Fully Funded, Holistically Selected, Career-Long Mentorship

Faculty who are currently training students in the program, and one of our graduates, on how to get ready to apply.

Franki Y. H. Kung

If you have not taken an I-O psychology class, Paul Levy's Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Understanding the Workplace is a good place to look. On graduate school itself — and this may be controversial — I have enjoyed Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School, 57 Ways to Screw Up in Grad School, The Professor Is In, and, especially in my early grad school days, PHD Comics. SIOP also has good educational videos; the 2016 one, “Everything You Want to Know About Graduate School in I-O Psychology but Are Too Afraid to Ask!”, may be useful to you.

Louis Tay

“Where someone chooses to go for their Ph.D. is as important as their talent and knack for research. Whether we like it or not, your graduate school environment and your advisor can affect your motivation and love for research.”

• Rankings have limited value. U.S. News rankings typically rely on ratings of department heads and directors of graduate studies — likely a function of who those individuals know, not the quality of mentorship or program culture. They also carry reputational lags, and give weight to established professors who may not be actively mentoring students at all.
• Interest fit with an advisor. “When you care about your research, you are intrinsically motivated, and you find pleasure in it.” I only applied to two graduate programs in the United States — the ones with advisors who shared my interest in psychological measurement and research methods.
• Recent research productivity. Look at a prospective advisor's publications over the past three years on Google Scholar, whether they appear in the top-tier outlets of the field, and — importantly — how many are co-authored with Ph.D. students. That last one is a proxy for active mentoring.
• The well-being of graduate students. Email the faculty member to ask whether they are admitting. If they reply, is the tone respectful, kind, helpful? Reach out to a few current graduate students, who may be willing to tell you what working in that program and under that advisor is actually like.
• Successful alumni. Where have their Ph.D. students been placed, especially recently — and are those the kinds of places you hope to land? Whether former students still collaborate with their advisor after graduating says a great deal about the relationship.
• Culture of the program. On a visit, do faculty speak about one another in positive and affirming ways? Do students feel safe sharing their opinions? Are expectations for finishing clear, and are faculty available when you need to talk?

Read the full article.

Sang Eun Woo

Decide what general research topic you are interested in, and start reading up on recent publications on those topics. Some of the major I-O journals to start with are the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Journal of Organizational Behavior. After you identify key authors whose work you appreciate, get in touch with them by email to see whether they are admitting new students or are open to research volunteers in their lab.

Once you have a handful of doctoral programs to consider closely, pay attention to the programs where students are thriving — in research productivity and professional engagement and in psychological well-being — not the ones where you see super-star faculty but little evidence of supportive mentoring. Prepare questions targeted at specific observable behaviors (“how long does it take to hear back from your advisor on a paper you are working on?”, “how often do you meet with your advisor, and are you happy with the frequency and depth of those interactions?”) alongside broad open-ended ones (“are you happy here?”).

Melissa Keith

Dr. Keith graduated with the Class of 2019 and is now Associate Professor at Bowling Green State University. From her alumni interview:

• Be proactive. More and more I am looking for graduate students who not only make good grades and do well in classes but who are able to be proactive in their learning. So much of graduate school is seeking out information and problem solving — skills that can be developed as an undergraduate student.
• Get as much experience in I-O psychology (or a related field) as possible. Classes, class projects, research with graduate students or faculty, self-study, internships. If your school does not have an I-O psychology program, that is okay — you can still read an I-O psychology textbook, or reach out to graduate students in other programs to see whether they would be willing to talk with you.
• Keep your mind open. Too often I hear students say things like, “I want to get a Ph.D. in X, but I don't like research.” How do they know? Be open to new experiences and new topics.
• Do your research on graduate programs and find a program that has a good culture, supportive faculty, and produces high-quality scholars.

The faculty advice above was assembled by the program in November 2020 and is reproduced here for the faculty still training students. Dr. Keith's advice is drawn from her PAGSIP alumni interview.