Graduate School in Psychology

Habits of a Highly Successful Applicant

EHRENFELS: “If you are applying to a research program two criteria stand head and shoulders above all else, actually, one staple and one strategy. I am speaking here of research compatibility and networking. I'll address research compatibility first. By compatibility I mean 'How similar are my research interests –- as I laid them out in my statement of purpose –- to those of at least one professor on staff?”

MOYER: “Statement of purpose. Is that like an essay?”

EHRENFELS: “Yes, except the committee looks for something very specific in this essay. They are looking for that similarity -– that match. In fact, I would say there is a hidden contract between faculty and applicants concerning this match criterion. Faculty want –- and may even expect -– the applicant to perform some research and identify the faculty members at various universities that he or she would like to work with. The applicant is expected to contact the faculty member.”

MOYER: “By what do you mean contact?”

EHRENFELS: “I mean drop the professor a line by mail or by phone. Make your wishes clear and make your case for the match. And do not wait for someone acting in a clerical capacity to recognize that the interest you listed in your statement of purpose bares a striking similarity with that listed in the faculty handbook. You have to make a statement: "Yes, I am aware of the match and it is one of the major reasons I selected this program." Even beyond that you can't assume just because you and a faculty member both list a particular topic as a research interest that the faculty member will be sweet on you. I have learned that a faculty member may not always see eye to eye with the applicant on the match. Take me for example. I was interested in dream research. I remember when I wrote a number of faculty who published dream research, I would often receive letters to the effect of ‘well, dream research is only ONE of the areas I study,’ ‘I am not doing that any more,’ ‘your dream research is personality-oriented or more personality-oriented than mine,’ ‘ what do you know of sleep disorders and do you have any experience working as a technician in a sleep lab?’ Perhaps the most unsettling reply I have received is one of the most common: ‘I have no assistantships or apprenticeships open.’ It is so damning because of the other element involved. I mean arbitrariness. The arbitrary views of the professors and the fortune or misfortune concerning the compatibility of your competition and the availability of assistantships. I remember how enthusiastic I would become to discover a rare match or meshing between my interests and those of a faculty member, and then to hear that professor make these fine distinctions that essentially disqualified my assessment of compatibility or to hear he or she did not have an assistantship available that year...it's disheartening. But make no mistake about it; the issue is one of match –- such that compatibility of research interests with at least one professor in the department is virtually synonymous with probability of admission. This issue is bound up with the issue of funding. Most PhD programs will admit only those students they can fund. And since the mode of funding is nearly always the teaching or research assistantship, the professor to whom you are writing must have one available if he or she is to recommend you to the admissions committee.”

MOYER: “What should the applicant say in the letter?”

EHRENFELS: “Well at this point, you're not yet an applicant. Don't wait to fill out an application before you research your opportunities. The professor may write to discourage your application. He will probably never write, 'do not apply here.' But he will let you know that he doesn't have an assistantship available. What this usually means is that he can't support your application. The admissions will go to other applicants who can be supported by a research assistantship. So the contacts should be made at least six months in advance to help limit the field of opportunities. It would be one thing if you can afford to apply to any and every school. But at $35-$50 a pop, at least that was the fee when I applied in '92, college seniors, many of whom have no source of income, cannot afford to write more than 10-20 checks. And the fewer applications you can afford, the more scrupulous your detective work should be, because you need your few opportunities to be high percentage. But about six months prior to admission, write the professor. If he does not reply, I would not consider that program viable. If he replies and appears encouraging and does not rule out an assistantship, then start building a relationship with the professor."

MOYER: “What do you say?”

EHRENFELS: “Like I said, make a case for the compatibility. If you've read his work, and I recommend browsing something the professor has written, be sure to mention it and possibly incorporate details into your case for compatibility. If the reply is encouraging, write again a few weeks later with questions. Appear to seek out his guidance in ways that make you appear sincere and ambitious, with questions concerning how you could best prepare for graduate school. What texts does he recommend? But yeah, a certain constellation of circumstances must be in place before an applicant can feel comfortable about his or her odds. If the faculty member is not a ranking member of the department, he or she may not be alotted assistants. I have written a couple faculty who have replied that as adjunct or assistant professors, they did not have teaching or research assistantships available. Translation: apply elsewhere. I have also written some full professors who claimed they were on the verge of retirement and could not commit three or four years to a new apprentice, and I have also written full professors who have claimed that they WOULD HAVE taken me if only I had applied a year earlier, before he filled the last of his assistantship slots. So in short, getting in is almost entirely about relationships – connections. As an applicant to graduate school in Psychology – and perhaps in other disciplines as well – you will spend as much time researching and developing these connections as you do on your coursework. It is never JUST a matter of stuffing an oversized envelope; of crafting a dossier or statement of purpose; of putting together a packet of application materials; of filling out the forms, enclosing some supporting documents, requesting letters of recommendation from undergraduate faculty, requesting copies of your GRE transcripts from ETS, and writing the fifty dollar check to the school for processing your application.”

