Application Requests
You may receive application
materials either on-line (in PDF format) or by regular mail.
On-line application materials are available here.
To receive application materials by regular mail, contact Alyson Kallas Kiep by email or by
snail mail (below):
Alyson Kallas Kiep
Graduate Coordinator
Department of Psychology (M/C
285)
University of Illinois at
Chicago
1007 W. Harrison St
Chicago, IL 60607-7137
A message from Dr. Bottoms to prospective students interested in studying psychology and law at UIC:
Dear Prospective Student:
I'm happy
to hear of your interest in studying Psychology and Law at the University
of Illinois at Chicago. Let me give you some basic background
information, and if you have more specific questions after this
information and after visiting our website, please email me back.
At UIC, we
offer the Ph.D. in five major areas of psychology: Clinical, Social and
Personality, Cognitive, Community and Prevention, and Behavioral
Neuroscience. Most of your graduate work in our program will focus on
giving you a solid background in the research and theories of one of
these core areas of psychology. In addition to one of these majors,
doctoral students also choose a minor, one of which is the Psychology and
Law minor. (We offer no terminal master's degree – that is, you will
receive the M.A. along the way when you do a master's thesis, but no
students are accepted who want to obtain only the M.A.)
A minor
gives you the opportunity to take an additional three or four classes
related to your specific interests in psychology and law while obtaining
your degree in one of the traditional major areas of study. On our
website, you'll see examples of minor "packages" of courses
that prior students have taken. For example, one prior graduate who
received her Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology (Dr. Suzanne
Davis) was interested in children's eyewitness testimony, so she took
Psychology and Law (the core course of the minor), Social Development,
and Cognitive Development. Other students have taken Violence and
Victims, which is offered by our Department of Criminal Justice, or
Public Policy, which is offered by our Department of Political Science.
Other students have completed both the Psychology and Law minor and the
Statistics, Methods, and Measurement minor, which has been a great
preparation for their future research careers.
Of course,
you can be a psychology and law researcher without taking a specialized
minor, because your research is what defines you in graduate school. In
fact, at UIC, your individualized research training with a faculty member
is where all of your training, but particularly your psychology and law
training, is concentrated. Our program provides excellent opportunities
for you to become actively involved in research with faculty members
whose work is relevant to legal issues. I am the core faculty member with
psychology and law interests, and I am in the Social and Personality
Division. My work focuses on children and the law. In addition, Stephanie
Riger, who is in the Community and Prevention Research Division, is
interested in issues related to gender, law, and policy, such as the
impact of welfare reform laws on women and their families. Linda Skitka
is interested in social psychology, political psychology, and justice
issues. Patrick Tolan (Institute for Juvenile Research) and Sarah Ullman
(Department of Criminal Justice) are affiliated faculty members; they are
interested in juvenile justice and violence against women, respectively.
Both have worked with graduate students in our department.
A
particular advantage of graduate studies at UIC is that we have a
"mentorship style" program, which means that all graduate
students have a specific faculty advisor whose interests are compatible
with their own. You will work closely with that advisor. As you become
more advanced, you can also work with other faculty, of course, but your
main program of research will be with the primary advisor, so it is
important that there is a good fit between your and your advisor's
interests. For example, I am personally most interested in mentoring
students who are interested in research related to children, psychology,
and the law (e.g., jurors' perceptions of children's eyewitness abilities
and of juveniles accused of crime, children's eyewitness testimony, child
abuse). In case you are interested in my work specifically, you can go to
my website where I have posted most of my publications and information
about my lab:
http://www.psch.uic.edu/bbottoms.asp
Most
students who are psychology and law minors are in the Social and
Personality Division of our department, but students from the other
divisions/areas can also minor in Psychology and Law or otherwise tailor
their research interests to include psychology and law issues. If you
apply to the Social Division, I will automatically see your application.
If you choose to apply to another division, you will want to ensure that
your interests overlap with a faculty member in that division. If you are
interested in my research, but you seek a degree in another area such as
Clinical or Community, please write to me directly or, better yet, send
me a copy of your application to ensure that I see your application. It
is not common for me to advise a student in another area outside of
Social, but I have done so in the past.
