How to select a Quantitative Psychology PhD program?

Graduate School
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This post will have a lot of questions that I have been seeking (unsuccessfully) answers for.

A bit about me…I am currently a Master’s student in Psychological Research, and I know I’m interested in pursuing Quantitative Psychology. I am highly interested in statistics, measurement, and computer programming (although I don’t have too much experience in programming). I would like to do research in structural equation modeling and cluster analysis. I’m also interested in Bayesian Statistics, but no one at my current university is doing research with it.

My questions…
How do you select a Quantitative Psychology program? How do you tell the best ones without official rankings? Is there anything I should know to steer clear of?
What kind of GRE scores are expected from Quantitative Psychology programs?
Why are there some schools that decide to take no one for the incoming class despite having applicants?
I have not taken Linear Algebra. Should I take it? If so, can I audit it?
I have used SEM, multi-level modeling, and logistic regressions in my past research experiences. However, this has all been more substantive research and not purely quantitative. Is this problematic?
I am going to apply for the Ford Foundation Fellowship and NSF GREP Fellowship. Do you think this could help me as an applicant? Can I put it on my CV that it is pending because I won’t be accepted/rejected by the time applications are done for next year?

I think this is all for my questions. If anyone has any advice whatsoever about the application process, selecting potential advisors, selecting programs, and applying for external fellowships for Quantitative Psychology, I would love to hear your thoughts (even if it is not related to my questions). Thanks!

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  1. I did my postdoc in quantitative psychology. The issue with finding the top programs is that they span fields - there are some that are formal psychology PhDs in psychology departments, and then there are some that are educational measurement programs in schools of education that are pretty much quant psych programs with an educational focus.

Here are some of the top ones in the field:

Arizona State (psychology)
UCLA (psychology)
University of Iowa (it’s in educational measurement and statistics, but in the department of psychology and quantitative foundations)
University of Kansas (in the department of educational psychology)
University of Maryland (measurement, statistics, and evaluation)
Michigan State (measurement and quantitative methods)
University of Minnesota (quant methods in education)
UNC (quant psych)
Notre Dame (quant psych)
Penn State (educational psychology, HDFS)
USC (quantitative methods, in psychology)
Vanderbilt (psychology)
UVa (quantitative methodology in psych; there’s also a good program in the education department)
UW-Madison (educational psychology)

In most other subfields, you select on the basis of the kind of research you want to do and who you want to work with. IN quant psych, it’s a bit harder because you may not yet know enough math/statistics to know exactly what you want to work on. So I’d say try to pick on the basis of the research being done there in specific quant areas but also on your fit with the PI and their productivity.

  1. High quantitative scores, obviously. And pretty high verbal scores, too. I would say you want to aim for a 160+ on the verbal and a 165+ on the quantitative section.

  2. I have never heard of this happening before. If it does, it may be because of budget reasons or maybe no applicants in the pool matched what they needed.

  3. Yes, you should take it. You should probably take it for credit, not audit it.

  4. No, I wouldn’t say it’s problematic. I think most quant psych PhD students have done more substantive research before coming to graduate school, and you’ll still do some substantive research in graduate school as well. As long as you can demonstrate that you grasp the core techniques surrounding the quant stuff and are trainable in that area, I think you’ll be okay. But good on you for having used SEM and MLM in undergrad!

  5. Having an external fellowship could help you in theory; in practice, it’s difficult because decisions are usually released after you have heard about programs. But no, simply applying doesn’t necessarily help you. There’s no way to determine anything about the likelihood of you receiving a fellowship simply from knowing that you applied.