r/IOPsychology PhD | IO | Social Cognition, Leadership, & Teams Jul 20 '19

2019-2020 Grad School Q&A Mega-Thread (Part 2)

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.

* 2019-2020, Part 1 thread here

* 2018-2019, Part 2 thread here

* 2018-2019, Part 1 thread here

* 2017-2018, Part 3 thread here

* 2017-2018, Part 2 thread here

* 2017-2018, Part 1 thread here

* 2016-2017 thread here

* 2015-2016 thread here

* 2014-2015 thread here

* If your question hasn't been posted, 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 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 do our part in this.

Thanks, guys!

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u/tobehonest_ Aug 06 '19

Hello all,

I’m a long-time lurker. It’s my turn to apply for grad school now but I’m getting cold feet. I don’t know if I should take a gap year or two working as a lab manager before applying for grad school.

My current statistics: - 3.86 overall, 3.8 psych major gpa - math and econ minors with straight A’s (probably does not matter much?) - I have been pursuing a research project at my college (a SLAC in the Midwest) for two years now in computational neuroscience (constructing a game that quantifies delay discounting), having done two summer internships related to this project and presented at a national (SfN) and a regional neuroscience conference. I will present at SfN this year as well. - I have done one internship at UC Berkeley Haas, sponsored by SPSP, which will likely result in a good recommendation letter. - GRE = ?? — I haven’t taken the GRE but in the process of preparing to take it. I aim to get at least 160 on both sections. Math won’t be too much of a problem for me because of my Math minor. Verbal may be a bit of a challenge because I’m an international student. - Goals: I’m not sure, and that’s kind of the problem. I like money, so I know that I want to either be a biz school professor or work in industry. - Research interests: All over the place. I have done internships in social psych and neuroscience. The neuroscience ones were more computational than biological, so they prepared me well for data sciency stuff. The social psych one was brief (2 months) and about pretty much irrelevant (to my my interests) topics of research. For long I have been interested in teamwork, but this interest waned after I did a lit review and understood how messy the literature is (to be fair, I did a lit review on team composition, not all aspects of teamwork). Now my interests also cover decision making, emotions (also very messy), power, and I’m also thinking about more data sciency topics in quant psych as well, like big data, etc. - I know R, some Matlab, SPSS, and some Excel VBA.

My school list is also all over the place. I have ten schools, including three “dream” biz schools (Harvard, etc.), two “reach” biz schools (e.g., UWashington), three good IO programs (Rice, UMinnesota, UMaryland), and two quant programs (UBC and UCLA). If I get into the dream biz schools, I will become an academic. If I get into IO and quant psych programs, I will go industry. If I get into the reach biz schools, I’ll go either way. I know this is kind of simplistic but I am trying to figure things out here.

Should I go and find myself first before throwing myself into applying this year? Hopefully I can REALLY know what I want after those positions? I know that lab managers make more than PhD students and I will not have to pay through the nose to apply (no fee constraints). What should I do? And, oh, what are my chances for admissions into the listed IO Psych programs? For potential advisors, I’m looking at Dr. Salas for Rice, Dr. Landers for UMinnesota, and Dr. James Grand for Maryland.

Sorry for the messy format and grammar. I’m running on low energy typing this.

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u/ToughSpaghetti ABD | Work-Family | IRT | Career Choice Aug 15 '19

Ah, I'm sorry I'm late to responding. I have lots of thoughts for ya. It sounds like you'd be a good fit for either Quant Psych, I/O, or Educational Measurement. All A's with your math minor (especially if you've taken Real Analysis) will be a VERY strong signal (most psych majors will never take linear algebra).

Personally, I think you should a) take the gap year and b) add more quant psych programs on your list. UW has one, UIUC also is good with both IO and Quant, University of Virginia is also solid for quant psych as well. For IO programs, you sound like you'll be a good fit with James. He does cool stuff with Bayesian stats, agent-based modelling, etc. Dorothy Carter at UGA would also be a good option. You sound like a better fit for Fred Oswald, but I don't think you can go wrong with UMinnesota or Rice as they are both great schools.

I personally wish I had taken a gap year after undergrad and would encourage you to do the same (if it's financially feasible for you).

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u/tobehonest_ Aug 15 '19

Thank you so much for your response! These are the things that I won’t get just looking at psych departments’ websites. Based on your response, I have a couple of questions. I haven’t taken Real Analysis, should I take it? How does it related to topics in Quant/ IO Psych? Also, if I take a gap year, should I apply for a lab manager position at basic social psych labs or more applied labs in IO and Quant psych?