The Contenders: Schools 1 and 2

I now have my tentative list of masters programs I am interesting in applying to. The list may change, of course - especially if I decide I do not need to apply to as many programs - but it seems likely that I will end up in one of these programs.

For purposes of this blogging exercise, I have also ranked the programs by desirability, but this is a very rough ranking and subject to potentially dramatic change as I scrutinize the professors' specific research interests by reading their journal articles and so forth.

The primary attributes considered for my ranking process were:
- Strength of research match between faculty and myself
- Selectivity/quality of the program
- Location (specifically for compatibility with Robert's needs)
- Coursework
- Thesis or non-thesis program

#1: I have already written about my first choice, the MA Psychology program at Wake Forest. One additional data point on Wake Forest is that is ranked very highly on the US News & World Report National Universities list, at #30. While I do not believe that this list represents any kind of gold standard for measuring school quality, the high ranking there is consistent with other measures of quality and selectivity that I have seen (for the MA Psychology program in particular). Given that most top-notch schools do not have masters level psychology programs, it's encouraging to find ones that do.

#2: MS Business Administration (Marketing Research), Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, VA

This is an odd little program. And I do mean little; they admit 1 to 3 students per year. The existence of preparatory-to-marketing-PhD programs is extremely limited, as in, this is the only one of its kind that I could find. MS Marketing Research programs are unusual to begin with, and most of them focus on getting graduates ready for the job market, not further academic study.

The research match is excellent, of course, since it is a marketing program and they have consumer behavior people on board. I found 8 faculty members that would be compatible with my interests; that's huge. (In fact, when I did a ranking of the PhD marketing programs based on faculty research compatibility, Virginia Tech came in at #6 of the 46 or so that remain on my list.)

Selectivity and quality are likely to be high. It's harder to judge this, since I do not have the luxury of the APA's Guide to Graduate Study like I do for psychology programs. But I did find a ranking of PhD programs for consumer psychology and Virginia Tech came in at #30. So this would seem a solid jumping point for study in that area, especially given that to my knowledge, the schools ranked #1-29 do not even have MS programs. Of course, with a class size of one to three, the odds of being accepted are not great, so it may be too selective for my purposes. But one source (that I have seen elsewhere described as having varying accuracy) put the combined MS and PhD marketing programs at Virginia Tech at 22% acceptance rate.

I recognize that acceptance rates do not predict my personal likelihood of acceptance, but determining my personal chance is impossible. They also are not a wonderful measure of selectivity, since many factors (especially location in an area with high population or that is desirable for some reason) might lead some schools to get many more applications than their equally high quality counterparts, but I feel that knowing whether a program accepts 10% vs. 30% vs. 60% of their applicants says something about the program.

The location is frankly not that great. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere and while there will be some jobs available, Robert will not have a great set of options as he would at most of my other contenders. But the program is just too good for me to dismiss it at this point.

The coursework looks promising and directly on point for my purposes. It's a blend of marketing, statistics, and my choice of psychology, economics, and/or business classes. (And no risk that the "Advanced Topics in Social Psychology" course will end up being about aspects of truth-telling in romantic relationships or some such irrelevant content.) Because it's a market research degree, the number of research methods and stat courses is higher than most psychology programs. Of course, it is possible that a couple of the 3-4 "advanced marketing seminars" I will need to take will be more boring than the typical psychology class, if they turn out to be "marketing management" or "marketing strategy" or that sort of thing.

It is also thesis-based program, which I prefer.

In many respects, this is the best program for my needs as I see them right now. It obviously leads naturally to a marketing PhD program and seems like it will make the most sense to those admission committees. It will be easy and natural to do a consumer psychology-centric thesis and I will have good advisors on hand for that. It has the huge advantage of presenting me with a good alternative path if I decide that I really don't want to suffer through a PhD program because of the immediate employability of someone with this kind of practical-looking degree. But the location issue, combined with some nebulous basic preference of Wake Forest over Virginia Tech and the impression that a psychology masters keeps my options more open in the event I want to do a psychology rather than marketing PhD program in the future, keeps it from securing the #1 slot.