The goal of a graduate application

The goal of your graduate application should be to find the best fit for you.

Graduate school is hard. In cognitive psychology, it generally takes 5 or more years. That’s a long time - so you want to try your best to find a place where you feel supported, collaborating with people with whom you work well, working on things you care about and want to work on.

PhDs in Psychology generally follow an ‘apprenticeship’ model in which you have one primary advisor (often called the PI, short for principal investigator, which is a fancy word for a professor who runs a research lab) whose lab you’re in for the duration of the program. You may collaborate with other people or rotate from one lab to another as part of your program’s normal experience, but generally speaking, you’re applying to one PI.

You are not looking for friends; don’t evaluate potential advisors or labmates first on whether you’d want to hang out. Evaluate them on what it’d be like to work with them, every day, for five years. Would they challenge you, teach you, guide you, and support you? Would your relationship with them be productive and sustainable? That doesn’t mean it’s bad if some of them are friends too! It’s really good! Being happy is unquestionably part of the equation here (and is part of a healthy, happy lab culture), but it’s not everything and it’s not primary. You’re seeking a good professional relationship, so consider it in that light.

For what it’s worth, know too that you’re looking for a lifelong professional relationship. Your advisor will hopefully be a source of support (including advice, collaboration, emotional support, etc) for a long time after you get your PhD and leave. Think of them as your academic family.

Remember that the goal is to find a program within which you will thrive.

Some perspective

Is this 100% under your control? If you do everything on this page (and all the others linked below), will you get in? Not necessarily. A lot of things have to line up for you to get into graduate school, and many of them are beyond your control. This doesn’t make the process easier for applicants, but it’s important to keep in mind. Do everything you can to control what you can control (your communication with the PI, your application itself, and your preparation for any interviews or meetings), and then try to let go of the rest! (easier said than done, we know…)

Examples of some things that have to line up…

• The PI is interested in taking a student this year, and has the funding and capacity to do so.

• The PI to whom you are applying has to be high enough in the priority list within their area or department (some PIs are higher priority, some are lower; this can be due to seniority, funding, size of their lab, recency with which they admitted new PhD students, or something else entirely).

• Programs/departments often have limits on how many students they can invite to interviews or can admit in a year. This means decisions to interview or admit can be affected by things happening at the department or program levels.

• Your interests need to match where the PI is thinking of taking their lab in the next few years, and your skills and desires match what they can support. Even if you put together a truly outstanding application, it can be a nonstarter if that’s not where the PI wants their lab to go.

• You have to be among the top candidates. Graduate school applications are competitive! See below for more detail, especially the sections on reaching out to the PI and application materials.

Finding PIs/labs to apply to

Finding PIs/labs to apply to can be difficult! To do this, I suggest a four-pronged approach:

1. Read research papers! If you find papers that are exciting to you, you’re on the right track. Ask yourself: would I have wanted to do this data collection? Would I have enjoyed working on this paper, designing this study, doing these analyses, dealing with the study’s issues and challenges, etc? Do I wish I had done this study?

2. Ask your mentors. Have lots of conversations with your mentors (be they professors, grad students, postdocs, or whomever) and peers about where you’re applying and what sorts of things you’re interested in. What people or programs come to mind for them? What do they have to say about these people? Double check what you hear, ask for second opinions, and take every response with a grain of salt. You don’t want to fall prey to rumor, bias, and the like, but you do want to make informed choices. Keep having these conversations up until all the applications go in - you never know when someone might have a suggestion that changes your applications!

3. Look up the PIs! Find their lab or personal webpage. Find their Twitter account. What do they write? How do they sound? Do you understand them, appreciate what they say, and think that they’re someone you might want to work with? What seem to be their values, and do you share them?

Every academic PI will focus mostly on and be best at training you as an academic, i.e. to become a professor like themselves. Increasingly, however, PhDs take different paths (teaching-focused academic jobs; industry jobs in data science; policy; marketing; etc) - does this PI and this program support alternative paths? How would working with them prepare you for the range of careers you may be thinking of?

