<p>Hello to everyone and thanks for all the great advice I've gathered so far from this forum! So I'm a bit of a outlier when it comes to applying to graduate school as I recently worked in retail until a ripe age of 31. Brain and cognition had always caught my interest, thus I decided to go back to college. So at the age of 35 going on 36, I thought I'd join the circus (i.e. application season) and hopefully receive a reality check. </p>
<p>Stats:</p>
<p>Undergraduate GPA: 3.94 (Cornell University)
Psych GPA: 4.0
GRE: V:157 Q:150 AW:4.5 [how much will this hinder me?]</p>
<p>Experience:</p>
<p>1 years research assistant looking at Hippocampus/Retrosplenial cortex in a rat model (early stage dementia zone of interest)
2 year research assistant looking at language and dementia
1.5 year research assistant looking at aging/Alzheimer's using fMRI and EEG
1 year volunteering at dementia retirement community</p>
<p>Papers/Presentations/Awards:</p>
<p>3 summer internships/ stipend awards (Howard Hughes Biomedical @ Stony Brook, NSF Biology Summer Research for under represented minorities, Summer Stipend)
Poster/Abstract at Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2014 & 2015, International Conference of Psychological Science 2015
3 papers in prep (hopefully one out by Dec 1st, two are 2nd author, one is first)
Internship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Psychiatry Department for Neuropsychology </p>
<p>Schools to apply to that are Clinical Neuropsychology/Cognitive Neuroscience PhD’s:</p>
<p>University of San Diego/SDSU
U of Arizona
U of Florida
UNC
U of Georgia
UC Berkley
USC
Boston University
U of South Florida</p>
<p>I spoke to my advisor about my low GRE scores and he stated that as long as my letter writers explicitly state that my GRE scores have no correlation to my performance, I should be ok as the rest of my application is strong. Any thoughts or suggestions? Should I lower my target school list?</p>
<p>Best and thank you!</p>
<p>GRE is 74th percentile V, 40th percentile Q, 80th percentile AW. Do you have any insight into why you did so poorly? Did you do poorly on the SAT? I can’t imagine so if you got into Cornell. </p>
<p>Do you have enough undergrad math to show you can handle the math needed for your PhD program? You can look up if there are any specific requirements for each school.</p>
<p>IMHO, you need to approach this the right way. PhD programs care much more about you than they do your scores (that is supposed to be true about undergrad programs, but it is NOT). Pick three colleges either convenient to your current location, and visit them. Take a tour, and make an appointments with professors in research areas you are interested in. Talk to them. You could even drop a few professors an email first, after reading their research, and see if they are looking for graduate students (some groups are COMPLETELY full because grad students tend to linger, especially in an excellent group).</p>
<p>BU sounds like your best bet to start at (unless it’s not your top choice, but apparently it is close by for you). Print out the department information. Print out the listing of professors, and find a few doing research in fields you want to pursue. Call them or email them - email is usually best. You might hit it off with one of them, and that would make your job easier, in terms of applying and getting accepted.</p>
<p>In short - applying to a PhD program is totally different than applying to an undergrad program, and even different than applying to a MS program.</p>
<p>Thank you for such a fast response! I’ve spoken to two professors over the phone already who are very interested (one of which is a collaborator with my current PI), and have had email contact with all the target programs listed above. Importantly, all expressed they were taking a student and I was a great fit based on an overlap of research interest. I made sure that I was a fit for every program. Any other thoughts?</p>
<p>Standardized testing is my Achilles heel. As for math, mostly statistics which all programs I’m looking at want, plus programming/ data analytic software knowledge etc. </p>
<p>The only score you did below the 50th percentile is math. My take on this is the number of years that you were out of school, because from what I have seen of GRE math, is that much of it is material covered in general math, some of which is covered in high school, which is a while for you. Depending on your major, you may have taken more advanced math in college or only what is required. </p>
<p>If this is the only thing that holds you back, it may be worth a retest. I don’t know the pros and cons of this- I would ask your professors. However, I think the math is quite doable, but you would need preparation and study to re-learn some concepts. I am not in your field, so I can not advise as to the importance of GRE scores for graduate programs. </p>
<p>IMHO, the verbal part of the GRE is much harder to improve on without significant preparation. It consists of a number of vocabulary words that one doesn’t come across frequently, especially students who major in the sciences and don’t have a large number of literature classes. </p>
<p>Unlike high school, the GRE is taken by a population that has completed college. This is not the same population that takes the SAT. For this reason, I think the averages represent the average of students who are strong enough to consider graduate school. For this group, the scores would possibly be influenced by the focus in college. It would stand to reason that students who major in subjects like English would encounter more vocabulary words than a STEM major. You are still above the average for this group. </p>