Application season is here! Junior researchers around the world are considering mentors, departments, and universities—each one offering a different possible future, and even a different future self. You might be one of these people, and might have questions. Which programs are a good fit for you, and how can you maximize your chances of getting in?
Twenty-two (!) years ago I stumbled through this process. I had very little guidance, wrote an awful research statement, and got rejected from all but one program. Thankfully, all it takes is one. I got lucky.
Pretty much since then, I’ve been working with other people—first in my mentors’ labs and now in my own—to help them do a better job applying than I did. A couple of years ago, I noticed my advice was getting repetitive. Rather than deciding I was getting boring in middle age, I interpreted this as meaning that I’ve developed consistent opinions based on all this experience.
Almost all the people I was talking to about these tips were in elite psychology programs. They had access to the “hidden curriculum” of unwritten rules, norms, and signals that people like me use decide who will succeed in this mysterious world.
It would be great to unhide that curriculum. So, five years ago I teamed up with alumni and members of my lab to assemble some of our tips. Now that I have a Substack, I’m posting an updated version of our guide so that anyone can access the insights we’ve collected over the years… and so I can stop giving the same advice over and over again.
Members of my lab have successfully applied to business schools and clinical programs, but my expertise lies mostly in social psychology. Hence, my advice is most tuned towards those.
More broadly, these tips might only be useful in certain contexts, for certain people, or they might not be useful at all. I don’t know! What follows simply reflects my experience, but I hope it can be useful. Applying to grad school can be scary, but it can also be fun and meaningful, and connect you to a world of thoughtful, generous people.
Most of all, thank you to Dean Baltiansky, Ryan Carlson, Marissa Clark, Wicia Fang, Isabella Kahhale, Eric Neumann, Erik Nook, Marianne Reddan, and Emma Templeton for providing input.
BEFORE YOU APPLY
Psychology PhD programs are hugely competitive. As you begin the application process, be sure to keep that in mind as you set your expectations, and try out some preemptive self-compassion.
If your application doesn’t work out, that does not mean you are not a good scientist, scholar, or thinker. Another year of research experience—for instance, in a post-bac RA position—can help you deepen your skillset, sharpen your interests, and emerge an even stronger candidate in the next cycle. What’s more, data suggest that early set-backs make for stronger scientists in the long run!
Which program / school / advisor is right for me?
Your search should begin by identifying at least 10 mentors whose labs you’d be happy working in. But how? There are countless people doing all sorts of research all around the world. How can you narrow down your search and find people who “fit?”
It’s tempting to start with any number of external parameters—a university’s name brand, a professor’s citation count, a program’s reputation. I suggest starting with yourself instead. Fit ultimately boils down to finding a place that connects with, nurtures, and develops your deepest interests and values.
Try writing a short “pre-statement”—nothing formal, more like a diary entry—that lays out in 2-3 paragraphs what you love about psychology, what has inspired you most, and who you’d like to become as a scientist. This note can become a sort of north star as you look for advisors. Is there someone whose work inspired you, or who embodies an approach to science you want to cultivate in yourself? Put them at the top of your list. Keep coming back to these questions as you broaden your search.
There are lots of ways to broaden. You can browse professional society websites and listservs, such as the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) site, which includes a job board and whose listserv sends frequent updates about new opportunities. Even if these listings aren’t for PhD positions, they’ll give you a sense of which labs are hiring. You can also search Google Scholar, Claude, or ChatGPT for terms related to your interest, restricting results to the last year to see who’s working on what you care about. Finally, you can go through conference programs (here’s one for SANS 2026) to see what people in the field are excited about.
Once you’ve identified Principal Investigators who seem like a potential fit, you should read their recent papers and browse their CV to learn more about their science. But you might also be interested in learning about them as potential advisors, and as people! Check out their online footprint. See if you can see your prospective advisor in action talking about ideas—on LinkedIn, Substack, TED talks, podcast interviews, and so forth.
