Admission to PsyD program

[itsallgood19]

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do you need a psychology undergrad degree to apply and get accepted to a PsyD program? I am currently a bio major and have taken psy 101 and will possibly take more pay courses but may be considering med school and am interested in clinical psy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

do you need a psychology undergrad degree to apply and get accepted to a PsyD program? I am currently a bio major and have taken psy 101 and will possibly take more pay courses but may be considering med school and am interested in clinical psy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Short answer: no, but pre-reqs are going to vary by program, so you'll need to look at each individual school to see what classes they require. In general, you'll likely have to take intro stats and a handful of psych courses (including research methods/design).

Also, I'm not sure if you were implying this, so my caveat might not be needed: but keep in mind that clinical psych is a doctoral science degree, not a medical degree.

 

[thewesternsky]

Yes and no... Some Ph.D. and Psy.D. programs explicitly require an undergraduate psychology major. Some reputable programs will still consider you if you did not major in psych but have a number of essential prerequisites or a certain number of credit hours (often between 12 and 24). On that note, they'll usually ask for the following required courses:

Introductory psychology;
Research Methods or Experimental Psychology;
Statistics;
Abnormal psychology;

Many will also require a course on the Biological Bases of Psychology/Neuropsychology, cognitive psychology; developmental psychology; personality psychology; and/or social psychology.

I hope that's helpful... Note that these programs can be quite competitive, and the majority of applicants will have been psychology majors. Still, a number of those prereq courses plus solid research and clinical experience may be enough.

 

[wigflip]

do you need a psychology undergrad degree to apply and get accepted to a PsyD program? I am currently a bio major and have taken psy 101 and will possibly take more pay courses but may be considering med school and am interested in clinical psy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Start at the end and work backwards. Get a copy of The Insiders Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology, which lists PsyD programs. Figure out where you would like to apply and what their requirements are, then you'll be able to determine what courses to take in prep for the psych possibility. For example, the PsyD program in which I am most interested requires a masters in psych or a closely related field, but this isn't typical and might be overkill at some other programs.

Can you double major in psych to hedge your bets? There can be other benefits to double majoring (in terms of teaching at the community college level after you receive your masters, eligibility for awards, etc.). Not to mention that you'll get a better sense of the discipline and whether it's really for you. I found myself interested in a lot of different things at the Intro level (101 classes, which are breadth classes), but once I took my in-depth advanced classes, my interest plummeted.

 

[KillerDiller]

Look through some of the threads on the top of this forum to get a good idea of how competitive graduate school in psych is and how to make yourself a good candidate. Once you pick a handful of programs that you are interested in, I also highly recommend doing a search on this forum for those programs to get a sense of their reputation. Not all PsyD and PhD programs are created equal by any means, and some may not get you where you want to go at all.