How To Apply to Graduate School in Psychology?
There are many questions and answers that you might have about applying to and gaining access to Graduate School. Recently, Dr. Okdie and several former Newark campus students who are current graduate students held a panel to provide information on applying to graduate school. So much information was covered in the panel that we decided to make the video available to students who might be interested in applying to graduate school. The vide is below and contains a short presentation by Dr. Okdie and then a panel discussion with questions from the audience.
How Many Grad Schools Should I Apply To?
After you have decided to apply, you should determine how many schools to apply to. This number may depend on a number of factors, including any limitations to a particular geographic area or limited focus of research interest (such as neuropsychology). Applying to 1-2 programs is very risky given the high rejection rates, but applying to 50 programs is too many given the costs of applications and interviews. A general rule of thumb is to apply to 5-15 schools. How do you narrow it down?
Start by compiling a list of all schools that you might be interested in applying to. Search for schools in areas that you are willing to live for 2-7 years.
What Schools Should I Apply To?
Investigate the websites for all of the schools you might be interested in. If it is an experimental program, do they have faculty that you would be interested in working with? Research that is interesting to you? If it is a clinical program, do they have the type of training you are looking for? Do they have training in your desired subspecialty area? Is there a faculty member doing research you are interested in? If the answer to any of these is no, remove the site from your list. For clinical applicants, check the program orientation (Scientist-Practitioner, Practitioner-Scholar, Clinical-Scientist) to see if it matches your career goals.
If your GPA and GRE scores are below the minimum scores at a site, you may want to drop the site from your list.
This will narrow down your list quite a bit, and then other factors that are up to you (size of the department, funding, application fees, type of training offered, location of the program, distance from family, etc) will help you narrow the list down to the final programs to apply to.
Keep in mind you should have a mix of highly competitive, competitive, and less competitive programs in your final application pool. This will help to maximize your chances of acceptance.
How Do I Keep Track of all the Materials and Deadlines?
Deadlines will creep up on you if you are not careful. The worst thing that can happen right before a deadline is to discover that you missed part of the application packet. We suggest utilizing an organizational tool to help keep track of sites, deadlines, application materials, and whether or not you have completed each part of the application. An easy way to do this is to develop an excel spreadsheet. We attached an example of an excel spreadsheet which you can tailor to work for you. You should save copies of all materials sent to each site. We recommend that you create a folder on your computer for each site you apply to, and include copies of all materials for each site there. Here is an example Excel tracking system.
I Want to Apply: Now What?
The biggest piece of advice: get started early! Many application deadlines are in December, meaning that you must take the GRE and request your transcripts early enough that they are postmarked by the deadline. Many of the application materials will require revisions and careful proofreading, as you want to put forth the best impression that you can.