lifeofaniopsychologist

[lifeofaniopsychologist]

It’s application season!

Some of you may refer to this time of year as cuffing season, I like to refer to it as application season! Grad school applications have opened up and it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get down to business!

I’ve laid out some of my top tips for application season in the infographic above, but I’ve got some more in-depth bits to ramble on about below.

Choosing your school(s): If you can, apply to multiple schools, there is no guarantee you get into the school you’re targeting! Apply to a backup school and shoot for the moon, apply to your dream school! Be careful though because applications can be expensive once all the fees and other costs start adding up! You also don’t want to overburden any of your recommendation writers. Make sure you’re only applying to schools that you’ll actually go to if accepted - don’t waste your money on a school where you’ll never in a hundred years attend. When choosing a program, make sure their values, coursework, research, and program features all match your ultimate goals. You’re going to graduate school for a reason, make this 4+ year investment WORTH IT.  Always reach out to make sure the faculty you’re interested in working with is accepting students the year you’re applying, if they aren’t it is a wasted application! Be organized with this and make a spreadsheet - deadlines, fees, number of recommendations, potential advisors, EVERYTHING. 

CVs/Resumes: Work on these early! Writing down all of your extra curricular activities, relevant coursework, accomplishments, and skills may help you understand how competitive of a candidate you are, and whether or not you’re ready for grad school. That isn’t to say that if you’re lacking on your CV/resume that you aren’t ready for grad school, but it can be a helpful indicator. Finalizing your CV/resume can also help you write your personal statement as well! Take what you’ve done and turn it into WHY you belong in grad school and what skills you’ve learned that will help you succeed as a graduate student.

Personal Statements: In my opinion, possibly the MOST IMPORTANT piece of your application. It brings your CV, resume, GPA, test scores, etc. to life. It is your chance to tell your story. (1) Why do you want to go to graduate school? (2) Why do you want to go to this program? (3) Why do you want to work with this professor? (4) Why do you want to study this area of research? (4) Why you would make a great graduate student? (5) Why do your experiences make you different? (6) What have you learned from your experiences, and how do they make you better prepared for graduate school? (7) Why you over every other applicant out there?. This is your one chance to tell YOUR story, and tell them why YOU are going to make the best graduate student. You don’t have to have all the research experience, you don’t have to have the highest GPA, you don’t have to have all the bells and whistles, but you do need to take what you have done, what you have learned, what you have experienced, and tell them why this makes you a great applicant, and show your potential.

Letters of Recommendation: Also very important (you’ll notice I think everything is important...). What’s important is who you choose. Not all of us have 3-4 professors that can write us personal and outstanding recommendations. But if you’re thinking of going to grad school, keep this in the back of your mind. And if you decided to go to grad school way late in life (like I did), dig deep to think of who you may have made a great impression on. Take everyone opportunity to make good connections, think of some of your favorite professors in classes you did well in, that you were attentive in. Even if you don’t think they knew your name, they noticed. When I was teaching, I knew which students were there to learn and made an effort, even if they thought I didn’t know their names. Even if it took me a while (cause I’m not great with names), I still remember most students that came to class, paid attention, asked questions, and made an effort. When asking for a recommendation, be really nice, be respectful of their time, and make sure they know it is okay if they say no, especially if they feel like they cannot write you a strong recommendation, and be sure to ask for a strong recommendation. Be organized with this as well. I created a binder for each of my recommendation writers. The binder had the following: my CV, personal statement for EACH school (yes, this means your personal statement for each school should be catered to the program and faculty you’re applying to work with), a table outlining the schools/programs I was applying to and in the order of deadline (also if any are still mail-in paper application, the method for recommendation), my GRE scores, and anything else you think can help them write your recommendation better. 

GRE: What’s important to know here is different programs value different parts of the GRE. Programs where statistics are important value high quantitative scores, other programs may value verbal scores or the writing score. Pay attention to what matters to your program, many will give you an indication of this on their application sites, and may even give you statistics on the average scores of their accepted students. The GRE is EXPENSIVE, sending scores is EXPENSIVE, waiting for another available testing date is ANNOYING. Study hard, study early, and make a schedule and stick to it! The earlier you study the better, then you can wait to schedule your test until you know you are fairly ready. My advice for studying: (1) buy a GRE study book (Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc.) and go through it word for word beginning to end. The last time you did this type of math was ages ago, brush up on the skills you need to do quick math! These books will teach you skills that work, especially because of the time limit on the GRE. (2) Practice tests are your friend, as well as practice questions online. Save the 2 that the ETS gives you for free until you’re fully ready. Use any random online questions to just work on your speed per section. (3) Go to ETS website, they have a test bank of a TON of possible writing prompts (they choose from here), pick random ones and practice the following things: coming up with an answer/outline and then fully writing out a response. I’d practice the latter more, as this skill is really important! 

Alright, this was a long post, but I think I covered most of it! Hopefully it can help someone out there with their applications! Good luck to all you future graduate students!

#grad school #application #grad student

[lifeofaniopsychologist]

“What is I/O Psychology?”