4. Look at the labs. Note that it may be hard or impossible to evaluate the lab and its members before applying - that’s OK! You’ll have plenty of time leading up to, during, and after interviews to find out more. Besides, unless your application is competitive (i.e. you get an invitation to an interview!), it might be wasted effort to check out each lab environment & all of its members in detail at the initial stage of applications. See your goal, as well as information about interviews.

See other sections on this page for more thoughts on the goal of your application, contacting PIs, and interviews, among others.

How specific vs. broad should my interests be?

This is a tough one. I tend to believe that the best approach here is to strike a balance.

You want to be committed to the big picture. Show that you know the broad topics you want to investigate, and the kinds of questions you want to ask. Be confident and decisive here (hopefully this goes without saying: you should also be honest. These should actually be the broad topics you’re interested in!).

You want to be flexible in the details. You need to show that you can get specific and concrete (i.e. that you can design a reasonable study that probably works!), because that’s “the job”, but don’t be overly committed to the specifics of the population, measure, neurotransmitter, task, etc. (unless, of course, that is critical to you).

There are two big reasons for this:

1. This makes it easier for the PI to see how you could fit into what they’re planning. They’ll see that you are really excited about particular topics & kinds of questions (hopefully overlapping with theirs), but that you’re flexible enough to help them accomplish some of their scientific goals too. It can also help you communicate to them where you would want and need help, collaboration, or guidance, and so help them see what it would be like to collaborate with, mentor, and teach you. Put another way, don’t treat the PI and their lab simply as a place where you’ll execute your research.

2. You don’t know enough, and you understand that. It’s a demonstration of maturity to acknowledge that your specific interests and the studies you run will evolve and change during graduate school as you learn about the mind and brain and the scientific study thereof. It’s OK to be flexible or unsure about some things - that’s what the PhD is for.

Note that this balance applies in some measure to BOTH your written application statements and any interviews (and for that matter, your mental conception of this whole process!).

Do I need research experience?

Practically speaking, yes. Having research experience establishes that you know what you’re getting into, that your interests are informed, that you like it, and that you can do research well. While not technically a prerequisite, some kind of research experience, even a little, is a must if you’re applying to a research-focused PhD program.

Does your research experience need to look like the research in the lab to which you’re applying? Not necessarily - you can still learn something (about what you like & don’t like) from a very different research experience.

Research experience gives you at least three things: 1) perspective on research in general, 2) skills and concrete experiences that may inform later research, 3) connections to people and topics that could be useful in the future.

You can get these experiences in a variety of ways, some of which don’t cost anything or may even come with a salary. These include volunteering in a lab, getting a full-time paid research assistant and/or lab manager position, or doing an honors thesis or working in a lab as an undergraduate (this list is not exhaustive; there are also post-baccalaureate programs, working in industry in a research-related position, Master’s programs, etc). Remember the main goal, though: get experience with as many of the stages of research as possible (i.e. idea generation, study design, study implementation, data collection, data cleaning/preprocessing, analysis, presentation, writing, etc.), with as much independence & depth as possible. It’s extremely unlikely you’ll have a completely independent research experience (again, that’s what the PhD is for!), but seek degrees of independence wherever possible.

Fee waivers

Applying to grad school comes with lots of fees! That said, there are often opportunities to ask that those fees be reduced or waived. The receipt of fee reductions/waivers, to our knowledge, is invisible to the people you’re applying to, though you may want to confirm this.

For reductions/waivers of graduate application fees, when in doubt, ask the Office of Graduate Education (or its equivalent) at the university you’re applying to. If you are applying to the University of Denver (DU) and would like to request a fee waiver, contact DU graduate admissions to learn more (this page also has general info). Note that for many universities, the availability of fee waivers to an applicant can depend on things like whether the applicant is currently on financial aid, for example (which can be an issue for people who are not currently undergraduates).

