Graduate Students

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APPLY FOR A POSITION IN THE LAB

We have several opportunities for graduate students in the lab:

• Join the lab as a PhD student
• Join the lab as a Masters student
• Join the lab as a Medical Student
• Behavioral Sleep Medicine Externship for Clinical Psychology Graduate Students
• How to get accepted into a graduate program

JOIN THE LAB AS A PHD STUDENT

For students interested in joining the lab as a PhD student, there are several options. Dr. Grandner is an official member of two of the University of Arizona Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs (GIDPs). Students can join the lab by applying to either the GIDP in Physiological Sciences or Neuroscience. Another option would be for students to join via the Clinical and Translational Sciences PhD Program. Dr. Grandner has also served as primary mentor for the School Psychology PhD program in the College of Education and is also a member of the Medical Scientist Training Program for MD/PhD students in the Colleg eof Medicine. It is possible to also join the lab as a student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program, though this may require special provisions.

If you are considering joining the lab via any of these pathways, you are encouraged to reach out as early as possible. Applicants should know a few things about this process that may be out of everyone's control:

• All graduate programs have a very limited number of slots available. So even well-qualified applicants may not make it into the program simply because there is not always enough space to accommodate everyone who deserves to be there.
• Faculty are not always permitted to take a student, given limited slots. So even well-qualified applicants for which there is a perfect match with a lab sometimes don't get admitted to a program.
• For a faculty member to take on a graduate student, that faculty member needs to be willing to assume 100% of the financial responsibility for that student's tuition, fees, and stipend for approximately 5 years. Given the current funding climate, this is becoming difficult and sometimes a lack of opportunity to join a program is purely due to ebbs and flows in funding.

With that in mind, definitely reach out to see if joining the lab may even be possible.

For students admitted through any of these programs, the expectations will be similar. By the end of a typical PhD program, you will be expected to:

• Have a good command over the field of sleep and circadian science in general
• Become a leading expert in at least one sub-area of the field, which is the focus of your dissertation
• Know how to survey the field to ask thoughtful, innovative, impactful scientific questions
• Have experience refining and adapting those questions over time
• Be able to take those questions and turn them into testable hypotheses
• Develop operationalization plans for converting those hypotheses into practical studies
• Design studies as appropriate for the questions at hand, including any combination of survey, observational, clinical trial, or system-level approaches
• Write grants well enough to seek independent funding to conduct that research
• Conduct all aspects of these studies, including regulatory oversight, recruitment, screening, consenting, assessment, interventions, and database management
• Design and implement data analysis plans, including leveraging appropriate biostatistical methods
• Generate manuscripts based on these analyses, which are publishable as empirical papers
• Generate other types of publishable manuscripts, including protocol papers, review papers and commentaries
• Carry a paper through the publication process to finished product
• Maintain membership in relevant professional organizations and participate in society activities
• Develop research presentations and gain experience presenting your work at local, national, and international conferences
• Develop a presentation for a 1-hour lecture that encompasses key areas of your work, with audience queation-and-answer, demonstrating your expertise

Still interested?

APPLY FOR A POSITION IN THE LAB

JOIN THE LAB AS A MASTERS STUDENT

For students interested in joining the lab as a Masters student, there are several options. Dr, Grandner has worked with Masters students through the Master's program in Physiological Sciences and Clinical and Translational Sciences.

Unlike PhD programs, Masters programs do not come with guaranteed funding or stipends. It is expected that students considering an MS program are fully aware of the time and financial commitments involved. Some financial assistance is available, but generally MS students are not typically paid from grant funds. This dramatically increased the ability of the lab to accommodate MS students, though. Since these students are responsible for their own funding, the lab can accommodate more of these students.

With that in mind, definitely reach out to see if joining the lab may even be possible.

