再来说说KCL。
我本科是Bachelor of Arts,硕士是Master of Science,其实除了硕士论文,几乎没有真正和心理学有交集的,仅仅是自学而已。陶瓷KCL的时候居然心大选了psychology department。。。老师让我去KCL面谈。谈话内容:你Proposal是啥?为啥研究这个?你用了啥研究方法?你懂定量?用定量做了些啥?funding怎么解决?然后他说了很多自己在做的事儿+介绍团队。基本上20min,他说了13min的样子。说对我超级满意,居然口头给了offer?!(事后证明美国人的确略草率。。。表喷我)之后开始正式申请。
接着说要面试。。。面试是由我陶瓷的那位老师主持的(这里可以看出kcl和爱丁堡老师在招生方面的权力)要先30min做题,然后面试。还安慰我说别紧张,只要我能说话能写字就成(天真如我,把这话当真了)。论坛里面很少有人发KCL的面试题目啊,我来贡献一下吧。题目如下:
PhD Interview written task
(for Skype/phone interviews – to be sent by email at the start of the interview)
Please spend ½ hour writing a research plan for your thesis. Specifically, indicate in your own words:
(1) Why this is an important topic to study?
I believe the topic of adolescent delinquency is an important topic that needed to be studied. Due to the fact that physical and psychological change during adolesence may increase adolescents’ vulnerability, it could be a problematic period by nature. In fact, the high adolescent delinquency rate has been a social problem for many countries. The prevalence and seriousnesss of adolescent delinquency have aroused many investigations by researchers. However, the situation of adolescent delinquency has not changed positively.
(2) What your hypotheses would be?
Basing on Strain theory and Moos’ family environment framework which are the two theoretical theories I applied, my hypothesis is that family environment is significant related to adolescents’ delinquent behaviours.
(3) Could you envision manners in which antisocial behaviours could influence the nutritional environment?
To be honest, I do not have much knowledge regarding this area. I assume the nutritional environment refers to prenantal factors that related to caregivers. Therefore, I think that antisocial behaviours may influence a person’s inner system (e.g., blood pressure, hormone level) which, in turn, has impact on nutritional environment.
(4) What sort of data that is not available in ALSPAC would you include in your research (give us your perfect set of variables and please justify each one).
I have to be honest that I just searched online for ALSPAC. I believe this is an abbreviation for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. I plan to conduct a mixed method research and I did not find the qualitative data from that study.