Join us!

To join the lab, you'll need to submit an application to Yale's psychology program. The psychology program is fully funded so, if you're admitted, Yale covers both your tuition and your stipend. You can find more information here.
We don't admit students every cycle, so keep an eye out for announcements about openings. We usually post them around October. The department maintains a list of which faculty are accepting students each cycle, and we'll update this page too (though the official site tends to post first).
We're looking for people who share our mission, have research experience, and understand our work. The best first step is to read 3-5 papers from the lab (focus on the ones where Julian Jara-Ettinger is the last author) and think about them! Are these the kinds of questions you find exciting? Is this the kind of work you'd like to do?
A strong application answers this question clearly! A common pitfall is to re-use the same wording we use on our website, or to simply mention papers from the lab without showing that you really read them.
Because of the volume of applicants and fairness to all candidates, I don't typically meet with students beforehand. However, I do appreciate a brief email letting me know you plan to apply. Tell me a bit about the kind of research you're interested in and how it connects to our work, tell me a bit about your relevant background, and attach your CV. I really encourage you to write in your own voice. It's the best way for me to get a feel for wh you are! I strongly encourage you to not use LLMs for this email. You'd be amazed by how similar those emails look when you're getting dozesn of them every cycle!
Once applications are in, I read every package carefully. From there, I will narrow the applicants to a shortlist of roughly ten candidates. These are people with the right research experience, good fit with the lab, and who show they really understand the work we do in the lab. I schedule Zoom interviews with all of them, usually between December and January. From there, 1-3 candidates are invited for an on-campus visit, fully funded by Yale. This is a great chance to see the department, meet graduate students, and other faculty. Admission decisions happen by the end of March.

We often looking for motivated undergraduates that are interested in developmental or computational research. Research assistants will have the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of the research process, including recruiting participants, running experiments, collecting and entering data, analyzing data, and presenting results.
Undergraduates in our lab usually join one of three efforts: Helping develop computational models, running experiments with adults, or working with children to understand the origins of social intelligence. Each of these require different skillsets. If you're interested, please send an email to our lab manager, Alina Dau, at alina.dau@yale.edu. Attach your CV, and explain which of the areas you'd be most interested in (you can mention several). For developmental research, you must be available for blocks of time during the weekday or weekend to help collect data, and comfortable interacting with children 4-10 years of age.
You can join the lab for the Spring semester (January-May), Summer (June-August), or Fall (September-December). We require a minimum commitment of six hours/week, and we prioritize undergraduates who can commit for at least two semesters of research. You'll be working on trying to solve new problems and it takes some time to get you set up!

Thesis advising. Our lab often advises undergraduate students on their thesis. The kind of research we do takes time, so we generally require undergraduate students to have completed at least one semester of research in the lab before their senior year. One year is just not enough to complete a thesis in the kind of work that we do unless you've already gotten the basics down! If you're interested in this, please reach out to the lab mentor you've worked with.

Undergraduate students who are not at Yale can come spend the summer working in our lab. You can join the lab through Yale's SURF program, or Yale's ESI-PREP postbac program. We also often have internal funds for hosting summer students. All of these programs include funding during your stay. Please contact Alina Dau (alina.dau@yale.edu) first if you are interested in these opportunities.