MOYER: “Speaking of the GREs --”

EHRENFELS: “Ah yes. The vital statistics. GREs and GPA are often used to make some easy decisions. I mean, these graduate programs receive between 80 and 700 applications. 80 if we're talking about an S&P program in Nebraska and 700 if we're talking about a Clinical program in Southern California. A numbers game is used to widdle down the stack because they simply don't have time to give much attention to all the applications. So some minimum cutoffs are enforced. But seldom are high numbers used to affirm an application. You just move onto the next level, which means you are assessed for compatibility and affiliations. And a popular opinion among university professors seems to be that GPA is not a measure of anything because the courses and requirements that factor into the making of a GPA vary too widely among applicants. GREs are at least standardized but then they do not address a whole hell of a lot of content. I can defend with one side of my mouth psych profs who toss out applications because of unimpressive GRE-Q scores if the GRE-Q correlated at least moderately with any performance outcomes. But in the absence of such a relationship, the irrelvance of the GRE-Q's preoccupation with high school algebra and geometry for mathematics used in the behavioral sciences (i.e. Statistics) is all the more glaring. And yet a psych prof will disqualify an applicant whose failure to remember his high school trig resulted in a forgetful Q Score even if that applicant went above the call by pursuing a heavy dose of research-related electives, mastering abstract mathematical concepts in Tests & Measurements, The Psychology of Individual Differences, and boldly going where few psych majors went before...the math department for Statistics II. But seldom are GRE scores used to rule an applicant in, although let me attach an asterisk to this. There are a handful of hoity-toity schools out there that play a numbers game. You'll know them when you see them. They cite the mean GRE scores of their graduate students in their prospectus.”

MOYER: “So numbers are not as important as the social component.”

EHRENFELS: “I wouldn't say it is a purely political process, but it is as close to one as you will find. Remember, if they are not looking for a reason to lobby for you, they are looking for a reason to reject you. By massaging the political aspect of it, by reaching out to the professor, you are helping to give him or her a reason to lobby for you. The compatibility and personal correspondence are ways to fulfill this political requirement. That professor will then use your numbers or whatever else you can give them to help persuade the rest of the faculty, if necessary, that you are worthy of admission. This may not be necessary if the faculty themselves are not deluged with a surplus of good candidates who followed my advice. In fact, under these circumstances, a candidate need only meet the minimum cutoffs, which are usually quite generous because the faculty would like to reserve the right to admit a student with the right interests, the right connections, or the right attitude. But for some of us, this political process is very unpleasant. For people like myself who formulate original hypotheses and who think for themselves, the whole process will seem either truthful and awkward or smooth but mendacious. Independently minded students, especially introverted students -- whose motives and vocations tend to be among the most scholarly -- also tend to be caught unaware of such socio-political and logistical requirements. I myself was very shy; I put an effort into crafting the perfect statement of purpose and dossier, and I even included a description of my independent research. I was not inclined, however, to make phone calls. I was not inclined to spend hours at the library slaving over the PsychLit CD as if I were composing a biography of the twenty professors who might be able to let me in the door. There was something disingenuous about the process, because I am independent and introverted and to be perfectly frank was not sincerely interested in anyone else's research but my own. I was underwhelmed by the current literature in sleep and dreaming, but I had all these ideas for a program of original research, including a methodology I hoped to pioneer. I was hoping my application materials would pique someone's interest. But I quickly learned that even though it is you who is being evaluated, the process is not so much about you as it is about them. I quickly learned that academics don't like independence in an applicant. The faculty want to know how you can serve them. They expect you to make the case that you can serve their interests better than other applicants. An applicant also needs to demonstrate that he or she could be trainable and that includes demonstrating that he or she has the epistemology of the profession coursing through his or her veins. Some phrases a search committee would like to hear about an applicant -- or for that matter from an applicant -- is that he or she understands the methodology. This may not sound very flowery, but then they are not looking for the next Magellan. They are not interested in someone who could walk on water, just in someone whose feet are planted firmly on the ground. They are looking for solid and trainable. It would be ideal if the applicant could convey a command of the profession and by that I mean the business of being a professor -- that or she also understands the publication requirements and is proficient in APA style or grant-writing. Naturally it would be a huge competitive advantage if an applicant had already published, but in most cases, it's a plus if the applicant appears to be cognizant of -- and amenable to -- this framework of expectations. To be caught naive about this is to be caught unaware of the basic unit of currency in one's own economy. Planting my tounge firmly in my cheek, I learned to write and speak such words as "I have an intrinsic interest in the methodology" or "I wish to develop a professional identity." But introverted or not, truthful or not, you must make THIS pitch. You have to be a salesperson and then you have to get a little lucky. But we’ve reached a point now where most applicants are familiar with the game, which places those who are NOT at a distinct disadvantage. And – believe it or not – there are applicants who are unfamiliar. I for one was never advised to do this – not by the undergraduate faculty advisor assigned me by the department – and not by the faculty member I chose to mentor my senior thesis. Both were aware that I intended to make application when I intended it. And both were aware that I was submitting applications at the time they were being submitted. What went through their minds in between those two points is anyone’s guess. But neither of them laid it all out for me. The only reason I was given to worry came from my research advisor, who informed me that the faculty were likely to place my application in a special pile for eccentric applicants. The implication here was double-edged, namely that I was not likely to be discounted immediately but that I was also not likely to be admitted readily or with fanfare.”