For students admitted through any of these programs, the expectations will be similar. By the end of a typical PhD program, you will be expected to:

• Have a fairly good command over the field of sleep and circadian science in general
• Become an expert in at least one sub-area of the field, which is the focus of your thesis
• Know how to survey the field to ask thoughtful, innovative, impactful scientific questions
• Have experience refining and adapting those questions over time
• Be able to take those questions and turn them into testable hypotheses
• Develop operationalization plans for converting those hypotheses into practical studies
• Conduct many aspects of these studies, including some combination of regulatory oversight, recruitment, screening, consenting, assessment, interventions, and database management
• Design and implement some elements of data analysis plans, including leveraging appropriate biostatistical methods if possible
• Generate at least one manuscript based on these analyses, which are publishable as empirical papers
• Assist with other types of publishable manuscripts, including protocol papers, review papers and/or commentaries
• Develop research presentations and gain experience presenting your work at local and/or nationalconferences
• Develop a presentation for a 1-hour lecture that encompasses key areas of your work, with audience queation-and-answer, demonstrating your expertise

Still interested?

APPLY FOR A POSITION IN THE LAB

JOIN THE LAB AS A MEDICAL STUDENT

Medical students at the University of Arizona College of Medicine are eligible to join the lab. The specific projects, skills, and expectations of medical students can vary quite a bit, depending on their involvement and time commitment. Some students have led their own projects and led multiple publications. Some medical students have just contributed to some ongoing projects.

Typically, medical students will be identified with a project that they can do on their own time, meeting with Dr., Grandner occasionally. This affords them flexibility to focus on their medical training while also working towards research abstracts, presentations, and publications. Most medical students who rotate through come out with multiple publications, and at least one with them as first author.

APPLY FOR A POSITION IN THE LAB

BEHAVIORAL SLEEP MEDICINE EXTERNSHIP FOR CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS

Clinical externships for University of Arizona Clinical Psychology graduate students are available in the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic.

This externship will develop graduate students’ experience in Behavioral Sleep Medicine. This involves the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders using non-pharmacologic techniques. This will include Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Insomnia, as well as other treatments for adult insomnia (such as Sleep Compression), treatments for circadian rhythm sleep disorders (including phototherapy and chronotherapy), treatment adherence in sleep apnea, and treatment approaches for other sleep disorders including narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome, periodic limb movement disorders, etc. Students will learn how to recognize, screen for, diagnose, and treat these sleep disorders without the use of medications. This will include administration and scoring of assessment instruments, clinical interviews, case conceptualization, consideration of other medical and psychiatric conditions, and report writing.

The extern is expected to commit 10 hours per week to this rotation, distributed approximately as follows:

1. Approximately 6 hours each week in direct patient contact (clinical interview, assessment, follow-up sessions). This will include some sessions that ill be led by a supervising clinician where you will observe and participate, sessions led by you where a supervising clinician will observe and participate, and sessions led by you which will be recorded for supervision later.
2. Approximately 2 hours each week interpreting results, writing notes and reports, and preparing materials
3. Approximately 1 hour each week in supervision
4. Approximately 1 hour each week attending the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Seminar

In addition, externs will complete a supervised reading list in Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Contact Dr. Grandner directly for more information.

HOW TO GET IN TO A GRADUATE PROGRAM

Some thoughts from Dr. Grandner about getting in to graduate programs:

Getting into graduate school is a stressful experience, one that may prepare you for many aspects of graduate school life: it's hard, it's a daunting proposition, and there are no real rules. However, it shares other similarities with graduate school -- there are ways of making it easier. If you know what you've got going into the whole endeavor, you'll have a better chance of knowing what you'll end up with. There are many factors that influence whether or not you will get an offer from a school. Below is my list of what I think are the ingredients to a winning application. This information in no way represents any "insider info" or anything like that -- it's just my impressions based on my own experiences and the experiences of other people I know. Of course, these "guidelines" won't apply to all programs, and some programs may take a quite different philosophy, but I think that this stuff is all good to know.

Before you send anything to anybody, you should be ready. You should have researched all of the schools you will be applying to and you should be prepared to present yourself in a saleable way. This whole process will take months and months of hard work, so make sure you have the time.

