I want to apply to grad school by the end of 2007, to start a full time PhD program in fall of 2008. I've settled on Psychology as my subject, after seriously considering Economics, Anthropology, and Philosophy (and less seriously considering Biology and History). Clearly my interests don't fit into a neat container, but I think Psychology is the best match for me.
The broadest way to describe my interests is that I want to understand what the hell is wrong with everyone. That's really what is comes down to. Is that a bad way to approach this? It doesn't mean I don't think there are lots of things right with everyone, and I see that there is good in the world, but I look around and see a lot of weird shit going on and I want to make sense of it. The last few years I've been trying to figure it out on my own, but now I want to make it more formal.
I think there are two areas that I most want to pursue, both of which I think I can find in the right Psychology program. Before I get to that let's highlight some of the things I think are so fucked up. We'll go to bullet format, and I won't elaborate on them all, I'll just list items.
- Political system
- Religion
- Mass Media
- Environmental destruction
- Tribalism
- Addiction
- Corporations
- Unhealthy lifestyles
- Education system
But getting back to the two main areas of study that I want to pursue, I think that all of those topic above are related by a theme: the human mind operating in a foreign environment. And the two areas of study are the human mind and the environment. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me. None of this is especially profound. My categories are poorly formed and everything is interrelated. But I just wanted to get my thoughts out there in a raw form.
I imagine that if I have a long academic career, it will involve digging into the way that evolved features of our mind manifest themselves in strange ways in a modern first-world environment, especially in regards to some of the bullet points mentioned. What I mean by evolved features is that humans are biological entities, evolved from earlier entities just like every other living thing on this planet. So some understanding of human behavior has to come from a biological perspective, and what is crucial is that life evolved to survive and reproduce in its environment.
If you take life out of its native environment, strange things can happen. Humans didn't evolve to live the way I live - in a suburb with cars and supermarkets and television and air conditioning and handguns and Internet pornography. And so strange things happen, like those bullet points above. To understand those strange things requires understanding how the mind works, and how the environment effects it.
I've touched on this before, but two examples of specific realms of study that interest me are personality psychology and evolutionary psychology. I think understanding personality types and how they respond to group settings is hugely helpful to understanding lots of those bullet points, which is why I've mentioned that Robert Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism has been of such interest to me. That's the part about how the mind works. And then evolutionary psychology is about understanding how we evolved, the challenges we faced, the psychological mechanisms we developed to survive and reproduce. Understanding the differences between where we've come from and where we are now is another crucial piece of making sense of those bullet points.
Pulling it back to what I want in grad school, I think it is more realistic for me to initially focus on the social/personality psychology, given my academic and career background. I've studied economics and done a lot of marketing research, and so I have a bit of experience with some of the research methodology used in that area. I maintain a keen interest in the evolutionary side, but my biology background isn't strong, and I'm not sure if I want to do anthropological type field work. So I'd like to be in a program with a few professors who are doing social/personality psychology research that I can get involved with, and also with a few professors doing evolutionary psychology work that I can watch closely.
Questions for anyone who can answer them:
- Do the ideas I've described above make sense as a decent way to approach going back to school?
- Can I, with a lot of refinement, use these ideas in essays and interviews to explain my research/career interests?
- What is the best way to identify schools that would be a good fit? I've just been looking at some program rankings, starting in kind of the 2nd tier because I don't think I have a top tier resume, and reading about the faculty at each school, with some geography considerations thrown in.
2 comments:
Just from my initial skimming, I'd say that you seem to have a firmer idea about what you'd like to learn than many graduate students do when they begin a program. Most students that I know, join a Microbiology or Neuroscience or whatever program because that's their general interest, without a very clear idea of what they'd like research, or at least with broad enough interest that they can pick a school based on something like where they'd like to live or what rank is it, etc.
Since you have these more specific ideas, I would say that you should try to pick a school with at least a few faculty who you'd like work with. You could start by making a list of potential schools, for whatever reason you like, and then going through the Psychology departments and looking at faculty research interests. And then apply to schools that have more than one faculty member whose research interests you.
Also - you could start with looking up primary research articles/books that interests you and then figuring out who and where those researchers are.
Both of those methods are time-consuming, since most university websites suck, so
I would also suggest (which I think I have before), that you find someone around Baltimore/DC that does research anything like what you might be interested in and email them to see if you could come chat. You might strike out with some of them, but I know that people like my PI and Nick's PI and lots of others would love to talk to someone like you and help you identify possible fits.
Those are my initial suggestions - I'll read it more closely later :)
Cara basically said it all.
To address your first 2 qs, yes and yes. You're off to a good start, and probably above average compared to the rest of the applicants in terms of knowing what you'd like to pursue. You just need to be able to explain clearly
For your 3rd question, you just need to keep reading about faculty and their research, and see if it matches your interests, and if you could envision yourself working with them. I would not sell yourself short for "top programs", but ultimately I think faculty and their research should be your first criterion. Also like Cara said it's good to see more than one faculty member with research that interests you.
Also excellent point about primary articles. You should probably be scanning current research, basically doing lit searches, looking at citations, seeing who is working on the stuff you want to work on. Also like Cara said definitely apply for NSF.
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