Frequently asked questions for graduate applicants
At this time of the year, we receive a lot of email inquiries about PhD applications. Here’s some answers to common questions.
Q. Please find attached my application to study for a PhD with you.
A. I’m sorry, this is really just not how you apply for a PhD. Admission to our Ph.D. programs (and pretty much every PhD program of which I am aware) is by a formal, centralized application process, not by cold email to an individual lab. You can find up-to-date information about procedures and deadlines on the departmental web sites. Good luck!
Q. Are you accepting graduate students in the 2024-25 application cycle?
A. Maybe! I have graduated a number of PhD students in the last year, so I have my eyes out for possible new students.
But in my view this isn’t really the right question anyway. That’s because admissions to the PNI are to the program, not the lab. Students only join a lab after a cycle of several rotations. Moreover, Princeton is just an immensely collaborative place. We have a very large set of labs working on related topics and we often collaborate in many different subgroups. This is for a bunch of reasons including how the training programs are structured, and the fact that many of us collaborate in funded projects that span several groups. This is the best thing about Princeton, in my opinion.
So depending what interests you share with me, you probably also share them with many of Cohen, Niv, Griffiths, Norman, Pillow, Witten, Brody, Buschman, Tank, Taylor, Crockett, Tamir, and Graziano — and these are just the faculty with whom I currently or recently have co-advised trainees. Thus, whether or not I personally take on new advisees this cycle, some of this group always are, and we often all end up working together in some fashion or another. So if you’d be interested to work with me, you’d likely also be a good fit to the broader program and I encourage you to apply.
Q. Which department’s graduate program should I apply to?
A. I am a member of both the psychology department and the Princeton Neuroscience institute, and these have separate graduate programs. Many students would be appropriate for both. Obviously, PNI includes more biological emphasis (e.g. in its coursework), which may or may not be your cup of tea, but the two programs largely overlap with respect to the main topics of my lab, e.g. human cognitive neuroscience and computation/theory, being very welcome in both. One main difference is how admissions work: some of what I said above (rotations, etc.) is true of PNI but not psychology. For this reason, I tend more often to accept students via PNI.
Q. Can we schedule a zoom meeting to discuss my application?
A. Sorry, no. Our program has lots of PhD applications (and even more pre-application inquiries) and it wouldn’t be feasible or fair to have individual meetings at this stage. The appropriate time for these types of conversations is an organized, formal visit weekend that we host in the spring for shortlisted applicants. But please do say hi if we cross paths at a conference or something!
Q. Am I a good fit for your lab? What kind of background are you looking for in students?
A. What distinguishes our lab is that pretty much everyone in it is engaged in theory and computational modeling at least as one aspect of their research, and has strong quantitative interest and skills. Almost always, students arrive with formal training in some technical field (computer science, economics, etc.), and at minimum have had experience and coursework in this direction. It would be very unusual for us to take on a Ph.D. student without such a background. Occasionally, we have worked with trainees (typically at the postdoctoral level) who bring exceptional expertise in some complementary area and wish to collaborate on learning to bring computational methods to bear on their area. But in that case, if you’re not very interested in moving toward quantitative and computational approaches, our lab is not the right place for you.