You need to have experience doing research. You need to have done some independent studies and worked in at least one lab. There must be at least one faculty member that you feel especially close to, who can serve as your "mentor" through the process -- someone to advocate for you.

Before you start looking for the school you want to attend, you must first find faculty to work with. This is because, despite what you may think, you are not just applying to a school -- you are applying to a faculty member, who just so happens to be working at a school. Talk to people you know at your lab or do a literature search on the topics you are interested in, and see whose names keep showing up. See where they are. Those are the schools you will want to apply to. Researching Schools: Now that you have a tentative list of schools to apply to, based on the faculty adviser you are choosing, you need to start researching those schools. Do they have a graduate program in psychology? What is that program like? What is the school like? Go to their website and print out all the information you need to figure out how their program works, as no two programs will be the same. See what requirements there are. Also, print out a list of faculty and see who else works there, to get an idea of the climate of that school.

Now that you know where you want to apply to, you need to get yourself ready. You need to prepare your CV. A CV (which stands for Curriculum Vita or Vitae) is basically an academic resume, stating (or maybe slightly overstating) everything you've done in the academic realm. For some ideas of what a CV should look like or include, you can look at mine. Another thing that you should prepare, if you can, is a website. If you have any website skills, now is the time to advertise yourself. While you may find it expensive to get a domain name, it's nothing compared to all the rest of the money you will be spending on application fees. This accomplishes a few things. First, it makes you memorable -- not many people will have one. Second, it makes things like your CV available to all the people you are interested in working with, available any time. Third, it boasts a skill that is in pretty high demand. Finally, you should prepare your generic personal statement. Even though each school will demand a different statement, it's good to have a general one to work with and pare down.

Now is the time to get all your application materials from all the schools. Make sure you keep all your applications organized. Make sure you know all the deadlines and get all the materials ahead of time. Make sure you ask for letters of recommendation from faculty that know you well far in advance, to give them plenty of time. Also, make sure you order plenty of transcripts and make sure they are sent to the right places. You should keep your materials very organized. I reccommend a file box with folders for each application, so that all materials for each school can be kept together.

As a general reccommendation, it is always nice to know that a particular school is waiting for your application. As you finalize your list of possible advisers and mentors, you should email them. Introduce yourself, say that you are applying to their program and attach a copy of your CV to the email. Giving them your website address also helps. Let them know, on perhaps a more personal note, why you want to work with them and why you think that their program is right for you, and why you are right for their program.

Now that you've submitted your application, there will be a few stages your application will have to pass before it gets to the final "offer" stage. The first of these is a general, nameless perusing of your vital statistics. I would guess that about 75% of all applications are eliminated by this stage. I could be wrong, but this stage seems to me to be a simple way to reduce 400 applications to 40. Make sure everything is in on time and none of your application fee checks bounce. Make sure your application is super neat. Make sure you study for any necessary standardized tests (like GREs) before you take them. Let me rephrase: study a LOT. Get the testing company's own study materials and get materials from at least two other sources. As long as your score meets the cutoff, it will neither help or hurt your chances; however, if your score is very high, it can only help you. This is one of the ways to get noticed.

Your GPA is more important than many people think, but for a variety of reasons that may not, at first, be obvious. As long as you meet the GPA cutoff, you're fine. An extraordinarily high GPA (over 3.7 or 3.8) will get you noticed. If, however, you went to a school known for grade inflation, a very high GPA may be ignored. Where you went to school is a factor. If you went to a really prestigious school, it will reflect better on you. If you went to a non-prestigious school, it might be a slight disadvantage, unless you demonstrate that you did good work where you went and took advantage of what they had to offer.

Once you pass the initial checks for scores, all of those things that took you so much time to prepare will actually get looked at. This stage of the process will answer the question "Do we want to make them an offer?" so it is very important. Of your letters of reccommendation, one of them will stand out. This will be the one from your main "mentor" and will be given a great deal of weight. There's not much to say here, because you won't be able to write these, but make sure you pick people carefully, so that they will say plenty about you. They will give the impression of how good you were to work with and what your promise may be. While other letters will be alongside the main one, they may carry much less weight, with the assumption that the people who are writing these don't necessarily know you as well. Also, they give another general impression of you.

