Recruitment Information

Is the RADLab a good fit for my career goals?

Our lab is very research oriented. Our primary goal is to train doctoral students to make outstanding, substantive, and meaningful contributions to the scientific literature on self-regulation and addiction. This research training will prepare you for many different kinds of careers, including jobs as a professor at a research or teaching institution, doing research at an academic medical center, doing research at nonprofit (such as RAND and RTI) or governmental research organizations (such as NIH or the Census Bureau), working in industry, or influencing policy. 

If you are mostly or entirely interested in getting a PhD to have a career in clinical practice, we are not the right lab for you. This is because a very large part of your training will be focusing on conducting research. We understand that interests and career goals evolve, and we don't expect you to know exactly where your training will take you. But, if you already know you're not very interested in research and largely want to pursue a clinically oriented career, you will likely be unfulfilled in our lab. Additionally, if you are looking to conduct research on interventions or applied settings, we're probably not the right lab for you. If, however, you view clinical practice as a meaningful compliment to your research career, you will receive outstanding training here in the RADLab and in the UW Clinical Program overall. 

What research interests are a good match for the RADLab?

We study how teens and young adults regulate their impulses and emotions, with a focus on how that regulation influences health risk behaviors like alcohol and drug use.  We're a part of the Child Clinical Psychology program at UW, because we take a developmental psychopathology focus, which means we try to understand how drug and alcohol use emerge from variation in typical developmental processes that unfold across adolescence and young adulthood. You don't have to be interested in children per se to work with us, and indeed, if you'd rather train in the General Clinical area, you can do that and still work in the RADLab.  

We have studied many different topics in the lab, but our current focus is:

We are funded by NIDA and NIAAA to study the momentary predictors of alcohol and marijuana use, and to understand how those momentary processes are related to long-term risk for the development of substance use disorders. We also primarily focus on these questions in adolescents and young adults (ages 16 - 25).

If your interests fit within these areas, you would be a good candidate for our lab. I feel I am an expert and can provide outstanding training in these areas. If  your interests are only somewhat related to these areas (e.g., you're interested in regulation but in little kids, or you're interested in how self-regulation relates to some outcome other than substance use or internalizing symptoms, or you're primarily interested in internalizing, but not self-regulation or substance use), you're probably not a great fit for our lab. It's important to me that I mentor students within the bounds of my expertise, and complimentary interests across lab members leads to more collaboration and cohesion. 

Quantitative methods are also central to what we do in the RADLab, so we welcome applicants who are interested in learning, applying, and even advancing cutting edge statistical methods in clinical science. You don't have to have advanced math or stats training to join, just an interest and willingness to learn. 


How are applications evaluated?

I evaluate applications holistically, using a rubric that I apply to all applications. Every applicant has strengths and weaknesses, and many different ways to showcase their strengths. I provide the following as a non-exhaustive list of things I look at when I'm evaluating applications, with examples (also non-exhaustive). 

In line with our values, we encourage everyone to apply, regardless of the degree to which you've had these experiences. Don't use these criteria to take yourself out of the running, instead use them to craft the strongest presentation of yourself for us to evaluate. 

Academic Preparation. I'm looking for students with strong academic preparation who are ready to dive into the research enterprise, read and digest large amounts of empirical research, and generate their own research questions that advance our collective research agenda. Academic excellence can be represented by several of the following:

Motivation. Students who succeed in my lab are driven, independent, and motivated. They demonstrate persistence in the face of challenges, their path to the PhD demonstrates commitment, and is connected to a long-term goal beyond the PhD. There are many ways an applicant can demonstrate this. 

Research experience and potential. Having research experience, especially independent research, helps prepare you for graduate training in part because it gives you an opportunity to see if research is something you'd like to do for the next decade of your life (or longer!). We also recognize not everyone has the same opportunities for research training prior to graduate school, so we try to evaluate a pretty wide range of experiences when we're looking at someone's research training. Some common examples of successful students are below:

Fit. This is critical to a successful application. Applicants whose interests don't fit our lab's won't be considered, because I don't think I can give those applicants the high quality mentorship they deserve. It doesn't , however, require that you actually have done the work we're doing before. Just that you can think critically about the questions we're interested in, and you have an interest in spending the next seven years of your life pursuing the questions we're interested in answering. We're looking at your research statement for a narrative that explains how and why you're interested in the research we do, how what you've done connects to that interest (even if it's to say "And that's when I realized I didn't want to study mouse brains any more!"), and what you want to study as a doctoral student. This can be very specific, like "I'd like to study how intra-week variability in sleep is related to risk for heavy marijuana use", or general, like "I'm really interested in understanding person-by-situation interactions to try to understand who, in what context, is at risk for developing drinking problems" (p.s., that's what I said in my personal statement).

Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We value DEI, and are interested in supporting enhancing diversity in science. We recognize that not everyone has access to all opportunities, and in many cases this unequal access is due to structural factors that disadvantage BIPOC people and women. Thus, we especially invite BIPOC and people with other identities that are under-represented in science to apply. We're interested in candidates that understand and are knowledgeable about diversity either from personal experience or education, and we're especially interested in candidates who have evidence of activities that advance the interests of marginalized or underrepresented students. We're also interested in candidates who can articulate how they might incorporate DEI into the work we do in the RADLab. 

I will be recruiting up to two students who will begin in 2024. I am interested in students who are applying to the Clinical or Quantitative areas. 

Please note: I do not generally meet with or exchange extensive emails with prospective students. This is both because I prefer to spend my limited meeting time on my current mentees, but also (importantly) because I prefer to evaluate every candidate using a standardized rubric and interview process. Pre-application interviews may systematically disadvantage students who don't know to ask for them, so I prefer not to do them at all. 

You can find general information about applying to UW Psychology here, and information about applying to the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology here.

Professor Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has an outstanding guide on graduate admissions. Read it here, and look at more extensive advice he shares on his website here.