Every advisor is different, but there are still some dimensions that can sometimes separate them. One of these is seniority. When they start their first jobs, junior faculty members tend to have few lab members and lots of time / energy to invest in each one. They are also eager (or, if you’re me, mega-anxious) to be prolific in the face of the tenure process. This invests them heavily in the productivity of their first students. You’re more likely to get lots of their attention.
Tenured senior faculty members tend to be more spread thin, for instance with committee work, editorial jobs, and society leadership positions. They also tend to have larger labs, meaning that each person might get less attention. That said, they might also have more leeway to choose their own research path. And when it comes time to publish, well-known senior faculty tend to have an easier time landing papers (Note: I am not condoning such bias and think double blind review is great).
As you can see, there are some pros and cons of having an advisor who is either junior or senior. Again, you can return to your pre-statement to think about which type of advisor fits with you as you pursue your training.
How can I learn more about an advisor I’d like to work with?
When you find an advisor you think might be a fit, go to their lab website and read their latest papers; if they have a research page, browse that to learn about their current projects. Take a look at what their students are studying, and whether they have published as well. Increasingly, PIs are also publishing their lab manuals (here’s ours), which can give you a sense of the culture they have built.
You can also reach out to members of a potential advisor’s lab, either at this stage or after you are accepted (see below) to ask what it’s like to work with that person and in their department. Current graduate students are the ones living the life you are contemplating; their present might uncannily resemble your future.
Should I email a potential advisor?
It’s totally fine to email a potential advisor, especially to learn whether they are considering grad students (but check first to see if their website already answers this question!). That said, you should keep a couple of things in mind:
(1) Be brief and specific. Advisors are probably fielding LOTS of inquiry emails. If yours is the length of an autobiography and research statement combined, it might not get read. That said, you should also make clear why you are interested in this advisor. A vague and general inquiry with the advisor’s name copy-pasted in (sometimes in a different font than the rest of the email!) might not work. Here’s a format that splits this difference:
a. Greeting and clear purpose for the email (e.g., inquiring about whether an advisor is taking students)
b. Short paragraph on your interests
c. Short paragraph on why their interests and lab resonate with you
d. Conclusion with possible inquiry
(2) You can request a meeting, but don’t expect one. Many students request meetings with potential advisors prior to applying, and some advisors take those meetings. Others—including me—don’t. This is because of the time it would take to meet with dozens of folks, but also because such meetings introduce inequality to the application process. Oftentimes, the people who know to ask for them skew privileged, and getting face time with a faculty member increases their advantage even further. If an advisor doesn’t want to meet, don’t take it personally—they might be trying to promote equity or avoid burnout. And if you request a meeting, I’d advise not doing so in a pushy or presumptuous way.
(3) Try old fashioned typing. Large language models can be a wonderful tool for brainstorming and editing, and research. That said, I strongly recommend actually typing the first draft of your notes to potential advisors—and, later, your research statement. This is for two reasons. First, writing is a gym for the mind, an opportunity for you to think, ideate, and organize yourself. You could ask a robot to lift weights on your behalf, but that would defeat the purpose. Second, AI flattens writing, including in college entrance exams. At least for now, as a reader it’s easy to tell when someone has used it to generate their ideas, which does not impress.
THE GRADUATE RESEARCH STATEMENT
You’ve found advisors / programs to which you’d like to apply, and now it’s time to write the most important two pages of the year: your graduate research statement. Prepare to spend a significant amount of time on it! If you have PhD student colleagues or friends, consider asking them for their statements as examples (but again, don’t push or presume). As you dive into the process, here are some ideas to consider.
Don’t be afraid to make your statement personal
The statement is most often the first piece of information through which potential advisors will get to know what you’ve done and want to do, how you think, but also what drives you towards a life in this field. This is hopefully top of mind for you as you apply—especially if you’ve written a “pre-statement” as described above—but many applicants think writing about themselves will seem unprofessional.