For reductions/waivers of GRE fees, see this site.

Transcripts generally also cost money to send. For example, DU charges $10/electronic transcript or $12/mailed paper copy. Ask the registrar’s office at your school about fee waivers.

What are PIs evaluating?

The PIs who are evaluating your application are trying to figure out the answer to the big question: will you thrive in their lab? Doing so can mean answering a number of more specific questions, including…

• How mature/experienced are you? Do you know enough about yourself to make smart choices about what to do and how to interact with others, to manage the challenges of graduate school, etc? Grad school is very independent - is there evidence that you’ll handle that well?

• Do you have the necessary skills? E.g. if the lab’s research is very physiological, do you have some prior experience with those techniques? If the lab is math-y, do you have the math and/or coding chops?

• Do you write well? There’s a lot of writing in academia (grants, papers, talks, conference abstracts, etc).

• What are you interested in? Does this align with the directions the lab is going in the next few years? With things the PI cares about, has funding for, and/or can support?

• Do you have the capacity to become a top-level PhD? You don’t know everything now (how could you?? that’s the point of the PhD!), but is there evidence that you can learn and execute at a very high level, balancing lots of projects and needs?

• Will you work well with them? Does the way you work/communicate/seek help match their style of work/communication/advising? Do your learning needs and desires match what they can provide?

Interviews

Interviews aren’t just for the applicant to be evaluated by the PI; you should also evaluate the PI and the program & department! It’s a two-way street at this point.

The purpose of interviews for the PI is to generally to see if you are who you say you are, and if the interpersonal interactions have the fluidity, sense of fun, content, and mutual interest needed over the course of a long path to a PhD. A common approach for a PI is to treat their conversations with their applicants as ‘dry runs’ of what it’d be like to work with you - they might want to brainstorm ideas with you, sort out problems, maybe design an experiment with you, on the fly, informally. They may also want to hear more about particular experiences of yours or skills that you’ve mentioned. For the applicant, the purpose is to get a sense of what it’d be like to work with the PI, to be in their lab, and to be a graduate student in this program & department. Would you be happy and challenged here? Would you learn? Would you become the kind of PhD you want to become? Remember the PhD is a long road. Don’t forget your goal and some some the things to evaluate when finding a PIs/labs to apply to.

Before going on interviews, consider lining up someone (a family member, a friend) as a source of remote emotional support during the weekend. Interviews can be exhausting, stressful, and anxiety provoking (in addition to fun & energizing), and it’s not uncommon to have a moment in which you feel like you don’t belong and can’t do this. The moment you feel like that, excuse yourself to the bathroom, text that family member or friend, and ask them to help get you back on your feet. Soon as you are, get moving again. You can do this!

To prepare for interviews, read up on the PI’s research, brainstorm some questions (for the PI AND for other faculty and graduate students! This is your chance to get information from all of these people; try to always have some kind of a question you can ask), and then do your best to show up and be your best self. Try to relax, observe and participate, have a little fun, and imagine that this is your advisor, and this is your department for the weekend. What’s it like? Do you like this place & these people? Are you excited about learning from your classmates? Doing research here? And remember: if you are your best self, and they don’t like that, then you probably wouldn’t have wanted to be there anyway.

Some example questions you could ask include “what kinds of projects would I be working on if I came, and where does the funding for those projects come from?”, “what kinds of organized efforts are happening in the lab/area/department to increase or support diversity, equity, and inclusion?”, “how livable is the stipend?”, or “what kinds of careers have graduates gone on to?” There are many excellent lists of questions out there covering the PhD program itself, mentoring, funding, teaching, coursework, the social/lived experience, and more. See here and here for some concrete examples.