EHRENFELS: “Well, at some point we'll be getting around to what happened to me personally, but I'd just like to take the sting out the disillusionment that awaits the serious student of psychology. I don't want them to go through what I did. My professors never advised me on the whole process. I later faced them with the facts of my fate and they seemed rather stunned by the whole thing, but a lot of them are older faculty who had not been through graduate school in quite a number of years. Also, this was a liberal arts college with no graduate program. So I could understand why they had little if any insight into the process. I'd just hate to think the liberal arts undergraduate, who probably receives a good education, is at a disadvantage when it comes to taking the next step in his or her career. It's bad enough most psych profs value name recognition and have never heard of many of these liberal arts schools. Why should an applicant enjoy an advantage for having attended a flagship state university? So you went to Iowa State? I could understand if the program has some reputable psych profs on faculty, but many of these programs do nothing more than give its bacceleaureate recipients coordinates on a map. That disturbs me. Now what disturbs me even more are these professors who will not speak out about the process because it puts them in an unfavorable light. I mean, not many of them are eager to admit to a lack of conscientiousness and to the use of time-saving heuristics and algorithms that stack the deck for and against certain types of applicants."

Graduate School in Psychology

Networking and Name Recognition: The Best Chance of Success

MOYER: “But if I am hearing you correctly, politics is not as much a driving force as competition.”

EHRENFELS: “Competition and the professional culture. But don't get me wrong. There is most certainly a socio-political component. With so few positions available in any given year, often it is networking that makes the difference.”

MOYER: “Networking? How would one network one's way into this sort of opportunity?”

EHRENFELS: “There is a latent network of academics who are linked by common projects. Pick up an article sometime and you will see that more often than not, it has three or more authors, usually from different universities. These authors share a common interest, view point, and some comeraderie. Then there are academics who belong to the same division of APA and regularly co-chair the same panel discussions. Division 24 is a great example because a large percentage of its leaders or most active contributors hail from the same 3-4 affiliations, places like Georgetown, Baylor, Brigham-Young. I call it the Mormon-Jesuit belt. I wouldn't be surprised if members of the psychoanalytic divisions are supplied by 3-4 universities in the New York metropolitan area, like Yeshiva and Adelphi. How this happens is no coincidence. A professor will often recommend an "affiliated program or professor" to a graduating student who expressed an interest in post-bacceleaurate studies. It's like allies during a War. The professor is often aware that his or her co-author has an opening for a research or teaching assistantship and that the program has a theoretical orientation that is consistent with his or her own. Under ideal circumstances, the professor and co-author may even be able to exchange students. So if you are a college senior with doctoral aspirations, you may want to select a professor who is "connected" for your senior thesis advisor. Then impress these aspirations upon the advisor and work closely within his or her framework, allowing the advisor to view your own senior thesis as an extension, application, or demonstration of his or her own research. Then such a student would be wise to research the advisor's connections. Pull up his prior research and identify any regular co-authors. Survey his or her social base. There are two levels at which the networking can occur.”