It can be the opposite! Especially when personal narrative (i) showcases your skill as a writer, and (ii) provides a compelling narrative into the topic of your research. Take this example from Emma Templeton (now a professor at UChicago!), whose brilliant research revolves around social connection and conversation. Emma’s draft began with a personal anecdote connected to her interests. That said, it took a bit of time for that connection to crystalize. Here’s an early draft of her statement (note: this and all excerpts shared with the writers’ permission):
Through feedback, Emma was able to clarify the connection between this anecdote and her research interests. In a later draft, in which an authentic anecdote quickly brings the reader into Emma’s question: why do we underestimate the joy of talking to strangers?
The revised statement immediately gets the reader excited about the work, and it also introduces them to Emma and her curiosity-driven approach to science. It lets her shine through the page. Consider letting yourself shine in your statement, too. Your passion and interest should be the center of your application process, guiding you to potential programs and advisors. It should also be the heart of your introduction to them.
Honor the narrative
Not every statement needs to start with or include personal narratives, but they all need some narrative. Any good piece of science writing needs plot and structure—often, the plot is a mystery we’re trying to solve. It’s important that you honor that narrative. One way of doing so is ensuring that you build it in a linear fashion, through a strong and simple story. Along the way, take the perspective of the reader. Assume that reader is smart and interested but doesn’t know what you do. As you revise, ask yourself: are they with me? What have I not told them that they need to know?
Dean Baltiansky’s important work surrounds inequality. Here’s his first draft:
Although succinct, the opener here might leave the reader with questions—do people really accept inequality? Why would interpersonal tendencies and worldviews matter for this? I asked Dean to slow down and bring the reader along with him more gently. In a later draft, he does:
Notice how he now introduces the scope of the problem and helps the reader understand his central premise more clearly.
Narrative doesn’t matter only at the beginning of your statement. You should be able to see the thread of your story unfold through each part of the document. One exercise to see if you’re doing this: for each paragraph you write, ask yourself: what does this contribute to the central story of the statement? If you can’t answer that, you might consider (i) doing more to make the relationship of that section to the central story crystal clear, or (ii) cutting the paragraph altogether.
Don’t overstuff your statement
Related to the above is THE SINGLE MOST COMMON MISTAKE I SEE IN GRADUATE STATEMENTS… candidates overstuffing them with too much information. This happens at every level. Perhaps most often, applicants will use their statement to describe every project they’ve ever been part of, every skill they’ve ever learned, and every award they’ve ever won.
This is not just unnecessary, it’s counterproductive. Prospective advisors will read your CV and statement, and these two documents should not do the same work! Your CV provides us a list of what you’ve done. The statement should show us how you think.
These are fundamentally different goals, and using the statement for the wrong one can ruin it. Too often, I’ve seen statements that describe seven or eight different research / volunteering / academic experiences, meaning each gets very little space. I learn the applicant has done very impressive things—run hundreds of subjects, or performed an intricate analysis—but I understand very little about why they did it, what they learned, or what it means. The result is prose confetti.
Two pages is not a lot of space, and many candidates are anxious to get as much into it as they can. I urge you to let go of that anxiety and focus instead on creating the best narrative you can. Oftentimes, people in my lab have produced statements that describe two or three research experiences. This choice affords them space to do two things (i) describe the work in a more thoughtful, detailed way, and (ii) make sure they are connecting that work to their overall narrative.
Here’s an example from the wonderful researcher Isabella Kahhale, whose work focuses on at-risk populations. In an early draft of her statement, she described one of our collaborations briefly:
This intrigues the reader, but does not explain Isabella’s role in the project and the impact of that role as much as it could. What is the core result? How did she produce it? How does she interpret it? What implications could it hold for criminal justice?
