Ph.D. admission will be based on a written test at the Ashoka University campus in Sonepat, followed by a personal interview.
The duration, number of questions and weightage of the sections included in the admission test will also be released at this time. Candidates are requested to carefully go through the syllabus and prepare accordingly.
Names of the applicants accepted for admission will be uploaded on the PhD page of the program website (accepted and waitlisted etc.).
When the name of the candidate appears on the website as selected, the candidate has one month to accept or decline the admission offer. The program will consider an offer declined if we don’t hear back via email from the accepted applicant within one month. In case of a wait list, the program will then consider those applicants. Applicants will be expected to arrive and settle when Monsoon semester starts, which is usually in the last week of August.
Structure of the admission test
The test will have two sections. The first section is mandatory for all applicants. It will test their general aptitude, basic analytical skills, understanding of academic integrity and ethical practices in research, and statistical literacy.
Syllabus for the first section:
Numerical abilities: Grade 10 mathematics as per CBSE/ICSE/International school boards
Academic integrity and research ethics: What is academic integrity and why is it required?
What is plagiarism (including self-plagiarism)? Citing, summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting others’ work. https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/
Responsible conduct of research: For any epidemiological/intervention based/ investigative/observational studies involving humans: http://www.who.int/ethics/research/en/
For animal research: https://www.aaalac.org/accreditation/RefResources/IGP2012.pdf
Statistics: Empirical methods in science, constructs and their operationalization into variables, continuous and discontinuous variables, scales, reliability and validity, frequencies, distributions, central tendencies: Mean, median, mode; measures of dispersion; graphical representation of data; correlation and covariance; standard normal distribution; sampling error of the mean and standard error; hypothesis testing; Type I and Type II errors; t-tests; chi square test; ANOVA (all types, including post hoc tests and corrections); and regression (simple and multiple); non-parametric statistics; confidence intervals, power analysis, and effect size.
Rather than mathematical derivations and formulations, questions will test applied aspects of these statistical concepts. You will be tested on
- Your ability to interpret graphical data
- Spot data inconsistencies and errors on graphical representations
- Understanding of errors than compromise reliability and validity of a study
- How to operationalize constructs into variables
- What sort of experimental designs merit which kind of statistical tests to be applied
- Interpreting test scores and what can you conclude about experimental results from statistical testing of data
A good resource to prepare apart from any college level statistical course material: http://onlinestatbook.com/
Statistical skills involving latent variable modeling (in various forms), meta-analysis, and time series analysis will not be tested.
The second section will be grouped into five subsections out of which candidates will choose any three. Questions will be grouped according to the core domains in psychology: Biological, Developmental, Clinical, Social, Cognitive and Measurements and Methodologies. This section will follow the syllabus of the subject GRE test in psychology. Please use the following link to obtain the syllabus and sample questions.
https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/practice_book_psych.pdf. The following textbook might provide a good starting point for preparation:
Passer, M. W., & Smith, R. E. (2004). Psychology: The science of mind and behavior (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
There are also several commercially available study guides which can help you prepare for this part of the test regardless of your academic background.