NeoAcademic

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply | Traditional vs. Online Degrees | Personal Statements
Alternative Path: Managing a Career Change to I/O | Pursuing a PhD Post-Master’s
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year
Rankings/Listings: PhD Program Rankings | Online Programs Listing

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: choosing where to apply.

The variety of schools makes choosing where precisely to apply a daunting (and often expensive) task.  You want to balance several factors:

1. Don’t overload your letter writers with too many letters.
2. Apply only to programs you would actually attend if accepted.
3. Apply only to programs for which you are qualified.

In practice, this means you should apply to no more than a dozen schools, typically a balance of 6 to 10 primary targets and 2 to 4 backups.

You should start the selection process by getting a list of graduate schools with either Master’s or Ph.D. programs (depending on which degree you are going for) and then try to narrow it down based on any other major limitations.  You can find an excellent search tool to do this on the SIOP website.  If you are absolutely tied to a particular region of the country, you can limit your search to one region, but this is a little risky, because program quality is not even across the country.

Create a spreadsheet (use OpenOffice.org, if you don’t already have another spreadsheet program).  Put the name of each school in the first column, its location in the second, and program type in the third.

When deciding where to apply, you should start by considering the quality of school that you can get into.  If you have exceptionally high GRE scores, that means you can get into a highly selective program.  If your GRE scores aren’t so strong, then you should not even apply to those schools.  Many graduate programs post the average GRE scores of applicants to their programs, so this is something you can find on their websites or using the search tool linked above. Add these values to your chart.

You should also not aim too low; if your GRE scores are 700/700, you should probably not be considering programs with averages at 400/400. As you eliminate programs, remove them from your chart.

As you go through the SIOP listings, add other columns that would influence your decision: region of the country, program size, number of faculty, etc. If these things are important to you, they should be in your chart.

Once you are down to a list of 30 or so programs that you are qualified for, open their websites and check out the faculty. Who has interests most similar to yours? As an undergraduate, you may or may not have specific research interests, but even if you don’t, some topics will sound more interesting than others. Job satisfaction, organizational justice, online social media? Again, add this information to your chart.

With your completed chart, consider your list of programs and trim them down to your final list. Really think about which features are most important to you, and which programs you are most qualified for.

One of the most surprising and scary aspects of applying to graduate school for most undergraduates is that just because you meet the minimum qualifications does not mean you will be accepted. This is true for undergraduate applications as well, but it is even worse for graduate school because competition is much fiercer. Many competitive programs have between 40 and 300 applicants and 5 or fewer spots to fill. This means that faculty sometimes make decisions based upon criteria that you can’t predict – perhaps Candidate Q had a cover letter that really resonated with one of the faculty and Candidate P’s undergraduate adviser is a close personal friend of another faculty member. Now your chances have gone from 5/300 to 3/300. This is why you should apply broadly.

Remember that earlier I mentioned having “backup” schools – these are schools where your GRE scores are right around (or slightly higher than) their current average. This is to increase your chances that even if you are quite unlucky, you’ll still be able to go somewhere. Don’t choose just one backup school – the same strange selectivity can occur at those locations as well. When I applied to graduate school nearly a decade ago, I got into 80% of my primary choices and none of my backups. It happens.

Finally, if you are at a school with I/O faculty, don’t underestimate the value of simply scheduling a meeting and chatting with them about where they think you should apply. When a student comes to me individually, I can consider a lot more about their particular situation and give them more targeted advice.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply | Traditional vs. Online Degrees | Personal Statements
Alternative Path: Managing a Career Change to I/O | Pursuing a PhD Post-Master’s
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year
Rankings/Listings: PhD Program Rankings | Online Programs Listing

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: getting recommendations.

Ph.D. programs generally require 3 or 4 recommendation letters, while Master’s programs require the same number of either recommendation letters or references.  That is because different programs want different information from recommendations.

A reference is simply someone that the selection committee (the group that will be deciding whether or not to accept you) can e-mail or call to ask questions about you.  This requires much less work on the part of the person providing the recommendation.  References are usually contacted by the selection committee a month or two after you turn in your application, if at all.

A recommendation letter is a letter in which someone with more experience than you explains why you would be a good graduate student, which becomes part of your graduate school application.  That means the most valuable letters contain several pieces of information about you:

• Your overall “readiness” for graduate-level work
• Your reliability in meeting your commitments
• Your personality
• Your intelligence/ability level
• Your creativity/innovation
• Any major accomplishments that are relevant to graduate work

That means for a letter writer to write a good recommendation letter, they need to 1) know you and/or your work pretty well and 2) have sufficient experience to know what’s important to be a successful graduate student.

