Read on Twitter
This week's Twitter Discourse™ is on whether faculty should speak with prospective grad applicants (before interviews). I think many of the problems & dilemmas underlying this convo could be resolved by having clear and comprehensive department/program websites. Thread: (1/6)
At the very least, it should include who's taking a student and who's not, so applicants don't waste their $ on application fees. It should also include all the info and tips that one would give a prospective if (if!) they were discussing the program in a meeting. (2/6)
Info/tips/answers to FAQs you may want to include: should you email faculty before applying? What should you say in the email? Is it a lab/advisor or a cohort model? Should you mention secondary advisors in your app? How does funding work? What's the coursework like? (3/6)
4 take-aways here: (1) This levels the playing field and makes all relevant info accessible to everyone—not only more privileged applicants who are "in the know" (often it's these same applicants who even know they can email faculty or feel comfortable doing so!) (4/6)
(2) You do not have to re-invent the wheel. There's plenty of public info you can source to create this webpage (more on this below!) (3) This will save faculty AND admin a lot of time and work. They won't have to answer the same questions many times, or weed through apps (5/6)
that list advisors who aren't taking students. (4) Grad students and junior folks can persuade their depts to do this! I did this last year and my dept website was updated accordingly. If you're looking for an e-mail template to send your dept chair/admin, feel free to use! (6/6)
My dept page that changed: https://psych.princeton.edu/applying-program
Page on whether/how to email faculty advisors: https://psych.princeton.edu/finding-faculty-advisor
Tufts' page, which inspired me to propose this to my dept: https://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/graduate/prospectives-advisor.htm
Credit to Steve Luck and Lisa Oakes who wrote the original resource!
Page on whether/how to email faculty advisors: https://psych.princeton.edu/finding-faculty-advisor
Tufts' page, which inspired me to propose this to my dept: https://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/graduate/prospectives-advisor.htm
Credit to Steve Luck and Lisa Oakes who wrote the original resource!
In honor of #NoNuanceNovember I will add this tldr: why don't we simply 
stop gatekeeping useful information
stop gatekeeping useful information
I made a meme for extra accessible scicomm 
