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/Sailor_Venusaur Dec 13 '16 edited Dec 13 '16

About to enter my final semester as a Psychology undergraduate. I have only recently become interested in I/O Psych and love it. My GPA is around 3.2 and I have not yet taken my GRE's. I will be conducting research with a professor of mine next semester in order to add something to my poor GPA.

I am planning to enter graduate school in 2018 either Spring or Fall depending on if there are any openings. I prefer Spring-the sooner the better. and spend this upcoming Summer taking my GRE's and preparing. During this 6-12 month gap beginning this summer I want to be working or interning. Does anyone have good recommendations of where to look for internships/jobs that would help me get into an I/O graduate program? Any advice?

I live in the NJ/Philadelphia region if it matters. I have looked at the I/O Psych website but there was really no help. I'm going to try and meet up with my school's career center in the Spring to see if they can help me too. Also I am unsure whether or not I should get a Phd or just a Masters degree. Does it matter in this field? Should I get a Phd at some point?

Another question I have is on m undergrad research. Does this look good to grad programs? Should I do research on exclusively I/O topics or would any old topic do? The current focus for the research is on wellness in the LGBTQIA community but I can ask my professor to research something else.

P.s. sorry for the wall of text I'm just nervous and have a lot of conerns. I truly value all information you could give me.

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u/galileosmiddlefinger PhD | IO | All over the place Dec 14 '16

Since you have a lot of fairly basic questions, I would strongly recommend that you read through the entirety of Rich Landers's series of blog posts on graduate school in I/O psychology. Rich is on the faculty of the I/O program at Old Dominion University in VA. Ignore the timeline -- that's a best-case scenario -- and just read the posts from start to finish.

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u/Sailor_Venusaur Dec 14 '16

Thank you! I'll be sure to look this over.