Brown Psychology PhD Program?

Graduate School
1

Hello!

I am a junior at a small state university. My major is psychology, and I’m also getting a minor in human resources management (just in case I need a job before/during grad school.

My cumulative GPA is 3.5 (I had one severely bad quarter due to my disabled mother’s medical emergency which required me to miss nearly half a quarter of classes) but my psychology GPA is 3.9.

I have teaching experience from being a TA for 3 upper-level psych classes (statistics, research methods, and abnormal psychology) which each allowed me different experiences, whether it was leading study sessions with small groups, holding office hours for individuals, and grading papers and tests. I am also a tutor at my school’s Writing and Math Centers. At the Writing Center, I work with individuals on their own assignments, and I also work with groups of developmental English students in a small-group setting (facilitating weekly discussion groups and leading activities). In the Math Center, I tutor statistics specifically for the psychology classes (both introductory and intermediate) as well as any other social science statistics courses (more specifically, the law and justice master’s program’s statistics course).

I also have had a decent amount of research experience, including over a year in a mouse lab. I have presented at a number of conferences (poster and verbal presentations; professional and academic conferences). Next quarter, I will be designing my own research study, which (depending on results, of course) I will likely be presenting at both academic and professional conferences, as well as potentially trying to get published. (The specific topic had virtually no published work that I could find despite weeks of combing through research.)

My letters of recommendation will be strong: one from my animal lab research mentor who I worked with for a year and a half and who taught a class that I did extremely well in; one from my boss at the Math and Writing Centers, who has worked directly with me (I tutored her for her law and justice master’s statistics course; she is also going to be helping me with the research project I am designing and has seen me grow significantly over the past year); and one from one of the professors I was a TA for, since I also took a number of classes with her and got A’s in all-- plus, she’s the one who introduced me to my first research mentor.

As for GREs: I have not yet taken them. I’m prepping to take them mid- to late summer, so I can determine if I need to re-take them or not. I’ve been studying like a mad woman, and plan to continue to do so. :slight_smile:

I will also be getting in touch with at least two of the Brown faculty members, as they have very interesting research that I would love to learn more about. One in particular has done prep work for a study I was hoping to do for an honors thesis, but due to a number of obstacles, I was unable to move forward on.

The program is my dream program because of a really long list of reasons (I’ve gotten pages full of bullet-points; I haven’t even gotten to write the reasons all out in paper-form yet). Basically, the program seems to be made for me (it is designed to train teachers/researchers and I would like to become a professor; the program allows you to design your specializations, and select one or more; multiple faculty members closely match my research interests; the list goes on and on!!!). I guess I just want to know what else I should/can be doing to ensure I look good in the eyes of the admissions folks. Any advice would be greatly appreciated… And if anyone has any experience with Brown’s CLPS program (any of the three fields), I would love to hear what you think. Ultimately, I hope to travel out to Providence over summer to see the campus and hopefully meet with some of the faculty, but that will greatly depend on my finances, as I live on the west coast.

Also, does anyone have any information on when Brown opens their applications? I could not find a date; just the due date.

Thank you in advance!!!

Sam

2

I have my PhD in psychology (from Columbia). You’re already doing everything that you need to do to be a competitive applicant for PhD programs. Just continue doing what you are doing - keep doing research, planning that independent study, and getting good grades. Make sure that the enthusiasm and passion you evidence here also comes through in your personal statement, and discuss your fit with the department.

Contacting the professors at Brown and making a trip to Providence can both be good ideas; however, when you do it you want to act as an interested colleague who is interested in the research and work they are doing there, not as a besotted undergrad :slight_smile: It’s hard not to be when you are so excited about the program! But professors are much more likely to want to talk to you if the talk is about their research and how you can grow in your own research program than if you seem to want backdoor information about how to get into their program (or worse, if you are asking for information that is readily available on the website).

Also, if traveling to Brown is a stretch for you financially, don’t do it. Most psychology departments interview their candidates, so if you are invited to interview you can visit (on their tab) then.

One teeny thing I would say - I know that the CLPS program website says that they are dedicated to training teachers, and that’s a really good sign. However, in my experience, professors tend to get weirdly biased against applicants and early-career graduate students who express a love for teaching too enthusiastically. For some reason, the idea is that the emphasis is supposed to be all on research, even though most psychology PhDs who go into academia will end up at institutions at which they will be primarily teaching. With that said, though, I’m not saying ditch the love of teaching - I love it too! so much! - but be…discriminating about to whom, when, and how you express that love. For example, it’s excellent to say that you want to be a professor in the statement of purpose, but not so excellent to say that you want to do it because you love teaching. Your TA experience will be a plus, but your research experience is more important. Does that make sense?

3

Thank you so much for your response, Juillet. I really appreciate it! I definitely didn’t think about the angle of what professors would think about my desire to teach (especially since I’ll have just turned 21 when I apply). I have a few professors in mind with extremely interesting research, so I will email them after I do some looking to see if I can find any of their published works, too.

Thank you again so much for your response and advice!

4

Good idea. Definitely look up their papers and work in a reference or two to them when you contact them. Professors are flattered when someone contacts them and expresses an interest in their work, and can reference it.

Good luck!