In a later draft, she gives this work room to breathe by cutting other threads from the statement. Notice that the follow-up study is also cut, but (at least for me) not missed, as the reader now gets a much richer picture of Isabella as a scientist and thinker:
Don’t overstuff your sentences
The rush to say as much as possible as quickly as possible also leads applicants to overstuff prose at a micro-level—often jamming a paragraph’s worth of information into single sentences. This, too, is counterproductive. A sentence full of intricate twists and turns can toss a reader off the side of its road, and leave them with whiplash, too. Practically, this can mean a reader becomes confused, disinterested, or both.
There are two key signs that I use to detect an overstuffed sentence. The first is long subordinate clauses. These often pack in a sentence worth of information before the actual point of the sentence even begins! And can impose working memory load on readers. Here’s an example from Isabella’s draft statement:
The text in purple is a subordinate clause, but really deserves its own sentence. It relates a core finding, and the following clause makes a fundamentally different point about the human side of Isabella’s work and interests. Here’s a revision:
Notice how this pacing allows you as a reader to digest each point, which teach us about Isabella’s important research as well as the values that undergird it.
The other telltale sign you’re overstuffing your sentences is long, baroque noun phrases. In general, noun phrases should be short, punchy, and intuitive, quickly getting us to the action in a sentence. In statements, they often expand, like The Blob, to take over almost all of it. This happens in almost every statement I’ve read—very much including my own. Here’s an example from Dean’s early draft.
The two highlighted pieces of prose are each a noun phrase, but they are long, vague, and hard to parse. They make the reader do a lot of unnecessary work. Dean ended up cutting this section from his statement (wisely un-stuffing his statement!), but imagine an alternative here:
“I studied how people’s motives and thoughts shape what they feel…”
Not only does this save a bunch of space, but it also makes the sentence human. The protagonist becomes the applicant, rather than an abstraction.
Write simply, about people and their experiences.
This brings me to another point on prose. Scientific writing can and should still be good writing! In psychology, we have an unfair advantage. We don’t need to tell gripping stories about mRNA or quarks. Even though people can write very gripping stories about both, we in the behavioral sciences have the unfair advantage of telling people about themselves. Few things are more naturally interesting than insight into human experience and action.
Too often, academics bury those interesting stories in mountains of jargon, passive voice, and run-on sentences. Especially early in one’s career, this sort of “academese” can feel important. You might think jargon-y writing proves you are credentialed and well-read. You probably are! But unnecessarily complex prose, if anything, hides those strong qualities, by frustrating, alienating, and boring readers.
I urge you to write about people and their experiences whenever possible. Use language that is spare, active, and concrete. Write brief sentences. Vary your pace and structure, such that the reader can enjoy the rhythm of what they’re reading along with its content. Always remember the golden rule of editing: Use fewer words.
There are some great principles for avoiding academese. If you want to further audit your writing for clarity, try two things. First, read it out loud to yourself. Does the writing sound like something you would say? If not, you might want to make it more conversational. Second, read it to someone from a different field than yours altogether. Do they understand—at least in the broad strokes—what you’re about as a scientist? If not, ask where they got lost, and consider simplifying or re-pacing those sections.
Outline—both before and after writing
Early in your process—in the “pre-statement,” it’s fine to write from a stream of consciousness. But as you move closer to the real thing, you want to ensure you’re using every paragraph wisely. I encourage you to outline your statement not once, but at least twice. Before you write, map out what you’d like each paragraph to do. This is where you can take a 10,000-foot view of the overall narrative and ensure it coheres.
The part people often neglect, though, is to write a reverse outline after you have a complete draft. This is especially helpful if you’re running into overstuffing issues, as 100% of the draft statements I’ve read do. For each paragraph of what you’ve written, write a “headline,” capturing the thesis of that paragraph. String all of those headlines together. Do they still tell the same story you set out to tell? Do they build cleanly on one another? If not, you might consider trimming some of those paragraphs altogether.
Customize where it makes sense
Advisors understand that most applicants are writing several statements, and don’t expect each one to be fully tailored to them. That said, it’s wise to devote some time towards the end of your statement to describe why you are a strong fit for the department to which you’re applying.
