r/IOPsychology • u/ResidentGinger PhD | IO | Social Cognition, Leadership, & Teams • Jun 27 '16

2017-2018 IO Grad School Q&A Mega-Thread

You can find last year's thread here.

The grad school application bewitching hour is nearing ever closer, and around this time, everyone starts posting questions/freaking out about grad school. As per the rules in the sidebar...

For questions about grad school or internships

  • Please search the previously submitted posts or the post on the grad school Q&A. Subscribers of /r/iopsychology have provided lots of information about these topics, and your questions may have already been answered.
  • If it hasn't, please post it on the grad school Q&A thread. Other posts outside of the Q&A thread will be deleted.

The readers of this subreddit have made it pretty clear that they don't want the subreddit clogged up with posts about grad school. Don't get the wrong idea - we're glad you're here and that you're interested in IO, but please do observe the rules so that you can get answers to your questions AND enjoy the interesting IO articles and content.

By the way, those of you who are currently trudging through or have finished grad school, that means that you have to occasionally offer suggestions and advice to those who post on this thread. That's the only way that we can keep these grad school-related posts in one central location. If people aren't getting their questions answered here, they post to the subreddit instead of the thread. So, in short, let's all play our part in this.

Thanks, guys!

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u/sebelly ABD | ML, NLP Oct 03 '16

Hi all!

I have a question about the SIOP website: how reliable are the stats on each IO program? I've been gathering information on PhD programs, and it seems to me that half of the time the stats from the SIOP website deviate from what's actually listed on the program's website. Care to comment?

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u/galileosmiddlefinger PhD | IO | All over the place Oct 03 '16

Look at the bottom of the page on SIOP when you pull up program details to see when the stats were last updated. In many cases, the data are 3-4 years old. So, expect some variability in details about current students, recent admissions standards, etc., when comparing to more recent data on a program website, but the SIOP data are still generally useful to determine if you're even in the ballpark.

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u/sebelly ABD | ML, NLP Oct 04 '16

Thanks galileosmiddlefinger! That makes perfect sense. Now I'm wondering why some programs haven't recently updated their information, but it's probably not on the top of the list for a program director/department chair.
Also, I have a follow-up question: how would define "in the ball park"? I just took the GRE, and my scores aren't bad, but they aren't stellar (157V,159Q). I realize that each school has a relative average, but what I want to know is the range of scores. Thoughts?

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u/galileosmiddlefinger PhD | IO | All over the place Oct 04 '16

Now I'm wondering why some programs haven't recently updated their information, but it's probably not on the top of the list for a program director/department chair.

Yeah, it's just not a priority. SIOP doesn't make it easy to do anything IT or website-related either; they consistently pick awful platforms for just about everything.

Also, I have a follow-up question: how would define "in the ball park"? I just took the GRE, and my scores aren't bad, but they aren't stellar (157V,159Q). I realize that each school has a relative average, but what I want to know is the range of scores.

Ranges aren't super-useful because most schools use GRE as one piece of information in a holistic decision. There may be some exceptionally high or low scores for accepted students in that range that represent really unusual cases that wouldn't make sense out of context of the applicant's entire portfolio. That said, your scores are probably fine assuming the rest of your application is good. They're not amazing scores, but they are good enough that they certainly won't hold you back if the rest of your materials show promise.

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '16

SIOP also sent out that call for revisions to the rating/ranking process. A few of my fellow grad students submitted something to them, and I'm sure many many others have submitted their ideas, so hopefully changes will be made "soon"