MOYER: “And will this make up for other areas in which an applicant is lacking?”

EHRENFELS: “It could. I was all but officially rejected by the faculty of the social psychology division his own university until an influential professor with an independently funded chair from another division stepped in and persuaded the social psychology faculty to admit me. Some members of the social psych faculty thought I was a poor fit for their program, which would later cost me, but they thought, 'why not? as long as someone else will find him.' But to return to my original point, there are two levels at which networking can work its magic. It could do so explicitly, whereby a faculty advisor instructs the student to apply to work with his or her colleague at this other university and then makes his or her intentions known to the colleague.”

MOYER: “Just picks up the phone and calls.”

EHRENFELS: “That's right. 'Hey, George, will you be needing a research assistant next year? Do I have a student for you!' Such back-door deals are fairly common. But then you have those less explicit modes of operation. Those hidden contracts. The student quietly does his or her detectivework and then one day a letter of recommendation from his or her advisor lands on the desk of the advisor's colleague. The letter carries a lot of weight because the colleague knows the advisor and trusts his or her assessment. At that point, the student may be admitted or the colleague may even use the application as an excuse to phone the advisor. 'Hey, George, you'll never guess what just landed on my desk. I have an application here from one of your students,' to which the advisor replies, 'oh sure, so you received my letter.' 'Yes, George, perhaps we can discuss the student. Oh, and how's the wife? I've been meaning to ask you whether you wanted to co-chair this year's symposium.'”

MOYER: “How fair is that to students who do not make or exploit these kind of connections?”

EHRENFELS: “Not very. My senior thesis advisor once remarked that he knew someone at the doctoral program to which I was applying. Not a faculty member -- I think it was a Dean. I had no foreknowledge of this. It was purely coincidental. As I mentioned earlier, I had no cunning or insight about me at all. But I didn't have an opportunity to take advantage of serendipity because my advisor informed me he felt uncomfortable with the idea of renewing his contact on my behalf. But hey, in that application year, that serendipity may have been responsible for my best opportunity. You see, I had been rejected outright by all but one university, where I was interviewed over the phone and subsequently wait-listed.”

MOYER: “And THAT was the university with which your senior thesis advisor was affiliated, in a manner of speaking.”

EHRENFELS: “Yes.”

MOYER: “I hope the students take full advantage of your wise counsel.”

EHRENFELS: “They seem more than happy to defer to me on this score. And if they did it in large enough numbers, we might see some inequities redressed.”

Learning the Hard Way: Black Thursday

There was nothing more I feared than knowing I had no place to go with my B.A. My B.A. to me was no point of pride in and of itself. At that time in my life, my B.A. meant nothing more than a stepping-stone to graduate school. Nothing would spoil my graduation ceremony more than knowing I wasn’t moving on. Of the letters I sent out Priority Mail the next morning, two met with a reply. I received the most bittersweet news from my faculty contact at UCLA. In her letter, she made it sound as if she physically marched into a meeting of the graduate admission committee to endorse my application. But sadly she learned she was too late. The committee had made its decisions.

The Michigan Debacle

A faculty contact at the University of Michigan – the only professor at any of these schools to study dreams – informed me that I had been rejected but that things might have been different if he had been alerted to my application sooner. And he kindly invited me to re-apply the following year. The Michigan debacle was a compelling case for the need to contact professors personally. This was an instance in which my research interests meshed with those of another faculty member, who also performed personality-oriented dream research. The fact I did not know of his existence when I submitted my application is immaterial. Even if I had been aware, I would have assumed that the professor would have been alerted to my application and that the faculty search committee (even if he were not a member) would have taken this fit into account. I will never know whether the fit was taken into account, but I DO know that my application was never brought to the attention of the professor and that he never had an opportunity to argue for my admission. Clearly, I was a victim of a not uncommon bureaucracy, in which the applications are reviewed either by an independent admissions committee – possibly in a university-wide administrative office called the Graduate School that oversees applications to all graduate departments – or by a departmental admissions committee that comprises a subset of faculty (who may look after only their own interests). The latter possibility would not surprise me given what I was told happened to my application to one of the University of California campuses the following year.

