u/Citrusnomics

I graduated from a top 15 econ US university with departmental honors t (awarded to <10% of people with that major) this May, only a couple RAs, one independent project, a dynamic optimization/game theory capstone, and pub in the works BUT i didn't take a lot of math undergrad courses aside from the required and didn't even take linear algebera. Took econometrics, prob stat, etc. GPA is 3.77 and hopefully GRE is good and I'd have solid letters of recommendations. In my home country, pre-doctoral programs don't exist and master's is 4 years, so I don't know if I would be able to meaningfully beef up my CV even if I wait. Thank you so much!

TLDR: How do you introduce competition in your daily life in order to feel motivated?

I (F22) recently realized most of my motivation is basically contingent on other people praising me. Like ex. in undergraduate I only took classes that I liked because I just cant do something unless I like it, but what motiovated me to do well was to get praised by professors and be better than my peers. A lot of it was from fear of disappointing people who thought highly of me. After graduating and I have to work on stuff by myself whether it be fitness/ grad school apps, I just cant bring myself to do anything. Like no one is going to see me anyway re: fitness and I have a romantic partner already so I don't need to attract other people. My family doesn't really care about whether I go to grad school. I also realized that perceived competition is really important to me as a motivator, like upon reflection, the times I've felt the most energized was beating someone in a debate or whatever competition. Winning is the defining factor of what makes things interesting for me and since my friends are doing extremely different careers, there's no par of like oh I feel left behind, etc. After using things for escapism and realizing they were for escaping, everything just feels uninteresting even doomscrolling or art, etc. I was wondering if anyone else is like this and want to know how you cope when you're not in an environment that promotes compeition? I was thinking maybe downloading some MOBA games again might give me the fix I need. I also enjoy helping tho like ex. learning a skill to help someone else do it

(Have ADHD as well and my dad died 9 months ago which might be affecting motivation)

Context: Applying for a clinical psych PhD.

I've been basing my SOP on other clinical psych SOPs and most of them talk about their previous experiences with like "In X lab, i worked under Y." Do people do this as a kind of "clout" thing or more of a narrative/external validation point? This is because the professors I worked with except one are largely irrelevant to the clinical psych field so I'm not sure if following that format is helpful for my application

I've seen a lot of posts that say a lot of students get rejected due to talking about how their longterm career goal is to be a clinician when applying to clinical psychology programs.

While this is my main career interest, my goal would be to also produce research even as a practicing clinican. I feel extremely strongly about following "best practices" and so I really want to contribute to psychometric and evidence-based treatment research so that I can provide the greatest benefit possible to my future clients. Therefore, I still really want to apply to a research heavy university as these still provide clinical training either way. but fundamentally, I want to be a clinician before a researcher but a researcher no less. (plus I want to be able to administer psychological testing)

Given the above, do you think I should explain those goals or just not mention to main goal of wanting to be a clinician and keeping it at a vaguer "clinical scientists"/ xyz program will help me achieve my goal in becoming a "researcher and clinician"?

Edit: Applying to US schools

I don't plan on trauma dumping in my SOP essay but in my bachelor's thesis I was really struggling with figuring out this one component in the research. Then, in my senior year second semester my dad passed away. One day I had a really bad grief day and spiralled between regularly scheduled maintenance psychiatric appointments but the spiral gave me the eureka I needed as my thesis was related to treatment adherence. I literally stopped sobbing and opened my notebook and finished the formula I needed which I ended up using in my capstone. I also ended up getting a pretty good GPA that semester.

My junior year grades were a little mediocore ish because my dad's illness became worse.

Overall, I think the ^ demonstrates my theme as a person of making the most of circumstances and shows my ability to grow in difficult situations. However, I'm worried it would read as trauma dumping and so kinda unfit to be a clinician rather than the former. I don't want it to read sob story but just as something that happened and how I responded.