During interviews, expect to a) have a long-ish meeting with your main potential PI, b) have lots of slightly shorter interviews with other faculty members, c) spend lots of time with grad students, and d) have social events (breakfasts, lunches, and/or dinners) with graduate students and/or faculty. Drink water, take bathroom breaks, and eat snacks to keep your energy up.

There’s a lot of disagreement out there about how you should dress. I personally recommend “nice you,” whatever that means to you. Aim for clothes you’re comfortable in (it’s going to be a long and challenging day!), but that take you up a notch and present a sharp professional front. You can always dress down a bit (take off a jacket; remove a tie; roll up your sleeves) if it turns out you’re overdressed. Don’t worry too much about this. Be comfortable, look good/feel confident, and then focus on the rest (your fit with the PI/lab/program/department, what they’re telling you, what it’d be like to work here, etc; literally everything else in this section of the guide).

Treat everyone you meet professionally, positively, kindly, and with respect. Even if you don’t go to a particular program, you will almost surely see these people again, in your new lab, a future lab, or even just out there in the field, as a reviewer on a paper or grant that you’ve written. This applies to faculty, students, other prospectives, and staff (i.e. administrators in the department). Give them the benefit of the doubt, and hope that they extend the same to you. These are your future colleagues (and, potentially, friends/enemies/frenemies).

Pay attention not just to your potential PI, but to their lab and their present and past mentees (see what makes a good PI/Lab and finding PIs/labs to apply to). Remember that they’re also interviewing you, and they will likely have some input on the decision of whether to make you an offer. Try to leave them with a good impression too.

Always take notes - both during the interviews and afterward. A day or two later, let alone weeks later, you’ll forget many details. Write down your impressions, your feelings, your concerns, and your thoughts about this PI and department within 24 hours. You may need these notes long after the interviews are done, if you have the fortune to receive an offer that you must then accept or reject.

Remember: the interviews do not end until you are completely done and alone at your home. You are being interviewed, and you are interviewing them, from the first moment you see someone until you leave, whether it’s a formal interview, a happy hour, a walk across campus, a quiet moment between events, or a dinner party. You are always interviewing them, and they you. Yes, this can be exhausting! This doesn’t mean “be stiff & formal”, but rather “be mindful of the impression you’re leaving, and that which they’re leaving.” Be your best self, as best you can, at all times. Nothing is off the record.

It’s ‘good form’ to send a nice note 24-48 hours after the interviews end to anyone you spent significant time with, but especially the PI, thanking them and expressing your excitement (assuming you feel some!).

Lastly, interviews are exhausting. Treat yourself well before and after each interview. Get plenty of sleep, eat well, hydrate, do something fun & relaxing, talk to friends or family, try not to obsess, take things one step at a time... take care of yourself, and you’ll make it that much easier to be your best self when the moment comes.

If interviews are virtual, review your digital setup; what will people see/hear when they Zoom with you? Is the lighting good enough so they can see you, and the sound good enough that they can hear you? Are you comfortable? Will your internet bandwidth be able to handle things? Don’t assume that your setup is good even if you’ve been using it this way for months or longer - actively check each component! Zoom with a friend or family member who can help you analyze your audio & video and try to figure out ways to make it better. There may be constraints here - maybe you have roommates, or live above a subway, or can’t get a better mic. Try to improve the things you can and ensure that the rest will be good, and then just focus on making the best of it day-of.

You will have to take in a lot of information during interviews. You’ll be talking to many different people, about many different topics, for many hours. Accumulate information and evidence (like a Bayesian) about these people, this place, the various environments you’d be in (culture, research, courses, etc) and your own reaction to it. Don’t try to make a judgment until you must. Weight information by its consistency (hear it from multiple people? Probably ‘real’. Hear conflicting info? May or may not be relevant to you), listen to what’s said and not said, and always be thinking “what would it be like if this was my place? How would I feel about that?”