At a broad level, this should flow naturally from the core narrative of your statement, which should tell the story about you as a scientist. After describing who you are and where you’ve been, tell the reader where you want to go, and how that destination is a match with your potential advisor(s).
More specifically, it’s a good idea to call out a potential primary advisor and spend a fair amount of time (2-4 sentences) discussing what you might do with them. Here I suggest a “goldilocks” level of specificity. Show you understand their work, but don’t go as far as to propose a single, highly detailed collaboration, which might not be in line with their current interests. After this, spend a sentence or two describing how you might work with other people in that department, and—if relevant—how pieces of the overall culture (e.g., a focus on open science or inclusion) fit your values.
THE INTERVIEW
Congratulations! You’ve been invited to a campus interview. You are most of the way there. Interviews are exhausting, nerve-wracking, and—in an ideal world—fun as well. Here are a few thoughts on how you might prepare, and the visit itself.
Read beyond your prospective lab
You should certainly read up on the work of your prospective advisor(s) and lab(s), but you’ll be talking with other faculty members around a prospective department as well. You don’t need to know all about everyone’s work, but it’s helpful to know a little. One strategy is to look at the faculty with whom you’re interviewing, and at least skim two of their papers: (i) their most cited, and (ii) the one that’s most interesting to you. This will give you a sense of their scientific contributions, but also give you some material for an engaging and connected conversation with them.
Practice out loud
You are likely to receive a few key questions / prompts multiple times. Details will vary, but common ones include:
· Tell me about a project you worked on, your role, and what you learned.
· Tell me about a research setback you’ve encountered and how you responded to it.
· What projects or ideas are you excited to pursue in graduate school?
· What got you interested in this field in the first place?
If you have succinct, clear, confident answers to all of these, you’ll likely have a more positive experience interviewing. Consider practicing out loud! It can feel strange running repeated “elevator pitches” in your room, but actually having a sense of what you’re going to say, and how it feels to say it, is wise. Far from making you seem rote, it can help you feel more comfortable in the room, and ready to move quickly into a conversation rather than stumbling through a long and winding monologue.
For what it’s worth, I still practice every talk and lecture at full volume. I think this is good for my students, and good for my kids, who get to make fun of me several times a month.
You are interviewing them, too
It’s easy to get caught up in how potential future advisors / colleagues / peers see you, but remember that this is probably the best chance you’ll have to learn about them, and whether this is really where you want to spend the next 5+ years. Keep an open mind and open eyes. Observe how people think, how they interact, and the lab and department’s general feel.
Just as you prepare answers to questions, prepare key questions that you’d like others to answer for you. Is it how often labs collaborate across areas, or departments? How closely an advisor works with lab members? How the department creates an inclusive climate that works for everyone? How they reward and value open and reproducible science? Asking thoughtful questions will not only help you learn, but also signals that you are considering a department seriously, and says a lot about what matters to you.
Be authentic
Your search and your statement have been tuned to show you—what you care about, how you think, and the scientist / academic you want to be. Don’t stop now! Represent yourself honestly and transparently, rather than trying to be who you think others want you to be. People can often see through this. Even if they can’t, you’ll be part of this community for a long time, and should ensure it truly matches you.
Everyone matters
Applicants often focus on their conversations with faculty members, and those matter. But don’t neglect your conversations with students, RAs, and staff either. I for one look for students who my students see as a great colleague and potential collaborator.
They’re not your competition, they’re your network
Interactions with your fellow interviewees can be awkward, especially if you are both interested in the same lab, and especially if that lab can admit fewer students than are being interviewed.
It’s tempting to see these interactions as a zero-sum competition, but I urge you to think differently. You might not all get into the same labs, but oftentimes you will end up at many of the same interviews. You might get into different programs and do complementary work. These are your future colleagues, co-presenters, co-authors (and maybe reviewers). If you support and cheer each other on, they can be your future friends, too. To me, that’s been one of the most valuable parts of entering this field.
