thesis? Help!

-What should I expect once I graduate? What kind of jobs are out there for cognitive psychologists? Ideally, I would just love to do research for the rest of my life. I’ve heard of becoming an “academic researcher” but I’m not sure exactly what that means.

I apologize for any kind of ignorance that is present in these questions. If you’ve read all of this, thank you. And if you respond to any of these questions, thank you even more! Any information would be helpful.

2

I have my PhD in psychology, OP! I’m going to answer these questions kind of superficially because detailed answers would make this even more of a book than it is, but if you have any additional questions feel free to ask them here or PM me.

  1. No, not really. Any of the UCs is a good choice.
  2. Your research experience and its fit with the departments to which you are applying is the most important factor. After that, I would say GPA/coursework record, application essay/personal statement, letters of recommendation, and last GRE. The middle three are very close in importance, though - the statement is where you explain what your research interests are and how you fit in with the department.
  3. You're off to a great start, and you're making use of the resources you have around you, which is important. There are many ways to get positions in a research lab, but I think traditionally you'd just contact a professor who does work that sounds interesting to you (or his/her lab manager) and ask if they have positions for RAs in the lab. You probably will not get paid for it. Most RAs commit around 10-15 hours a week. You will be working along undergraduate students, graduate students, and possibly also postdoctoral fellows (early career researchers who have a PhD but are not professors).

You usually start out doing more basic tasks, like setting up experiments, scheduling participants, running the experiments, maybe doing a literature search for a paper or poster or assisting with recruitment. The longer you spend the lab, the more advanced your tasks will get. If you are ambitious, you can ask for a piece of the project to do a poster at a conference or even co-author a paper. It just depends on your skills, your level of coursework and what point your PI’s (that’s the professor; it stands for “principal investigator”) research is at. Some PIs have tons of data they need analyzed and others are in between projects.

  1. Generally speaking you'd need two years of research experience in a lab to be competitive - it's very common for people to start in the beginning of their junior year, so you aren't behind. It's very common these days for even students who started in their sophomore or junior years to do 2-3 years of research work after college (that's paid), but that is less common in cognitive psych.
  2. PhD programs are fully funded, which means that your tuition, fees, and health insurance will be covered and you will receive a monthly living stipend that is usually between $20-30K per year (which is livable in most places). In fact, you should not take an unfunded PhD offer, but in cognitive psychology virtually all offers are funded anyway. There are different ways that you might earn your stipend. The best way is if you are on "fellowship", which means that your only job is to be a student. You, of course, will still be expected to do research - but you have more flexibility in who you work with and what kind of research you do. Then there are research assistantships, in which you usually work 20 hours a week for someone in exchange for the stipend. Functionally in psychology programs, there's little difference between being on a research assistantship and being on fellowship - you'll still do the same amount of research. The other kind of assistantship is a teaching assistantship, in which you help teach undergraduate classes in psychology. You might grade papers, give a lecture or two, or teach a whole lab by yourself. Teaching is time-consuming but most people do at least one TAship before graduating, and having that experience can be important in getting academic jobs afterwards.
  3. PhD programs are usually 5-6 years. Usually, you take courses for the first 2 years while also starting some research. Graduate students usually take 2-3 courses a semester because the graduate classes are more intense, but really your role is to assist in research in the lab. You might run experiments, start to explore your area a bit more, and figure out what you might like to write a dissertation on (more on that). In year 3 (and maybe year 4), you usually have to pass one or more exams (often called "comprehensive" or "qualifying" exams). The exams test your knowledge of the entire field of psychology, of psychological research methods, and of your knowledge in your area of cognitive psych - basically, they are seeing how prepared you are to do a dissertation. In years 4 and 5 (and sometimes 6), you write your dissertation and then defend it. (more on that later.)

During this time, though, in order to be competitive on the job market there are also things you need to do outside of this. For example, many students (and the ones who are most successful on the market) publish papers in journals and present their work at national conferences. Generally students go to 1-2 national conferences a year. The number of publications is variable, and really depends on you and your PI and what data he has in his lab.

No, it’s not really like having a 9 to 5 job, but it’s not quite like being an undergrad either. It’s an odd in-between stage. Generally you’ll probably spend around 50-60 hours a week on coursework, teaching, and research. It’s very busy, and can be draining, but it’s also very rewarding.