Note that
we do not offer a specific program in clinical forensic psychology.
Forensic psychologists can be trained in several ways (for more
information, please visit the website of the American Psychology/Law
Society http://www.unl.edu/ap-ls/ and look under careers and training for
a document called something like "Careers and Training in Psychology
and Law"). Many are trained in traditional clinical psychology
programs, then get their specialization in forensic matters by doing
practica and internships in forensic settings before obtaining the Ph.D.
This can certainly be accomplished at UIC, especially given the rich
possibilities in the city of Chicago. On the website, you'll see that a
former student of mine, Dr. Michelle Epstein, did this.
You may be
wondering about finances. Like all good psychology programs, we are very
selective and take only the number of students that we can fully support
financially. All students who are accepted into our program are offered
some type of funding (fellowship, teaching assistantship, or research
assistantship) that takes care of all tuition and provides a stipend of
around $12,500 or more for 9 months. Most students get teaching
assistantships. Many students also get teaching or research
assistantships during the summer, although this is not technically
guaranteed.
We
actually have no additional information to send via regular mail, because
we have put all our introductory information on our Department web pages,
particularly the special pages about Psychology and Law at UIC. I'm
afraid our psychology and law web pages are a little out of date,
including my own, but they still provide most of the information you will
need: http//www.uic.edu/depts/psch/psychlaw/. For our department's
general home page, go to
http://www.uic.edu/depts/psch. On our web site, you will find the
statements of research interests for all associated faculty and students,
a representative listing of the publications, conference presentations,
and awards of faculty and students, etc. You will also find the
application to our program which you can download (see detailed
information about applying at the very bottom of this email). Be sure to
explore the interests of our faculty members by reading their web pages,
and if you apply to our program, mention the faculty member(s) with whom
you would like to work. This will ensure that your application will be
seen by the faculty members most suited to mentor you while you are doing
your graduate work.
After you
apply, what happens? The faculty in the area/division to which you apply
(such as Social and Personality Psychology) will review your application
and evaluate it in comparison to other applicants, examining the usual
things: GRE scores, GPA, fit of research interests with faculty members,
prior experiences, plan of study, career aspirations, etc. Students who
make a short list are interviewed by phone. Some are invited for a
visiting day, and we cover part of those expenses. This usually occurs
sometime in February, but phone interviews can occur throughout March. If
you are accepted, you will be notified by April 1 (this is a nationwide
rule that all programs should adhere to), sometimes much earlier. You
have until April 15 to notify a school whether or not you will accept
their offer, but it is best to let schools know as soon as possible,
because if you decline an offer, the school can give that offer to the
next student who is in line on the short list. If you have not heard
anything by mid-March, you should feel free to contact the faculty
member(s) whom you applied to work with to see if he or she can tell you
if a decision has been made with regard to your application.
Not all
faculty accept students each year, and faculty (like me) often do not
make a decision about whether to accept a new student until the
application deadline has passed. You are free to email and ask faculty as
the deadline for applications nears, though.
Finally,
do you have general questions about careers in the field of Psychology
and Law? Go to the web site of the American Psychology-Law Society and
read the new "Careers in Psychology and the Law" document,
which includes a lot of useful information plus biographies of people
like me in various careers related to this field. Here's the web address:
http://www.ap-ls.org/students/careers%20in%20psychology.pdf
Please contact me if you have any remaining questions or problems finding
our Web site. The best way to reach me is by e-mail at bbottoms@uic.edu.
If you have specific questions about my own research, take a look at the
attached curriculum vitae and at my web page, and email me if you have
questions about my research or any other program issues. I would also be
happy to arrange to send reprints of my or other faculty members'
research.
We look
forward to receiving your application!
Best wishes,
Bette L. Bottoms, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Chair, Psychology and Law Steering Committee
Department of Psychology (MC 285)
University of Illinois at Chicago
1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607-7137
312-413-2635, bbottoms@uic.edu