Social Ecology Honors Personal Statement

My family and I immigrated to the U.S. from Uruapan Michoacán, México, due to economic hardship. As a single parent, my mother worked multiple strenuous jobs so that my sister and I could pursue a professional career, rather than a manual job. To honor my mother’s hard work, I successfully completed my high school education and applied to the University of California, Irvine (UCI). As a first generation and low-income student, I was completely unfamiliar with the academic demands of the university. Despite this challenge, I took advantage of research opportunities, clinical training, and teaching experiences in order to explore a potential career in clinical psychology.

For my third and fourth year as an undergraduate, I enrolled in close

Campos’ lab, I enrolled in her culture and close relationships course and I became interested in exploring the similarities and variations in the overlap for characteristics associated with romantic partners and friends amongst Asian Americans, European Americans, and Latino Americans. Thus, I decided to develop my honors thesis under the supervision of Dr. Campos for her expertise in culture and close relationships. To do this, I successfully applied and submitted my research proposal for the Social Ecology Honors program. This yearlong commitment was highly selective (5%-10% acceptance). In developing my honors thesis, I worked closely with my advisor to develop an outline and identify the predominant variables needed for my study as well as the appropriate methodology. For the first hypothesis, we predicted that there would be greater overlap in the characteristics associated with a romantic partner and friend across all cultural groups as compared to the overlap for each cultural group exclusively. For the second hypothesis, we predicted that there would be less overlap in the characteristics for Asian Americans and Latino Americans, relative to European Americans. To test the hypotheses, participants were randomly assigned to two conditions (romantic partner or friend) and asked to free-list 20 characteristics associated with that condition. Afterwards, I arranged the top ten characteristics that captured a central personal characteristic for each

First, I want to gain a thorough understanding of close relationships, family, and marriage research. Second, I want to strengthen my current research skills and acquire innovative skills in advanced methodological techniques and statistical analysis to generate novel research questions and effectively disseminate research. Third, through my research, I want to develop evidence-based prevention and intervention programs that promote couples’ strengths and assist couples who are at-risk for marital discord and dissolution. Fourth, I want to instruct courses pertaining to close relationships and marriage. Lastly, I want to establish and direct a close relationship/marriage research institute. Therefore, I am certain that the clinical psychology program at SUNY Binghamton will provide me with the necessary research experience and clinical training for me to achieve my academic career goals. Ultimately, I am confident that my academic proficiencies, research skills, clinical and teaching experiences, and compatible research interests with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Balderrama-Durbin make me a superlative candidate for your clinical psychology