Considering this, some letter writers are better than others.  Here is a rough list, from best to worst:

1. A faculty member in whose lab you worked and whose class you took, with whom you worked closely
2. A faculty member in whose lab you worked, with whom you worked closely
3. A graduate student in a lab where you worked, with whom you worked closely
4. A faculty member in whose lab you worked and whose class you took
5. A faculty member in whose lab you worked
6. A graduate student in whose lab you worked
7. A faculty member whose class you took and did well

You probably noticed that everyone on this list is an academic.  Remember that references for graduate school are professional references, not personal ones.  Your boss at MegaMart doesn’t know what work as a graduate student looks like, so don’t ask her to be your reference.

Note that a faculty member whose class you took and did well in is at the bottom of the list.  That’s because this person is unlikely to have many specific comments about your capabilities in regards to graduate school.  Asking three faculty whose class you took is an extremely poor strategy for collecting recommendation letters.  One such person is fine as a last resort, but you should aim higher in the list, especially if you want a good shot at a Ph.D. program.

Just because some people are higher in the list doesn’t mean you should ask them at the exclusion of others.  For example, if you have worked in a research lab closely with three graduate students, you would not want to ask all of them.  In your final list of references, try to have balance: at least one faculty member, at least one person that has worked with you closely, and at least one person that has taught you.  Hopefully that means at least two faculty.  Many ambitious undergraduates work in two labs in order to have several folks to choose from (plus this looks impressive anyway!).

If you’re pursuing a Master’s degree, then this order is much less important.  Faculty with whom you’ve taken classes and made an impression are probably enough, but higher in the list is still certainly better.  If you are applying to a professional Master’s program, you should also add a professional reference if you have one – someone in the human resources/OB world who can comment on your potential as a practitioner.

You should start planning out who will be your letter writers at the beginning of your Junior year.  As soon as you’ve identified someone you definitely want to be a reference and they know you pretty well, ask them if they’re willing to write a letter for you, up to a year in advance.  This will call their attention to watching your performance, which will help them write a better letter.  If you only need references, you can contact these folks a month or two before you submit applications. You need to work in a lab and you need the faculty with whom you are working to know who you are.

You should give letter writers at least 30 days (a month) to write letters for you.  That means 30 days out, you need to know where you are applying and deliver a recommendation packet to each of your letter writers.

The recommendation packet (which might be paper or electronic) should contain:

• A list of all schools you are applying to.  Include which program you are applying to, e.g. Master’s in I/O, Ph.D. in Human Resources.
• Deadlines for each school.  To be safe, set deadlines for your letter writers a week before the “real” deadline.
• Specific instructions for each school.   Some schools want letter writers to also fill out online forms, some want letters e-mailed, and others want letters snail mailed in an envelope signed across the back flap.  Do this grunt work for your writers – figure out what each school needs, and include this information in your packet.
• Your unofficial transcript.  This will help your letter writer describe your academic qualifications outside of his or her classroom and lab.
• Your resume/curriculum vita.  You need to prepare this for some of your applications.
• The best on-topic paper you’ve ever written.  Find a paper you wrote for your lab, for your thesis, or for your I/O or HR class.
• Any needed letter hardware.  If some of your applications require paper letters, include a pre-addressed stamped envelope.  Not only is it more polite to pay for your letter writer’s stamp, but it also ensures that your letter writer will send it to the right address.

The more organized you are, the less you are relying on your letter writers to remember things on your behalf, and the less likely something will go wrong.  Use spreadsheets.

Finally, don’t ask your letter writers for a copy of the letter they write.  Recommendation letters are generally considered confidential, between the letter writer and the search committee only.  Even if I like a student, I generally won’t write a letter if they want to see it first.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply | Traditional vs. Online Degrees | Personal Statements
Alternative Path: Managing a Career Change to I/O | Pursuing a PhD Post-Master’s
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year
Rankings/Listings: PhD Program Rankings | Online Programs Listing

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: How do I prepare for the GREs?

The GREs, although just a couple of numbers in your graduate school application, are absolutely critical.  Poor GREs can sink even a moderately strong application while exceptional GREs can lend strong support to a weak one.  The reason for this is that GRE is a standardized indicator of potential.

Standardization is important because it helps the faculty reading your application put all the other information in perspective.  If you have a strong GPA, it’s hard for us to tell if that’s because you worked really hard, because you took easy classes, or because you cheated your way through.  If you have strong recommendation letters, it’s difficult to know if you had a personal relationship with those faculty or if they send out the same letter for everyone.  If you have research experience, it’s tricky to know what you really learned from that experience.  So while all of this information is useful in putting together a complete picture of your potential as a graduate student, GRE scores are the only thing we can use to directly compare one applicant to another.

The GRE is what’s called a “high stakes” test.  You only have one shot at it, and the results are extremely important.  Because of this, it is absolutely critical that you prepare appropriately for the experience.