NOTE: Some of the above may of course be irrelevant or different in the 2022-2023 admissions cycle due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The basics remain unchanged: take every interaction seriously, be your best self, have lots of questions ready, and be as comfortable and professional as you can throughout the interview process.

Offers

Offers work in very different ways at different places.

In some places, offers are made in parallel, all at once. That is, all PIs in the area or department make all their offers all at once, and then they’re done. Applicants accept or reject the offers, and it’s over. In other places (like DU), offers are made in waves, until all available spots in the graduate program are filled.

If you do get an offer, it’s real - they are excited about you as a student, and want you to join them. Get in there! Remember: you don’t need to get the first offer, or even many offers - you just need one offer that you are genuinely excited about. Try not to sweat those details. In a few months time, you’ll forget that you got the second or third offer, and the only thing that will matter is that you’re in.

If you know you will not be accepting a particular offer, turn it down as soon as possible. You may open the door to someone else who is excited about going to that program. Similarly, if you know you’re going to accept an offer, then do it! Delays on your part can make life difficult for other applicants, PIs, and the department.

This all said, when interviews are done and offers have been made, this is the only part of this whole process that is entirely in your control, in which the ball is in your court, so to speak. Do what you have to do to take care of your own interests, and make the best choice you can. Put yourself first here, and worry less about what other people need (within reason).

So how do you make a choice with so many variables? A classic approach is to do a thought experiment: what would it be like to be there? Imagine you accept the offer - how does that feel? What are you excited about? What are you nervous about? Imagine your first day was tomorrow - what’s going through your head? Reflect on your reaction to that prompt, and compare it across your options (if you have multiple options).

I haven’t gotten an offer! Now what?

If April 15 comes & goes and you still didn’t get an offer, don’t despair. The goal was always to find a program within which you would thrive. There are many possible reasons it didn’t work out this time.

Maybe you weren’t actually ready for a PhD program! You thought you were (otherwise you wouldn’t have applied), but is it possible you could use a bit more time to become an even stronger applicant?

Maybe an advisor or program turned you down because, from their perspective, it wasn’t a good fit - you wouldn’t be happy and productive there. And so they may have said “no” because given what they know about themselves and their program, they didn’t think you’d thrive and be happy there.

Maybe it’s competitive out there. There are many great applicants but not very many seats in PhD programs, and the application process is imperfect, noisy, and crowded.

Maybe… it had nothing to do with you, and you’re awesome and ready, and so are they, but it wasn’t possible this time.

Big picture, try not to ruminate on all the potential reasons you didn’t get an offer. Process it and reflect on it, but then move on if you can. There are so many things that go into this process and only some of them have to do with you. Take a deep breath, and look forward. Maybe you could find a research assistantship or a lab manager position? Maybe an internship in data science, or a different kind of lab? Talk with your peers, mentors, and advisors, be creative, and think about your possible paths forward. You’re gonna do great!

Resources

Others have written excellent guides to graduate school applications, grad school itself, and more that you may find helpful. Some of them are below. Search the internet - there’s more out there than you might think.

• Other people! Talk to others and get their help, and do this repeatedly & frequently. Reach out to current and former advisors & mentors, people you may know who are already in graduate school, anyone you know who writes well, etc. Tell them who you’re applying to and ask who else they might suggest, share your application materials with them and get their feedback, tell them how you’re feeling and what you’re worried about… TL;DR: just get their feedback on everything! No one gets into graduate school on their own, with no help.

• Twitter! Lots of academics are on twitter. You can learn about people you’re applying to (depending on how vocal they are), as well as more generally about the field. In the fall, there’s also a lot of tweeting about grad applications - read it, but take all advice (including this!) with a grain of salt.

• Project SHORT: they connect current PhD & MD students to prospective students in their fields to provide feedback on personal/research statements, interview prep, one-on-one mentorship, and more, with the goal of “combatting socioeconomic and systemic inequalities in the medical and graduate school admissions processes.” Click here for more info.

