Strange interview experience.... opinions, anyone?

[pavlove]

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[cara susanna]

Can you PM me with what program it was? Sounds similar to ones that I attended 😉

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

While they may have a leg up because they know about the lab....they may be limited in what they bring the lab because they would have had a similar experience. Often labs discourage applicants from in-house because they have already learned much of what they would learn there during their doctoral training. Academic inbreeding typically isn't viewed favorably.

 

[UhOh]

 

[BamaPsych]

This is really random, but I remember one school in particular that, accorcding to SDN's interview feedback datebase, did exactly what you described.


I have no opinion on said school, because I didn't apply/attend there, but I must ask just to see if the database feedback was actually repeating itself: was it UND?

 

[Psych1212]

Okay,

I recently attended at interview weekend event that's left me a bit unsure about the institution and the candidate selection process; I understand that the application process is multi-faceted and often difficult to predict and explain, but I can't quite wrap my thoughts around this one.

At this particular interview, five other candidates were also interviewing to work with the same POI. From my other interview experiences, this was not abnormal. However, during the course of the weekend, it became evident through my conversations with these other candidates that they had ALL attended the interviewing institution as undergraduates. Furthermore, they had ALL been previously associated with the POI's lab and/or research.

....has anyone else had a similar experience? 😕

My general understanding has been that it's often MORE difficult to gain entry to a Clinical Psych PhD program if you've attended the institution for UG, so this situation was a bit disconcerting for me to say the least. I also felt a bit unsure of how I was supposed to compete with students who were already part of the POI's current projects.

Input, anyone?

Your reaction is completely normal, but I have some good news...

In 2006 I sat in on an interview for an APA-accredited Ph.D. program that was very similar. Five students, 2 of them undergrads from his lab and two of them graduate students (Masters-level) from his the lab.

The professor chose the one student that wasn't associated with the lab or the school.


It was a combination of that candidate looking impressive and the current members of the lab looking not so impressive.

 

[HEM0305]

In the same line, I had a couple of interviews at schools where I met current grad students who came directly from their undergrad - and they seemed the least happy with the program. And then at the interview, there were several students from the school.

 

[blindchaos]

Just to clarify....are all of you talking about PhD/research intensive programs? I would suspect that academic inbreeding is more of an issue (in the negative sense, typically) in research intensive programs. For programs that are more practice-based I don't think it's as much of an issue.

Also, to play devils advocated...some people are geographically limited, some people may have picked an UG without knowing who they want to study under or what they want to study for grad school four years in the future so perhaps interests related to what the UG institution offers could be cultivated or it could be just luck of the draw if someone from your UG studies exactly what you want to study. Lastly, some schools focus on serving or researching specific populations (maybe based on diagnosis, geographic origins, specific life experiences/trauma, etc) so if you are already there and that's what you want to study...why not?

I'm not saying this is why 5 out of 6 interviewees at School X are from School X, I just want to caution people against assuming something is wrong or weird about a program when SOME interviewees or current students are from that school. Maybe it just fits with their wants and needs (and it doesn't mean that's the only school they applied to or that it's at the top of their list. I heard quite a few interviewees at the program I'm in talk about how they applied to their undergrad out of feeling obligated to do so to satisfy LOR writers...some of whom outright told them to apply to their UG or otherwise indicated that they should or that they'd be sad/disappointed if they didn't. Writer pressure: It happens. 😛)

 

[cara susanna]

Oh, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I was just sharing my experience 😀