The personal statement serves two functions. First, it demonstrates your writing ability. How well do you write? How clear? How is your information organized? Is all the information appropriate? Stuff like that. The other main purpose of the personal statement is to match you with a possible adviser. If you already know who you want to work with, then you're that much ahead of the crowd. Even though they may not ask for it, include a short paragraph identifying each mentor, why you are interested in their work, and why they should take you.

Your research experience should be evident from your personal statement, letters and CV. You should convey what research skills you have acquired and under what settings. Clinical experience may not be so important, as many people don't get much of this until graduate school anyway. I would see this as more of a matching issue, where the mentor you're planning on working with may request these skills for the work they plan on giving you. So, if you have this, you will probably be seen in a better light, but it is not necessary. Extra-curricular experiences and other types of experiences are usually seen as irrelevant. However, like clinical experience, if there is something that sets you apart or identifies a skill that you have that would be applicable, don't hesitate to mention it. You will probably be expected to have presented at a major conference at least once. The more the better -- it is indicative of a number of things, but it generally shows that you are involved in research and that your research is making an impact on the field. While publications are quite rare in applicants, they are increasingly in demand. They will help you for obvious reasons, and you should at least list a few "in preparation" publications based on poster presentations to show that you know that posters are meant to be written up into papers, and that publishing is a priority of yours.

Matching to an advisor, or "fit" to the program, is probably the most important factor in your application, above vital statistics. You want your prospective mentor to want to accept you. You want to show that you are familiar with their work, and that your interests are parallel to theirs. You should show that your abilities match the capabilities of their lab and that your aspirations match projects that they are currently working on or are willing to work on. You need to make a personal connection with that possible mentor and and meet them on a person-to-person basis, so that you may feel like you know each other and that you are personally invested in each other. In addition to factors such as matching your research interests, you need to make sure that your possible mentor is accepting students. There are many factors involved here. Assuming you meet all other characteristics, they may simply not be able to afford you. Also, especially in more selective programs, it may not be "their turn" to take a student if they've already taken one in the past year or two, even if they can afford you.

After you have passed all the requirements for admission, you may have been invited for an interview. If this is the case, then that school, you can be sure, wants to accept you. The only thing is, they want to accept more people than they can handle, and this interview may be that final decision-making point. So if you get called, you really don't have to prove anything mentioned above -- you already have. At this point, you need to do two things: connect with your mentor and don't screw anything up. The interview with your target faculty is probably the mort important part of your interview process. You will see if you and your mentor connect on a personal level that would make both of you comfortable in investing so much time and money in each other. Other interviews, with other faculty and even possibly students, accomplish two things. First, they get to answer questions of yours so that you have a better idea of what you would be in for if you came to that school. Second, it gives the people involved a personal connection with you. If they generally like you and would like to work with you for the next several years, then your chances are better.

Whether they think you'll actually come is actually an important factor. Even if they would love for you to come, if they seriously don't think that you'll accept an offer, they may prefer to offer admission to someone else. When it comes down to it, they may have a list of 10 people they really want to accept and only 7 spots. How do they choose at that point? Assuming that you have passed all the requirements above, the tiniest thing can tip the scales -- the influence of your faculty, how much you personally connect with your mentor, etc. -- but don't be too upset, because many of these factors are largely out of your control, especially if you have covered all your bases to this point.

After this whole process, either you get the happy letter or the sad letter. If you don't get an offer, don't be too disappointed; if you did well throughout the process, remember that there are many factors that are totally outside of your control. If you don't get in to a program you really feel strongly about, you may want to contact the faculty you planned on working with (only if you established a good connection with them) and ask why you were not accepted. It may be that they couldn't take a student this year, but they could take you next year if you applied. You never know. If you get an offer, Congratulations! If you get in where you wanted, you're all set -- start looking for a place to live.

APPLY FOR A POSITION IN THE LAB