I’m splitting this because CC says it’s too long.

3
  1. A dissertation and a thesis are functionally the same thing - two different words for similar things. Theses are usually used to refer to the work you do as a BA or MA student, whereas dissertation usually refers to work you do as a doctoral student. Basically, it's a big independent resaerch project that you have to do to complete your PhD. Basically, you have to execute a project or series of experiments of your own, and then write a long paper describing what you did. It's kind of like a research paper, but...expanded - it's a lot more in depth than your average research paper. Mine was 132 pages of writing (excluding references and appendices). There's a range, though - my department, which had strengths in cognition and neuroscience, tended to produce dissertations that ranged from 80-130 pages in length. That's relatively short compared to other departments and fields.

Don’t worry about it - by the time you get to the point of writing your diss, you won’t have a problem filling that much paper. Basically, most of the work you do in your PhD is designed to prepare you for the dissertation, and your advisor is there to help guide you.

Many undergrad universities also allow you to write a thesis, which is like a mini-dissertation - an independent research project that you do that’s along the same lines but not held to the same standards. My undergrad thesis was around 60 pages (including everything), and I was told that was longer than usual.

  1. Well, the traditional route is into a job as an assistant professor as a university (that's what an academic researcher is). In that role, you would do some combination of research and teaching, although how much of each you do depends on the kind of university/college you teach at - at Harvard or Michigan, more research and less teaching; at Lehigh or Davidson, a mix of the two; at some place like Kennesaw State or another regional public or small teaching college, probably mostly teaching. Academic jobs are very competitive; as they involve more research and less teaching, they are more competitive.

You can get an idea for what a portion of the market looked like last year by taking a look at the Psychology Jobs Wiki: http://psychjobsearch.wikidot.com/#toc6. Usually jobs are posted between August and October; people apply for them between September and December; you do phone interviews from October to January, and if you are lucky, campus interviews from December to maybe February or March.

One thing about this: it’s very common these days in psychology, to be competitive for academic jobs (and especially these top ones at elite schools), to do a postdoctoral fellowship. Usually that’s 1-4 years (most commonly 2) after grad school when you basically just do research like crazy. That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s fun!

There are other things you can do, though. You can work for a think tank; you can take your expertise into the federal government like a military research lab or DoD work; you can go into doing experimental research for a private firm (Facebook, Google, and Microsoft hire cognitive psychologists!).

4

@juillet Wow, thank you so so much for this response!! I appreciate it very much- I felt very lost about the process, but now I feel I have a much better grasp on it. Also, congrats on your PhD, seems like it takes a lot of work and dedication to earn that degree!

I just had one additional question:

-How do you go about writing a thesis as an undergrad? Would writing a thesis make you a more competitive applicant for grad school?

Once again, thank you so much for answering my questions.

5

Thanks! Glad I could help.

An undergraduate thesis is something you should work out with your advisor, because it varies by university. Generally, students who are already doing research in a lab with an advisor work with that person to execute the thesis. At my college, the thesis was two semesters and included an experimental study component (meaning you actually had to do an independent project, although I’m sure you could use data from a supervisor’s lab at some place like UCI). You work closely with your advisor to do it.

Basically, your junior year at UCI you should try to get into a professor’s lab and assist them with some research. Early to mid-second semester of your junior year, set a meeting with the professor (or perhaps a postdoc in the lab) and explain to them that you’d like to write a senior thesis. That should set the process in motion of selecting an acceptable topic and doing the groundwork to write the thesis.

Yes, writing a thesis makes you a more competitive applicant - you’re proving that you can work on an independent project and write a long paper, as well as work under the supervision of an advisor. The process is akin to what dissertation writing is like. It’s something you can discuss in your statement, and also a writing sample you can send if you need one!

6

I helped my adviser with he book on women and birth control. My UG thesis was on qualities of a group leader of women’s groups. I worked for a year in a substance abuse clinic. I was the only UG on the committee for psych. The head of dept was one of my LORs.

in more recent years, psych grad schools emphasize cognitive psych, NS, etc., rather than just clinical work.