How competitive is my grad app (cognitive psych PhD)

juillet
Fri, 11 Aug 2017 04:28:02 +0000

As far as safeties go - there’s really not such a thing as “safeties” in the traditional sense, in that no PhD program is truly safe as to guarantee admission, but competitive applicants can apply to less selective programs to raise their chances of getting into a program. I am personally against the idea of safety programs in PhD admissions for a couple of different reasons (which I’ll address below). But it’s not a bad strategy if you really want a PhD.

Most people’s conceptions of a safety is a program that is a less-good fit but has a lower level of selectivity to enhance chances of getting in. But most people who aim for PhD programs in non-clinical fields of psychology (and most fields, really) are aiming to enter academia or have some kind of research career, and the reputation and prestige of your program and advisor really matters in that process. In some really competitive fields, only graduates of the top programs get tenure-track jobs, and the rest toil in adjunct positions or leave the profession altogether. For some, it may be better to spend the 7 years of your life doing something else than going to a low-ranked program and not really ever being competitive for academic jobs. In other fields that are sort of less cutthroat right now, going to a lower-ranked program may keep you out of the running for the best academic jobs but still leaves some open to you and more opportunities outside of academia. I think this is where cognitive psychology sits.

So I think it’s really up to you. My personal opinion, when I was applying to PhD programs, that if I could not go to the perfect PhD program and study exactly what I wanted to study, I’d rather spend 5-6 years of my life doing something else and go into another career. In my eyes, I thought, what was the point of spending the time doing research on stuff I wasn’t actually interested in?

But I know other people who would rather spend the time in a program that was a good fit instead of a great fit, and get the PhD, and spend their postdoc years or early years in academia working their way back to what they really wanted to do. It’s just a personal decision - I’m not saying mine is the most right one by any means.