And if you want to be an academic????

[thewesternsky]

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Hi all. I'm applying to clinical psych programs in the fall, but I have to admit that my interests in psych definitely lean more toward research than clinical work. I'm very excited about clinical training, but I am in no way planning to spend the rest of my life doing therapy full-time. I hope to eventually obtain a faculty position at a (preferably) strong research university, hopefully in Canada or the northern U.S.

That said-- what kind of schools should I be applying to? Clinical psych is quite competitive already, and programs at top research schools tend (from what I've seen) to be even more competitive. Is this true?

Is it possible to be competitive for academic positions if you obtained your training at a slightly less research focused school? (I'm not talking about Psy.D.s... I mean Ph.D. programs that are not brutally focused on research, like Windsor or Ryerson or Guelph as compared to Western and McGill).

 

[JockNerd]

Hi all. I'm applying to clinical psych programs in the fall, but I have to admit that my interests in psych definitely lean more toward research than clinical work. I'm very excited about clinical training, but I am in no way planning to spend the rest of my life doing therapy full-time. I hope to eventually obtain a faculty position at a (preferably) strong research university, hopefully in Canada or the northern U.S.

That said-- what kind of schools should I be applying to? Clinical psych is quite competitive already, and programs at top research schools tend (from what I've seen) to be even more competitive. Is this true?

Is it possible to be competitive for academic positions if you obtained your training at a slightly less research focused school? (I'm not talking about Psy.D.s... I mean Ph.D. programs that are not brutally focused on research, like Windsor or Ryerson or Guelph as compared to Western and McGill).

I'm right with you on the research emphasis!

What I might suggest is that while you're checking out advisors, see if you can find out what each of their students is up to now. Are they in research or clinical work? Did they end up where they wanted to be? You might ask the profs directly or you might look at their CVs and find student coauthors, then look those coauthors up. The advantage of this is that you don't want to get into a research-oriented school only to find out that your advisor is the one prof there who hasn't done any research since getting tenure, or whose students never get their names on anything.

It's DEFINITELY possible to get a great education with a research emphasis at a university not known for having major research programs. There are some stellar profs in programs with low average productivity, just as there is some deadwood in research-emphasis programs. "Fit" isn't just a common research area--it's also fit between where you want to go and finding a prof who can help make that happen.

If you can get in with a prof who does the sort of research you want to do, and who is productive and encourages producivity in his or her students, you're in great shape, in my opinion, no matter where you go!

By the way, I'm assuming you're Canadian? Are you looking into some US programs as well as Canadian ones?

 

[thewesternsky]

Thanks, JockNerd, for your response; it was definitely reassuring. Also, it's great to see others on this board who are gung-ho about the research part of our training-- yay for research. 🙂 (Except not today, because the data I'm analysing right now is just... very puzzling, but most days I love it.) 🙂

Thanks for the advice; I now plan to subtly check out where people's old graduate students are, and what their publishing records are like. 🙂 I might also pay more attention to the individual professor's research productivity rather than how research-focused the entire department is ...

I will be applying to a few (at least 3, maybe as many as 6) programs in the U.S. I'll be applying mostly to the bigger names in my area of interest there, I think-- people I'd LOVE to move a thousand miles away to work with. I'm also applying to two Canadian schools with perfect fits that I would love to go to, and a few Canadian schools for what seem to be good-but-not-amazing fits, to round out the application cycle. I'm still concerned that I might be restricting my applications a little too much... We'll see.

If anyone else has any input on this topic, please let me know; I'd love to hear from you.

 

[tkj]

...

 

[psychanon]

Hi all. I'm applying to clinical psych programs in the fall, but I have to admit that my interests in psych definitely lean more toward research than clinical work. I'm very excited about clinical training, but I am in no way planning to spend the rest of my life doing therapy full-time. I hope to eventually obtain a faculty position at a (preferably) strong research university, hopefully in Canada or the northern U.S.

That said-- what kind of schools should I be applying to? Clinical psych is quite competitive already, and programs at top research schools tend (from what I've seen) to be even more competitive. Is this true?

Is it possible to be competitive for academic positions if you obtained your training at a slightly less research focused school? (I'm not talking about Psy.D.s... I mean Ph.D. programs that are not brutally focused on research, like Windsor or Ryerson or Guelph as compared to Western and McGill).

I'd aim for the most research oriented school that you can get into that also has faculty meeting your interests. It's not that you can't have a research career coming from a more clinically oriented school-- it's that if you already know you want to do research, you should do everything you can to set yourself up to have a good shot at that. Research careers are very competitive. You'll need to have publications in good journals, and for that you need to be in a lab that has good data or good opportunities to collect data, and you'll need to be in a place where they value research. Yeah, research-oriented places tend to be more competitive, but they're also looking for different things. They're looking for people who are committed to research (and it sounds like you are), who have well-defined interests that match with their faculty, and that have the experience to back it up.

As a non-Canadian I don't know anything about the programs you listed.