We get a lot of applications from students who have great credentials but who apparently share no research interests with our faculty. We tell prospective students up front that their application will be rejected if they have not arranged for a member of our faculty to sponsor the application, but many just go ahead and apply without first arranging such sponsorship. I consider such failure to follow instructions a fatal flaw for an applicant to graduate school.
Cheers, Karl W. -----Original Message----- From: Paul C Bernhardt [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 10:05 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] graduate program admissions I had very similar thoughts about both of the highly qualified candidates that have been described over the past two days. One thing I heard about one of the candidates was an implication that they had a fairly specific idea about what she wanted to study. I couldn't help but think that such a thing sounds good, but will actually limit the number of programs because there are probably only a handful of other researchers in the US and Canada interested something similar to that specific interest. If that same interest was communicated in all the applications, then the application didn't match a faculty member's interest or didn't sound like someone who could be oriented towards a faculty member's interest. That, combined with the fact that many faculty don't need any new students in a particular year and I'm actually not terribly surprised to hear only 1 acceptance out of 22 applications, no matter how sensational the student. I also tell students to think of applying to Ph.D. programs as more like a job application than as an application to school. Faculty in Ph.D. program are looking for lab workers, not students who will study well. They determine if you are a good enough student from looking at the transcript and GREs. Focus on the work, the match of interests and showing your work skills (even to the point of showing abilities with lab and data analysis techniques and software). After all, what I was told and still believe to be true is that the *match* between your interests and a specific faculty member's interests (along with that faculty member's *need* for a student) is the absolute key to admissions. All the rest is just information to judge the student sufficiently capable to success once the interest match is determined. This is why contact with the particular faculty member prior to application is valuable. A simple inquiry that says: "I'm interested in [these things] that appear to be areas in which you work, will you be adding a new student for the upcoming year?" Folks understand that nobody should waste the time of a candidate (or the evaluation committee) with applications that have no chance for success. So, it is considered time well spent. The candidate can then say in their cover letter, "You may recall my inquiry of Dr. [] on [date] about the need for a new student in the upcoming year." That will often prompt the committee to sent the application directly to that faculty member for evaluation and the courtesy and clarity of connecting the communications can be seen as a positive. Just my 2 cents. Paul C. Bernhardt Department of Psychology Frostburg State University Frostburg, Maryland --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1404 or send a blank email to leave-1404-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