• Letters to a Young Scientist: a set of articles published in Science written by a group of psychologists from Harvard, NYU, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Toronto, and Cornell, full of fantastic advice for young scientists: link.

  • One of these was linked above: “To ace your Ph.D. program interviews, prepare to answer—and ask—these key questions.” This article also links to a terrific list of more than 70 concrete interview questions spanning the whole range of possible topics, made by Jay Van Bavel.

  • Another relevant one is “Applying for a Ph.D.? These 10 tips can help you succeed”

• A twenty (20!) page Q&A (link) that resulted from a “What I wish I had known about doing a PhD” session, part of Growing Up In Science (GUIS; a terrific professional development series) spearheaded by postdoc Ali Cohen (twitter). The questions were from prospective and early PhD students, with answers from current PhD students, postdocs, and faculty in the US & Europe. Covers much more than applying to graduate school! GUIS also has a terrific list of resources relevant to many stages & parts of the PhD, including some information about applying to grad school: link.

• Prof. Jamil Zaki at Stanford (twitter) posted a long (16 single-spaced pages!), thoughtful guide to the entire graduate application process, called “So, you’re applying for a PhD in Psychology... Loosely organized tips from one subjective source”. You can find the guide here (Dropbox link; Google Drive link), and see the original tweet thread here.

• Prof. Emily Balcetis at NYU (twitter) has an excellent and very thorough guide called “How to get in to graduate school” that you can download here. Her detailed guide covers similar topics as above in addition to others, and of course comes from a different perspective.

• Prof. Sam Gershman at Harvard (twitter) posted a few slides titled “Advice for young investigators” that can be helpful when thinking about how to pick a research question/topic (and therefore, who to apply to work with).

• A thoughtful, thorough, and digestible blog post by PhD student Meriah DeJoseph (twitter) with tips & resources for people applying to psychology PhD programs: link.

• Kate Nussenbaum (Twitter), a PhD student at NYU, has some excellent info on her website, including a different take on how to apply to Psychology PhD programs.

• Advice on how to write an excellent personal/research statement from the Crockett Lab: link.

• Advice on applying to graduate school (with a focus on NYU) from Jay Van Bavel, one of the Letters to a Young Scientist writers: link.

• A book called “A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum”, by Jessica Calarco (Twitter) for people considering or beginning graduate school.

• Info from the American Psychological Association (APA), perhaps the most prominent national psychology association, on applying to grad school across all kinds of programs and degrees: link.

• The Psychology Grad School Wiki (postings advertising open grad school positions in psychology): link.

• “7 Tips for Applying to a Psychology PhD Program” from Psychology Today: link.

Lastly, a few time-sensitive opportunities:

• The Application Statement Feedback Program (ASFP; link) is returning for 2021! This program (which we are involved in) gives feedback on applicants’ personal/research statements in mid-October. Submissions accepted between October 4 and 8, statements returned with two pieces of feedback on October 14. Follow the program on Twitter for more!

• The University of Michigan is running a Diversity Recruitment Weekend (link). Applications are due by September 3, 2021, for the 2-day event on October 8 & 9.

• Harvard’s Dept. of Psychology is once again running the “Prospective PhD and RA Event in Psychology” (PPREP; link). Applications due September 17, 2021 for the 2-day event on October 16 & 17.

  • They also made a series of videos answering questions from prospective students in a guide called “PRO-TiP” (“PhD Resources & Online Tips Page”).

• Stanford Dept. of Psychology offers an informational program & workshop called Paths to PhD (link) in October of each fall. Applications to attend are typically due in mid-September.

• The Psychology Department at Stony Brook University is running a “Weekly Virtual Psych Grad School Application Café” in October and November. See here for more info.

This was written by Peter Sokol-Hessner and substantially improved by thoughtful feedback, suggestions, and edits from Chelsey Pan, Ari Dyckovsky, and Hayley Brooks.

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