I'm currently a 2nd year student in a School Psychology PhD, and I'm looking to transfer to a clinical PhD program (nothing against my program, or school psych--clinical psych would just be a better fit for me).
Stats:
Undergrad GPA: 3.75 (psych GPA: 3.9-ish)
Grad GPA (as of this summer, will have a non-thesis Masters--program doesn't offer thesis Masters--in December): 3.90 (one B; one W)
GRE (old): 660 Q, 590 V, 5.0 AW
Research experience:
-2.5 years as an undergrad in various psych faculty labs
-1.5 years as an RA at research institute as an undergrad (continuing this work as a long-distance "consultant")
-Undergrad honors thesis (preparing for publication)
-Will be 2 years as grad RA in my advisor's lab and also as an RA in another department research team
-Will be two years as RA/fellow at a research institute
Presentations:
-Around 17 poster or conference presentations (mostly posters) at state, regional, and national conferences (almost all are national); many are first author
Publications:
-7 peer-reviewed publications accepted, in press or published (1 1st author, 1 2nd,author 3 3rd author, 2 4th author)--one (third author) is in a 3+ impact factor journal; three (first author, second author, and one third author) are in journals with an impact factor of about 2-2.3; the others are lower impact factor
-Two non-peer-reviewed journal articles in press (a test review and an invited commentary), first author on both
-Invited book chapter under review (technically second author, but 1st-4th are considered to have contributed equally and are listed alphabetically)
-Two short encyclopedia entries under contract and review, first author
In prep stuff:
-Two manuscripts under review (1st and 3rd authors), one in revision and resubmission (4th author)
-Couple of other manuscripts in prep; hopefully, three will at least be under review by December (projected 1st, 1st, and 3rd author)
Professional service:
-Peer reviewer/editorial board member for a national student journal
-Ad hoc reviewer for two other journals
-Contributing editor for an encyclopedia
-Reviewed abstracts for a regional conference last year
Clinical experience:
-Two years co-facilitating psychoed groups with college students as an undergrad
-Will have a semester of clinical child/adolescent therapy prac done when I apply
-Did a fairly intensive behavioral assessment and brief intervention in a school last year (around 25 face to face APPIC hours)
-Also getting some additional prac experience with academic assessment and interventions this semester (don't know if that'll matter to clinical programs, though)
Teaching experience:
-Psych and non-psych TAing in undergrad (1 semester psych, 3 semesters non-psych)
-4 semesters facilitating a psych service learning seminar in undergrad
-1 semester teaching a freshman social science class
-Instructor/guest lecturer (part of a group of them) in a post-bac certification program
Other stuff:
-Couple of small awards/grants/scholarships in my area of interest
-Grad fellowship from my current university
I know there will be a stigma as a transfer student (rarely done and all that) and the W won't help me (although I have a fairly good reason, I think) so I'm not that optimistic about my chances, but it's worth a shot. I'll be applying to 3-4 PhD programs, all 4-5's in the Insider's Guide, imperfect though that rating system is. All are funded and pretty selective (around 5%-15% acceptance rates), but I don't think they would necessarily come up on most people's mental lists of "top tier" programs, which I'm fine with.
My GRE scores are on target for 3, slightly below the median for 1 (30 points below last year's median but within 10 points of the median for the preceeding few years). Do you think they are likely to get me screened out, or will they likely be "good enough"?
Pretty all my research has been with a specific, not too commonly researched population, although it has been somewhat diversified within that population (my pre-grad research was with adults in this population; my grad research has obviously been with child and adolescents in the same population). I think I have pretty good matches with my POI's, FWIW, although obviously the POI's opinion is the only one that actually matters.
Chances? Thoughts on how to best mediate the transfer stigma, if that's even possible?
Thanks!