So should I keep it? I'll write about other things as well of course but I think that was a pretty important point in my research journey

Basically, I found a possible PI who's research is basically love at first sight intellectual soulmates type shizz and immediately got heartbroken because I want to apply for Clinical Psychology but he's under the cognition department. (All under broader psychology dep) Would it be possible to get him as a PI under clinical psychology or can I only pick people under the clinical psych department? Website doesn't really shed light on this. College is US based

Hey folks, what's the order I should prio building Diluc's team based on my current characs/ builds?
Diluc C4 WGSR2, YelanC0ElegyR1, KazuhaC2, BennetC6SkywardbladeR1

I assume it's Citali then xianyun? or weap first?

Honestly, before watching the show, I heard from everyone that S3 was terrible because it was such a change in genre, but aside from lobotomizing Nate and making Maddie a dumbass in that -one- scene, I think it's a realistic escaaltion of everyone's characters. Anyway, Rue's arc as Moses was sucha stroke of genius becasuse Ali literally tells you what's going to happen top her in one scene. Anyone who know's the story of Exodus would see Rue's parallel of leaving home, problems with snakes, etc, and of course finally attempting to escape the desert into the promise land but never getting there. (Litrl much of the story is in a desert) The story of why Moses didn't get there is because he disobeyed advice from God aka doubted intructions and we see Ali being that "hand of God figure in her life".

>!And even though Rue didn't make it out, just like Moses before her death she was able to get a glimpse of the promised land with her Fezco and mom hallucination. And also just like Moses though he didn't enter the promised land, eventually those he was with was able to get there cuz of him ala Ali going to the homestead that Rue wanted to go to. !<

Hey guys, I'm 2026 undergrad graduate looking to apply this Fall 2026 cycle and I'm wondering whether I have a shot of getting into a PhD program this application cycle. Here's my stats:

• Education
  • Major(s): Economics with Honors, Psychology; Minor: Neuroscience
  • New York University Shanghai: 3.77, 3.83 for psych
  • Thesis: Interdiscplinary theoretical paper on the correct switching point of when to involuntarily hospitalize a suicidal patient, had a defense with a panel of 3 professors
  • **Also expecting a strong GRE score
• Research Experience:
  • Publications
    • One second author publication in Journal of Clinical Science and Psychopathology (Presented this one at a conference as well)
    • One pending review on fourth author (last author but indicated 2-4 author did equal work) pub in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice
  • Roles:
    • 2 Research assistantships (2 sems) for behavioral design/ behavioral econ departments
    • Independently awarded undergrad research fund with a PI for a behavioral economics project (Will try to work on publishing this)
  • Skills:
    • Data science: Econometrics, multivariate regression, STATA, matlab, R
    • Qualitative interviewing, research paper writing, etc.

My biggest issue is the summer gaps of research time I have but I do have an explaination because basically going back to my home country, there's limited to no resources for psych research or clinical hours unless you're licensed or with a masters. Aside from that being an issue, I couldn't really spend a summer abroad because my dad had terminal cancer since 2018 so caretaking when back home, and me not doing any research this summer was because my dad passed away this January :').

I'm also worried than my econ research experiences won't count at all even though I focused on doing more behavioral sciences type of econ that finance or macro econ. I would have done psych assitanships if I could but in China, this wasn't really possible and so I went for behavioral sciences instead.

I've read so many people talk about applying to 15+ PhD programs and not getting any and so would be greatful for a realistic assessment because PhD application fees in the US are really expensive given the currency wexchange rate. Should I just apply for a master's instead? (Edit: Master's for research before PhD) My longterm goal is to be a practicing clinician license in the US that still does research on the side, and my research interests kinda evident in my experiences is really about behaviorism, so improving attrition rates. I'm also interested in shifting away from pen and paper pscyhometric testing and creating behavioral alternative tests instead as well.

TLDR: can a power surge ish) wipe a phone?

Hey kinda having a panic attack because my old Iphone 13 has videos with my dead dad's voice on it and during a particularly bad grief night, went into his room, plugged an extension cord with the phone charger and an air purifier. The air purifier wasnt plugged properly and loosened causing a spark ish type thing. I went to check my phone to listen to his voice and it just wont turn on. It was out of battery when i went to charge it and its am iphome 13 w a replaced battery.

