Advice for a bit of a lost soul....

[PepperdineGal]

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Hey guys. Thanks for reading.... I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I was a graphic designer for several years. Last year several events that recently occurred in my life have led me to want to pursue a career in clinical psychology. I am currently in a psych masters program, which is extremely clinically based. I wish to apply for a (funded!) doctoral program in clinical psych in Fall 09, so I have a bit of time to get some needed experience and such. I was hoping some of you could help me with out with a bit of advice as to what I can do.

I searched for a RA position, and was able to find something working with a social psychologist at a top university. She is great and has said there are a lot of opportunities to publish and such. My question is, do you think that this is acceptable experience as I wish to pursue clinical psychology. As I have read on a number of web sites, it doesnt matter what your research is in, the experience is more important. How true do you feel this is? Should I continue to try to find something clinically related instead? I am torn because I really like this professor and feel there is a lot of opportunities I can get out of working for her...but it may seem obvious to that maybe it is far more attractive to do research in the clinical field if one wishes to pursue a dr in clinical psych??? I tried emailing a number of professors in clinical psych and they all told me that they are not accepting research assistants at this time....

Secondly, what are your thoughts on gaining clinical experience? Would it be more wise to spend most of my time on research and volunteer at a hospital as a secondary thing. I am currently looking for a job (need the $$$ 🙂) and would it help me strengthen my application if I worked in a clinical setting? Or would research schools be turned off by this? Additionally, what kind of clinical work are they looking for specifically?

What about a PsyD program? I shy away from these because the majority are unfunded and $$$$, but do you think the best prep for one of these is a FT job in a clinical setting?

Also, several programs list that they look at your "extracurricular activities" when considering your application. What would fall into this category?

Thank you so much for your help everyone. I am feeling very discouraged at this point.... but I'm optimistic 🙂

 

[psychwanabe]

First, my understanding is that research experience is good no matter what. It would be great if you could get it in your desired area, but that was not possible for most of us going into the application process. Some is definitely better than none (correct me if I'm wrong, ya'll).

Second, you should definitely get some clinical experience. If you're applying to research-based programs, then that experience is more important but you should have some clinical stuff on your CV too. If you're applying to more clinically-based programs then the opposite is true. But you do need both to be competitive. Most PsyD programs do tend to weigh clinical experience heavier, but not all.

Frankly the most important things are your GRE scores, GPA, and LORs. The other stuff is important too, but in every graduate admission regression analysis I've ever heard of, those three factors receive the most weight.

Extra-curriculars are taken into consideration when they are evaluating your ability to manage time. For example, a grad student in my UG program was given a lot of props for maintaining a 3.9 GPA while also competing on her college swim team which consisted of 4-6 hour practices 5 days a week. Anyone who can do that shows the ability to handle the workload in grad school. If you write about that, you should emphasize how you learned to manage your coursework while doing X.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[psychdude5469]

I'll start off by saying that some experience is better than no experience. If the social prof is the only person you can work with, do it. That being said, I think it is important to gain experience in the area that you want to research in your future program. I did a lot of aging research as an undergrad and consequently applied to schools/profs that did work in aging. It's important to have experience in the area of research of you potential advisor. For example, if you want to do research in depression and apply to these types of schools/advisors, but you only have research experience in aggression, then these advisors might think, "how does this person know they want to do work in depression if they've never done anything with depression" or "will this person be any good doing work with depression if they've never done work with depression". This may be the case, it may not. When I went on interviews, everyone had research experience that was similar to what their potential advisor was doing. Don't freak out about this, you can probably relate the work being done in the social lab to sonething that somebody is doing in a clinical program.

As far as extracarricular activites... I had none to speak of and still got accepted. I worked a lot in the psych department but I don't think that counts.

 

[Jon4PsyD]

Funding is available in a certain few Psy.D. programs so don't count out Psy.D.'s. I would say any experience is good experience in terms of research. What is your goal for your career, to be a research/academic or to be a clinician? That plays a big factor in this.

Jon

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Funding is available in a certain few Psy.D. programs so don't count out Psy.D.'s. I would say any experience is good experience in terms of research. What is your goal for your career, to be a research/academic or to be a clinician? That plays a big factor in this.

Jon

Agreed. Acceptance rates for funded Psy.D's will be on par with funded Ph.D. programs, so they should be on your radar.

 

[PepperdineGal]

Wow. Thank you all for the advice. It is truly appreciated.

My career goal is to be a clinician. I am new to all of this, so I want to take my time and put the feelers out and see what I like. I have a couple of years before I apply. Although I feel so much pressure to choose something as soon as possible and then do as much work with that topic as I can before I apply.

I have been browsing Craigslist for psychology related jobs (I would volunteer, but I need to make some money to support myself right now...), and I have applied to a few behavioral therapist positions working with children with autism. There are some non-paid internships at mental health facilities that I came across, but I am in a tight financial situation and cannot afford to take a non-paid internship unfortunately.

I suppose I will work in this lab for this quarter, get some experience, work on developing a more focused research interest and then search for a more fitting lab, and then BEG 🙂 Or do you think it would look bad hopping from one lab to another in such a short period of time?

Sorry to throw so many questions out there, but the advisors at my university are not very helpful when it comes to these questions...