In this episode we speak with Saliha Büşra Selman, a psychology graduate of Istanbul Şehir University, currently pursuing a master's in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University and researching how infant and early childhood stress affects brain development. The conversation follows her path from accidentally entering a lab to the Harvard Youth Mental Health Lab, more than a hundred cold emails, the Boston admission process, and disciplined study habits.
Saliha began psychology at Istanbul Şehir University in 2011 and graduated in 2016 as top of her department and school. She is now doing her master's at Boston University, studying in the Brain and Early Experiences Laboratory how stress hormones affect children's cognitive, emotional, and social development, attention mechanisms, and parent–child relationship patterns. Her long-term goal is to develop early prevention and education programs rather than treating problems only after they appear.
When she started the program she had no interest in laboratories; she was a curious student who asked professors many questions in class. Her biopsychology professor noticed her engagement and invited her to a newly opening lab; an assistant team of about fifteen formed. When Şehir's lab paused for the summer, she went to Adil Dinçer at Marmara University—without expecting an internship, happy even to make photocopies. Commuting between Topkapı and Anadolu Hisarı strengthened her love of lab work; even small tasks like starting and ending experiments felt exciting. Her professor included her in discussion meetings; in her second year, after a question she asked, she was allowed to write her own research proposal and design an experiment. A pilot study was submitted to a conference as a poster; she gained her first presentation experience at a biomedical engineering congress.
In her third year, at her friend Merve Armağan's insistence, she began applying to labs abroad; she refused at first, then sent more than a hundred emails. Acceptances came from Oxford and, in the same week, from the Harvard Youth Mental Health Lab. In her first English-language interview she realized that answering honestly when she did not know something was a test of discipline. At Harvard she worked three months in person, then seven months remotely after returning—ten months in total. An unforgettable moment came when her CV was put on the lab agenda and corrected line by line in front of twenty people; when she asked a question, a forty-five-minute private meeting was arranged—showing the culture of academic support. At summer's end she was also struck by a professor over seventy serving dinner to students at her supervisor's home.
For Boston she needed TOEFL and GRE scores, a statement of purpose, reference letters, and transcripts. She was accepted at Tufts and Boston; she believes the decisive factor was fit between her research area and the program plus prior lab experience. She remembers that in the Harvard interview, when asked how she would work through three articles she did not know, she honestly said she did not know and explained she would proceed piece by piece with discipline—and that was received positively. She continued a meta-analysis study remotely from Turkey; the ten months of lab experience became the backbone of her Boston application.
At Şehir University she continued lab work with Dr. Reyhan Bilge in her fourth year while completing master's applications. Accepted at Tufts and Boston, she thinks the combination of research fit, prior lab experience, and exam scores was decisive. She wants to understand how stress in early childhood contributes to later problems such as specific learning disorders and to design early intervention programs.
Assistantships at institutions such as Koç University and Marmara are also part of her path. For Boston admission she stresses that beyond language exams, the statement of purpose must explain why this program, why she is a suitable candidate, and how past experience connects; reference letters should function as letters of trust among colleagues on her professors' behalf.
For those choosing psychology she recommends reading every subfield because courses are only a skeleton. She says the answer to not knowing what to do after university lies in undergraduate reading. She advises observing on site for anywhere from two days to three months on topics that intrigue them—and trying things to rule out what they dislike. To become best in a field you must first love the work; to find what you love you must try many areas.
She sees the secret of success not as a great mystery but as steady work in small doses; knowing she did her best even when she fails brings inner peace. During internships and her Harvard period she kept a daily journal; seminar notes, article summaries, and observations combined into a 120-page lab report. Recording hour by hour in a small notebook let her see concrete progress until exam results arrived.
Her series recommendations include Merve Armağan, who convinced her to apply abroad, plus Fatma, Reyhan Bilge, Hüsniye Gülşen Koç, Elif Altın, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Kadriye Slocum.
Highlights: entering a lab by asking questions · designing her own experiment in second year · 100+ cold emails · Harvard Youth Mental Health Lab · CV meeting culture · Boston BU master’s · stress and brain development · steady work in small steps · keeping a daily journal
