<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm currently an undergrad majoring in psych and I plan to attend grad school. I was wondering if there's anyone out there who could tell me some of the programs they got in, their stats, and ESPECIALLY how much research experience they gained prior to applying.</p>
<p>By "how much", I mean, how many different topics/labs did you work in and how long did you commit to each one?</p>
<p>I got a PhD in a joint PhD program in public health and social psychology at Columbia. I only applied to one PhD program because at the time, I originally intended to earn an MPH first and then go on to get a PhD in social psychology after that - this was the only PhD program that allowed me to combine them simultaneously. I was told by my advisor that I would have been a competitive candidate for most of the top programs in social psychology in my field, had I applied to them at the time. </p>
<p>I just want to note that I don’t think this exercise is productive; but given that in 2007 I wanted the exact same kind of information, I am going to provide it first and then explain why I don’t think it’s productive. I had</p>
<p>-A 3.42 GPA (3.6 in my major)*;
-2 years of research experience in 2 labs and 1 summer REU by the time I applied - I started doing research in January of my sophomore year. The first lab I worked in for about a year, and it was research on child motor development in infant 12 to 24 months old. The second lab I worked in for about a year and a half by the time I graduated, and I did research on culturally relevant HIV prevention programs for African American adolescents and coping with experiences of racial and gender discrimination in African American young women. My research in grad school was most related to the latter. My summer REU was at a school of public health doing research on adolescent risk in an urban low-income community. I think I had 2 conference presentations at the time, both at small student conferences.
-GRE scores: 790 V/740 Q/6.0 AW (the GRE says that’s equivalent to about a 170 V/158 Q these days)
-Random other things, like a summer training program in statistics, a full scholarship to undergrad, was in the honors program, and was in a two-year NIH-funded fellowship in my last two years of college. I was also a very excellent fit for the PhD program and the department that I applied to.</p>
<p>*My GPA was low partially because of a semester in which I was facing some serious mental health problems. My advisor wrote me a great recommendation letter in which she explained that my performance that semester was not reflective of my capabilities. And as you can see, my major GPA was higher. I also know that I wrote a great personal statement, had very very clearly defined research interests and career goals, and had two other really strong recommendation letters with people with whom I had either done research or taken more than one class with.</p>
<p>You can find more stats like this on TheGradCafe.com. Click on Results Search.</p>
<p>Now, there are several reasons I think this information is unproductive, but the number one reason is because I think that it’s very improbable that you will gather enough data to be able to make any reasonable conclusions from it. Even if you got 50 PhD students and/or graduates to tell you their stats from 10 different programs, that means on average you only have 5 data points from each program, which doesn’t really reflect the diversity of students that are admitted. Furthermore, you might not be getting the most recent data. I was admitted to my PhD program almost 7 years ago and things have probably changed (I know that the directors of the program have!). Plus, how can I really convey to you the intangibles? I know that I am an excellent writer and that my statement of purpose was great; I also know that my recommendations were glowing. But there’s really no objective way to communicate exactly how “glowing” your recs need to be in order to overshadow a 3.2 GPA or something.</p>
<p>So here’s my advice:</p>
<p>1) If you are a junior or below and you are looking for information about what you should be doing to increase your chances to get into grad school, the answer for now is to keep your grades as high as you can; continue doing research (or start right now if you haven’t already); and foster relationships with professors who may write you recommendations in the future (take more than one class with the same professor, if you can).</p>
<p>There’s no real magic formula - you could work in 1 lab for 3 years or 2 labs for 2 years a piece or 2 labs for 1 year each and still get in. The important part is to get SOME experience. Now I will say that to be competitive, most programs do like to see a bare minimum of 1.5 years by admission (so that means starting at the beginning of your junior year at the latest).** But people have gotten into programs with less. The important thing is that you get experience and that you start to formulate ideas about research interests so that you know what departments to apply to when the time comes.</p>
<p>**If you are interested in clinical psychology, know that this is THE most competitive subfield and that the standards are somewhat higher. Many clinical PhD students - perhaps most at some programs - take 2-3 years post-college to work as a lab manager or research associate in a psychology or psychiatry lab, another allied health lab, or at an organization that does research. It’s becoming increasingly less common for clinical students to go straight from undergrad. Secondly, if you are interested in clinical, you should also be getting some volunteer clinical experience, maybe at a hospital or mental health center or clinic or something.</p>