There are really two aspects to GRE prep.  The first is long-term preparation, which you’ve been doing since you were born – learning.  The more familiar you are with how the world works and why it works that way, the better you will do.  There are two character traits that will help you here: intelligence and motivation to learn.  The greater your intelligence, the easier you will find it to learn.  The greater your motivation to learn, the more likely you have sought information when you had a question about the world.  When you think to yourself, “I wonder…” do you run to check for the answer online?  That’s motivation to learn.

You can improve your long-term readiness for the GRE by taking challenging classes and taking every opportunity you can to learn about the world around you.

The second aspect to GRE prep is short-term preparation, which you should begin during your Junior year of college.  This involves taking some kind of preparatory course on the GRE.  You don’t necessarily take a GRE prep course to learn the content on the GRE, aside from brushing up on vocabulary and mathematics you’ve forgotten.  Instead, you take a GRE prep course to gain familiarity and comfort with the format and time pressure that you’ll experience during the actual testing.

One of the biggest threats to your GRE score is your own insecurity; if you get in that room and panic, your score will suffer and won’t reflect your true potential.  Completing a preparatory course will prepare you in the same way that drills prepare a soldier for combat.  While nothing is quite like real combat (test-taking), you want to go on autopilot when you get in that room.  You want to sit down, know exactly what kind of questions you’ll see, know exactly which techniques and strategies you will use to solve them, and just do it.  That will fight off panic better than anything else will.  Remember, if you’ve done so many practice tests that you’re bored taking them, you won’t be nearly so anxious during the real test.

In terms of the preparatory course itself, you probably don’t need to waste money on an in-person course – some of these run into the thousands of dollars.  All the material you get in person you can get from a book with CD or online course for less than $50.  If you find it hard to motivate yourself to study on your own time, you will likely struggle in graduate school anyway.

The GRE uses an approach to asking questions called computerized adaptive testing.  This means that your performance on early sections changes the difficulty of later sections; if you do well on the first section of quant questions, the second section of quant questions will be much harder (and vice versa).  You need a prep strategy that simulates this adaptive approach.   Testing yourself with banks of GRE questions is not quite the same; you need to experience practice tests exactly as you will experience the real test. The old GRE would adapt within sections. At least you don’t need to deal with that!

Create a schedule for your practice and stick to it.  Some CD programs (e.g. Kaplan’s and Princeton Review) will develop these for you, but in general, expect to spend at least 3 to 5 hours per week for the six months leading up to the GRE, with more intense prep closer to the actual testing date.  You might instead start preparing a full year in advance; think about your comfort with test taking, and give yourself more time if you know it will be a challenge.  You should take the GRE as early as possible during your Senior year (usually August), so this means starting GRE prep between August and February of your Junior year.  You want to take it early in case you decide you want to improve your score and take it a second time before applications are due.

You will probably want to take two GREs: the GRE General Test (quantitative, verbal, and analytic writing) along with the GRE Subject Test in Psychology.  Not all programs require the Psych GRE, but it is better to be safe and complete it anyway.  Even if both are required, your General Test score will likely be more important than the Psychology Subject Test in most programs.

At the actual testing date, take all the standard advice for doing well on tests:

1. Don’t do anything test-related the day before the test.  This will help you relax the next day.
2. Get a full night of sleep.  You may be nervous and have trouble sleeping, but try to be in bed for at least 8 or 9 hours to be at maximum strength.  Do NOT try to cram at the last minute.  You’ll be better off sleeping a full night without the last-minute cram session than you will be exhausted.
3. Don’t use energy drinks unless you usually use energy drinks.  There’s nothing worse than sudden unexpected stomach pain in the middle of a test.  If you’ve used energy drinks before in high-pressure testing situations, then feel free – but don’t try anything new that morning.
4. Eat a bland but high energy breakfast.  You need carbs to get your brain moving.  Toast, cereal, granola bars, cereal bars.  Your stomach may have more butterflies than usual; plan accordingly.
5. Plan your route to the testing center the day before.  Even if you have a GPS in your vehicle, print out directions the day before.  No last minute surprises; you never know what might happen.  If your GPS doesn’t work, and you run inside to print directions really quickly, or have to hold your cellphone, etc, all of these things will increase your anxiety and will lower your score.  You might also want to do a dry-run drive (someone I know discovered her directions were to the wrong place after attempting to follow them and ended up at the testing center an hour late).  You want to do your dry-run the day before because you never know when construction will unexpected alter your path.
6. Plan to arrive 45 minutes early to the testing center.  You want to get there early (so there’s time in case you hit traffic or other trouble) but not so early that you sit quietly in the lobby worrying about the test for an hour.
7. Plan something fun for after the test.  Visit an amusement park, go biking, have a nice dinner with friends, something.  This will give you something to look forward to afterward, regrardless of how the test goes.  Ensure it’s something you’ll enjoy doing regardless of how things go.

With adequate prep and a calm attitude, you’ll ace that test for sure.