Advice from a (Experimental Psychology) Professor regarding research

[Regression]

I email'ed one of my advisers regarding importance of publications/presentations in graduate admissions. I come from a school with a well-regarded graduate program in experimental program, so he's seen plenty of great candidates while in my school's adcom:

It is not that common for applicants to have publications, and to be honest, they don't quite count as much as you might think. A publication is good evidence that you were important enough in a lab that you got your name on a paper, but there are other ways for that to come across (the letter of rec is the most obvious place). So, I wouldn't sweat the pubs or the posters.

Getting around to lots of labs is a good thing, mostly for the reason that you're doing it: To try different things, so that when you do apply to graduate school, you have a good reason to be interested in what you say you're interested in. I don't think there's much of a worry that you'll be identified as a dabbler or anything like that[...]

The second part was addressing my concern over having worked in multiple labs over the years. I was worried that this may look like some kind of lack of commitment.

The second question I asked him was regarding finding a professor with research interests that you like, but may not have much experience in:

Well, this sort of situation is always a little bit tough. You'd want to maximize (a) how close the work is that you do, even if it can't be directly on point, (b) the extent to which you're taking advantage of what your home institution is good at, and of course, (c) how strong your letters are going to be.

The SoP can be used pretty effectively, though -- it just almost never is. If someone were applying here to work with me but was coming from someplace that had no [insert psychology branch] research, she or he could do a bit of work to find out what kind of work I (and other [...] people here do), get informed about it (read papers), and develop a decent sense of what she or he would want to do here. A SoP and file that basically says, "Hey, I'm at [insert school here] where they don't have much straight-up [research of x], but I worked with famous people X and Y who wrote me strong letters, and I want to come to [this university] to do some [...] research," that could be very strong indeed.

For those who thought this was tl;dr --

-If you have good research experience but nothing "physical" to show for it, you're fine
-If you want to research something you have no experience in, you're fine

Hope this helps someone!

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[twilson]

That eased some of my anxiety. I am applying to programs with a research interest I have no direct work in. My experience and interests can be grouped together under a general area but aren't similar at all.

Thanks for the post!