Bring snacks
If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to eat when you’re nervous. Bring some snacks (protein bars are a life saver) so you can get sustenance in a pinch.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT DEPARTMENT FOR YOU
You got in… to more than one department. Congratulations again! Take some time to brush off your shoulder.
That said, you now face a monumental choice. For many people in my lab, it’s been an agonizing one. Where will they live? Which culture will they join? Which questions will they ask? Who will they become?
These choices are usually impossible to make in any simple way, but here are a few things to keep in mind.
You can take your advisor for a test drive
Interviews are weird conversations, nothing like the ones advisors and advisees actually have on a regular basis. In an interview, you might talk about yourself and them at the most “big picture” level, but in practice you’ll be brainstorming the details of projects, designs, and analyses. In an interview, you might ask about their advising style, but not see it in action. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, talking about an advising relationship is like dancing about architecture. To understand, you need to experience it.
One way to do this is to ask them for a “test drive” advising meeting. Bring them a project idea, or question about your professional development. Brainstorm, plan, or seek advice. This will give them a chance to show, not tell, how they advise.
Think more about yourself than your advisor
It can be awkward thinking about declining an offer. Will you be judged by that potential advisor? Will you burn a bridge? If possible, try to turn down the volume on these concerns. Advisors have many students over the course of a career, but you will probably only go to grad school once. It’s your life path in question, not theirs. Almost every advisor I’ve ever talked with feels this way—their ultimate goal is not to “get” a student, but to have that student go wherever is right for them. And if an advisor doesn’t feel that way, you almost certainly don’t want to work with them anyways.
Talk with students in your prospective lab
You can talk all you want with a prospective advisor, but you are not considering their job; you’re considering their students’ job. If you haven’t already, this is the time to ask those students about their experience. This is the time to ask for candor—about the advisor, lab and department culture, and so forth.
Focus on culture
Beyond research fit, advisor style, and university prestige, look out for the broader culture of a lab and department. Culture is an emergent and sometimes fuzzy property, but it matters. Look for cues about how collaborative and open (or competitive and closed) labs and individuals are. One clue is the extent to which professors and graduate students co-author papers and grants together, as well as how much time they spend together outside of work.
It’s better to ask than to regret
This is the time in the process when you should ask about anything and everything that matters to you. Grad school is a long journey, with plenty of stress, strain, and setbacks. It’s important you take care of yourself and look out for your interests.
You might think it’s rude to inquire about how much research funding a lab has, or about how a program’s stipend compares to local rent and living expenses. It’s not! These things matter. So do other questions. How does a lab / department foster work-life balance and support trainee mental health? What sorts of childcare support is available? How open are the faculty to trainees who want to explore non-academic careers?
All these questions are above board—and if someone responds badly to you asking, that is also a strong signal, too. I for one am happy when prospective students ask them; it increases the chances that if they join my lab, they will be making an informed decision that ultimately supports their well being.
IN SUM
I hope these thoughts have been helpful to you. Let me reiterate that they represent just one perspective, based on one (very lucky and now privileged) experience in academia. You should learn from as many people as you can during this process.
Applications can be daunting. The bad news is that it’s probably just the first of many daunting steps. Academia is full of evaluation, uncertainty, and failure. The good news is that at its best it’s also full of intellectual freedom, curious exploration, and supportive community. In my experience, one key to persevering through the bad pieces is savoring the good ones—and especially learning from the wonderful people that come to this field to wonder, together, about how human beings work.
Good luck!
Thank you for this well-written and accessible piece! I will it read over and over when I'm ready to apply for a PhD program in Psychology next year. I guess in a process like this failure may feel like the end of time for a prospective student. Over the years, I've learned how to tackle projects and not take everything personally when there's a setback. That has really helped me a lot when dealing with uncertainties as an undergrad.
This might be one of the best written pieces for anyone who is about apply for a PHD program in Psychology. The amount of insight simply shows the in depth experiences of you in this field Zamil brother. Great work at writing this, much needed piece of blow written.