If you’re an I/O psychologist, or anyone who works in an obscure field, you get this question ALL the time - I can’t even count how many times I’ve had to explain to my parents over and over again what I/O psychology is. And let me preface this post with: we. are. not. just. HR. (the response of “oh you’re just a glorified HR” has hit me one too many times)

I’ve thought about how best to describe I/O psychology a lot this year after I volunteered with LPS (Letters to a Pre-Scientist). This program matches scientists with young scientists (or even non-scientists) as pen pals for the school year. One of the hardest parts of the program for me was explaining what we do to a young student. The best I had was: “I do research to help people be happy at work.” - was this the best explanation? Probably not, but it was the best I could come up with at the time.

So what does that mean really? Let’s get into it. 

I/O psychology, or industrial/organizational psychology, is the application of psychological principles, theories, ideals, etc., to the workplace. We use science-based practice to understand different human experiences at work: teamwork, engagement, productivity, performance, leadership, and all that jazz. Because we are so versatile in applying what we know and do to all different areas of the work experience, I/O psychologists are employed in all different types of settings to do very different types of work. So, when people asked me what I’ll do in my future or what jobs I/O psychologists do, it’s not an easy answer. 

In my own experience I have two different areas where I’ve worked in I/O psychology: (1) as a graduate student, I’ve got the academia experience and (2) in my internship and job, I have a very specific applied experience. I

In academia, I/O psychologists do a lot of...you guessed it...RESEARCH! Most I/O psychologists in academia spend a large amount of their time coming up with new research ideas to solve workplace issues and conducting that research. However, research in academia is not always free or easy! Many academics spend a substantial amount of time writing grant applications looking for money to fund their research! Another thing they do is attend conferences and possibly do talks and presentations for companies or other universities. All in all, it’s all about their research! 

My job in the applied world is much different, and it’ll be very different from the next I/O psychologist’s. I was hired into my company to focus on people insights and measurement - mostly a fancy way to say I focus on employee surveys, analyzing the surveys, and pulling insights from them. I get to design and execute a lot of HR and even non-HR employee surveys and develop dashboards in order to share data with people who may not be able to interpret the data as easily. I give my own insights based in my I/O knowledge as to why we are seeing the results we are getting from surveys and what it means in the big picture (insights!). This data is normally used to improve work processes and create a better employee experience at the company (aka - make employees happy at work!!). 

This has been enough rambling for a Sunday night after watching a day’s worth of football (go cowboysss! - phew today’s game was a doozy), and now throwing it back to watching some Hannah Montana (please don’t judge me). I’ll get more into I/O topics and jobs in future posts!

#iopsychology iopsych psychology academiavsapplied

[lifeofaniopsychologist]

About me.

Welcome to my blog! I’ve recently delve into the world of creating content for social media and it’s inspired me to make a new blog. A blog, to be honest, that’s more for me to write my thoughts and share IO psychology with those in the world who have no clue what it is! So if you happen upon my blog, welcome and I hope you enjoy or learn something! 

My name is Allison and I was born and raised in Plano, TX. To understand my perspective on life, it’s important to know where I come from since my experiences are likely highly different from most readers out there. Plano is a middle-upper middle class city, depending on which side of Plano you hail from, personally I come from the more middle class side of Plano, but I’m still aware of the privilege that I came from. The privilege to be born to 2 loving parents, with 2 older siblings looking out for me, in a city that has plenty of residents that look like me and welcomes who I am, with teachers throughout my education supported me and told me I could be anything despite my gender or the color of my skin. These are all privileges that I was born into and from these privileges and this upbringing I have formed my values, my experiences, and my own perspectives on life. 

A quick re-cap of the past 26 years:

Born in Plano, TX

Montessori school, elementary school, middle school, high school all went by pretty normally until my senior high years

Attended TAMS which is Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (nerd alert). It is a high-school college program, where we stay at UNT for 2 years in our own high school dorm, take college courses, and live the dramatic high school years out 24/7 with our other nerdy peers. 

Went off to college at UT Austin, thinking I wanted to be a pediatrician this whole time, until I joined a child psychology research lab and decided medical school wasn’t the place for me. 

Graduated from UT Austin in 3 years, took a gap year to figure out my life, what I wanted to do next and with my career. Ultimately, I decided I wanted to be an I/O psychologist - a thing I didn’t know existed until after graduation. 

Took my GRE, applied to grad school, got into grad school, picked a grad school.

Started grad school, only to endure stressful years with studying, being a TA/TF, doing research, writing and defending my Master’s thesis (woo I’m a Master!), studying for and successfully passing comprehensive exams (otherwise known as qualifying exams - only the hardest exam I’ve ever taken and I took physics y’all...), interning, and now finalizing my dissertation. 

It’s been a crazy couple years, which I’ll slowly hash out as I continue this blog. But I hope you enjoy reading about my past, present, future, and any IO psych ramblings I have (cause you know I’ll have a lot). 

#iopsychology iopsych gradschool personalblog newblog