The UC Davis Fiasco

The following year -- now a sage and seasoned applicant reprising my siege of graduate institutions -- I composed a letter – this time a TIMELY letter -- to a professor who managed to earn a reputation for his work in the areas of dreaming and consciousness. When I received no reply to my application, I phoned the department to learn that my application had been ‘lost.’ I did not question at the time HOW the graduate student coordinator KNEW my application had been lost, except that perhaps he was aware that the school had in fact cashed my check and was unwilling to refund my money. The plot would thicken. A year thereafter, while I was working toward my PhD at another university, I visited Georgetown University to meet a professor with whom my wife was acquainted. My wife and I were invited to lunch with some applicants to Georgetown’s graduate program, who happened to be on campus that day interviewing with faculty. In a conversation with an applicant from UC Davis, I learned that its faculty makes a habit of losing the applications of people like myself who express an interest in working with this dream researcher. I could not speculate at this time about the source of the animosity, but the undergraduate suspected that the faculty did not support his dream research. After I received my PhD, I contacted the dream researcher by e-mail and informed him of what I had been told by this student. His reply was succinctly and sincerely: ‘it would not surprise me.’ But to return to my original story – after I received the letter from the professor at the University of Michigan, only two schools remained – only two hopes for my future in Psychology. I had been working toward this end since I was thirteen years old and now – at 22 – I had the possible – no, ‘likely’ – destruction of my life’s mission thrust directly into my face. I cannot tell you what happened after this, except to say my fears were confirmed. I also cannot tell you WHY I cannot tell you, except to say that certain people I care about within the profession stand to lose a lot by virtue of their mere association with the name JW Ehrenfels. Among the members of this field are the most vindictive people I have ever met – people to whom making life miserable for others is a sport. And they would do anything in their power to hurt JW Ehrenfels -- and if that means hurting the people he cares about – even people who have not advanced or contributed to my cause -- then they will do that. They have already demonstrated quite a flair for this M.O. I have heard many terms applied to the field of Psychology – many from its own faculty – words like ‘lodge,’ ‘union,’ ‘guild,’ ‘barber’s college,’ ‘fraternity,’ even ‘mob.’”

MOYER: “You know – SO many people make applicants to graduate programs in Psychology. That means SO many people are turned down a year. Yet your story of disillusionment and disappointment is the FIRST I have ever heard.”

EHNREFELS: “Applicants expect to be considered on the merits of their vital statistics – and by that I mean their GPA and GRE scores – or the sincerity of their Statement – but in actuality, if you do not align yourself with a professor – the faculty application committee will not know which pile to place your sheets of paper – you will in their minds be an applicant without a purpose, which is to say an applicant without a category. It is so sad because so many Psychology baccalaureates graduate expecting to attend graduate school the following year, not realizing that the odds of getting into graduate school are astronomically worse than those of getting in for undergraduate work. They can quickly and bitterly learn they have no future in graduate school, and then the private sector teaches them they have no future with a B.A. in Psychology. They need a crash course in Microsoft Office to land an entry-level data-processing job. For graduates seeking careers and vocations alike, it is eerily unsettling. I received my BA at the height of the recession in 1992, when I applied for graduate work only to learn in follow-up phone calls about the status of my application from frazzled receptionists that the departments were swamped that year by applicants who did not want to enter the job market during a recession. My application was literally drowned out by the numbers and by the fact I did not know the game. I was upset my undergraduate advisor did not inform me of the rules, and that he – and his colleagues – were surprised by the news I had received from these schools about the nature of admissions. They assured me that it was NOT always like this – certainly not when THEY made application – and that it was quite a simpler matter for them. They thought that my GPA, GRE scores, and the sincerity of my statement of purpose would have been sufficient. Of course, I suppose it IS true that IF the procedures had changed over the years, that the faculty at THIS school could have been unaware. This school does not have a graduate program. And I was quite amazed in my travels that students who do their undergraduate work at universities with graduate programs can – IF they distinguish themselves as undergraduates – be admitted into the graduate program without much of a fuss. Hell – they KNOW the faculty and have already taken courses from them. I imagine it must feel like a promotion to the student. But there ARE a precious few schools that as a rule will not allow into their graduate program a student from their own undergraduate program. And I very much respect the rationale – the student has already learned all he or she could from these professors – which may not be much – having taken courses from them, and that their grasp of the field would be quite skewed indeed if they did not sample Psychology from another group of professors. But those students who simply get ‘promoted’ are spared the misfortunes and frustrations of people like myself. And not all of these students are worthy in my opinion. I had heard a professor remark to one such student in passing, ‘Have you decided what you wanted to study yet?’ I wanted to turn around and say ‘PARDON ME?!’ after years of cultivating an extracurricular reading list and personal program of research.”