Is this likely just a battery problem or did I probably lose all the stuff in my phone???

Hi! I graduated this May 2026, and I'm really hoping to apply for this Fall's US Clinical Psych Admission's cycle. But I genuinely think I'm really cooked, a quick summary of my stats:

Education:

• Major(s): Economics with Honors, Psychology, Minor: Neuroscience, GPA: 3.768, Psych GPA: 3.833
• School: New York University Shanghai
• Honors: Major Honors (2026) - Awarded to no more than 10% of students within each major based on departmental selection. New York University Shanghai, University Honors Scholar and Founder’s Day Awardee (2026), Dean’s List (2022-2026) - All Semesters. New York University Shanghai, Funded Visiting Student Semester Undergraduate Research Assistantships and Arts Apprenticeships (2024), Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund (2024) -

Publications/Presentations

• 2nd Author accepted for publishing in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science
  • Presented at Society for Psychotherapy Research 57th Annual Meeting in Osaka, Japan. (June, 2026)
• 4th Author (But contribution statement says 2-4th author has equal contrib) currently under review in the Journal of Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice
• A Verbal and Poster Presentation at NYU Shanghai's Undergraduate Research Symposium

Experience:

• Undergraduate Researcher, NYU Shanghai (May 2024–Dec 2025): Conducted competitively funded independent research on a novel auction mechanism, developing a theoretical model, designing an online experiment, analyzing data, and co-authoring a manuscript.
• Visiting Undergraduate Research Assistant, Center for Behavioral Institutional Design NYU Abu Dhabi (Aug–Dec 2024): Developed reproducible statistical indices in Stata, cleaned international datasets, and conducted literature reviews supporting faculty research.
• Research Assistant, Behavior and Experimental Economics Laboratory, NYU Shanghai (Aug 2023–Dec 2023): Assisted with behavioral economics experiments through protocol development, experiment administration, participant recruitment, and RA training.
• Learning Assistant, NYU Shanghai (Aug–Dec 2023): Conducted 40+ tutoring sessions, developed midterm review materials, and supported student learning in introductory macroeconomics.

Okay so as you might be able to tell, a lot of my research experience is in the "Behavioral Sciences" and not explicitly psychology, so problem #1. Problem #2, due to a mix of it being hard to get reseaarch experience in my homecountry aka over the summer + caretaking duties I had, i couldn't get full-time in the summer. I'm hopefully going to get something within these next couple of months but we'll see.

Am I cooked? I'll probably get a good GRE score as I'm a good test taker, but do I need to master's first? I really need to only get into fully-funded programs :(

https://preview.redd.it/nbde8aexdmdh1.png?width=1414&format=png&auto=webp&s=35e62655edf932e72519990c83d1e7b91fae0ad6

https://preview.redd.it/tn946r4ydmdh1.png?width=1414&format=png&auto=webp&s=9aafb594ab21c63cd1db967a3f39bfc5875fffc3

https://preview.redd.it/koasrwlydmdh1.png?width=1414&format=png&auto=webp&s=d164493877d93c30c9b44e17949047608ae0fd9e

Okay so what are my chances of getting into a fully-funded PhD program for clinical psych in States? I'm a pretty good test taker so I think I'll have a solid GRE and my recommenders will be a clinical psych prof who I do research with, legal psych prof that's kinda famous (?), and an economics prof who's known me since first sem undergrad and had me as an RA and also was a PI. Two sub qs

1. I know research experience is kinda sparse and I was hoping to address that in the personal statement but idk if i should because the reason why I couldn't do stuff in the summer was my dad had stage 4 cancer and so I had to take care of him, but I don't want to come across as "pity me and accept me pls" but hjust highlighting a structural logistical reason as to why I don't have that much.
2. Given 1, would it be worth it to do a master's? After uni, I'm back to my home country where getting lab experience is really difficult to do unless you're a student because resources or is my application solid enough that i should already try this cycle? I'm hopefully going to land some kinda of mental health related research thing maybe before deadlines but its really unsure.

Thank you so much!