Application question - any help?

[kbean]

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Hi there,

I'm gearing up for a second round of applications to clinical psych PhD programs, as I didn't get in last year.

So, long-term, I'd like to work with children. I'm positive about this. However, I've been working for the past two years since graduation in a research position where I work solely with adults--in fact, half of my research is focused on Alzheimer's and other dementing disorders. When I went on interviews last year, I was asked at every single one why I wanted to stop working with adults and study children instead.

So, here's my question: I am fascinated by a lot of different areas in psychology, enough so that I would be perfectly happy studying a non-pediatric population for the next 5-6 years of my life. However, if I apply to work with professors whose research interests match up a little more with what I've been doing at my job, will I ever be able to get an internship/position at a place where I'm working with children? In other words, am I lowering my long-term chances of working with children the longer I continue to commit to working with adults? My sense at interviews last year was that my research experience, strong GRE, good letters of rec, etc., were not enough to make up for the fact that I was up against people who had clinical or research positions where they worked with children.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me!

 

[KillerDiller]

A few thoughts.

1) Are you thinking you would like to be more of a clinician, more of a researcher, or both? If you are content to work with children in terms of clinical work only while in graduate school, then I think you will have more options when you apply than if you want to work with them in your research as well. This is because, in short, your research interests do not have to match your clinical interests.

2) If you do decide to apply again to do research working with children, make sure to address why you want to make the switch in your personal statement. If you can weave your change of interest into a narrative I think you will get a lot fewer questions about why you are shifting areas of concentration.

3) As long as you are not applying to the research-heavy internship spots, the majority of internship sites will be focused much more on your clinical experiences as opposed to your research experiences. If you find you can't get in with a professor doing research with a child population, you can always work with an adult researcher and do your practicums in schools and other centers where you will be working with children. When you are deciding where you want to apply, simply make sure all the universities offer practicum opportunities in these types of settings. FWIW, there are students in my program who do research with adults, but who have set themselves up to work with children by taking child-based courses and practicums.

 

[psyed4clinPhD]

Hi there,

I'm gearing up for a second round of applications to clinical psych PhD programs, as I didn't get in last year.

So, long-term, I'd like to work with children. I'm positive about this. However, I've been working for the past two years since graduation in a research position where I work solely with adults--in fact, half of my research is focused on Alzheimer's and other dementing disorders. When I went on interviews last year, I was asked at every single one why I wanted to stop working with adults and study children instead.

So, here's my question: I am fascinated by a lot of different areas in psychology, enough so that I would be perfectly happy studying a non-pediatric population for the next 5-6 years of my life. However, if I apply to work with professors whose research interests match up a little more with what I've been doing at my job, will I ever be able to get an internship/position at a place where I'm working with children? In other words, am I lowering my long-term chances of working with children the longer I continue to commit to working with adults? My sense at interviews last year was that my research experience, strong GRE, good letters of rec, etc., were not enough to make up for the fact that I was up against people who had clinical or research positions where they worked with children.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me!

Thanks for the great question! I was wondering about this too.

 

[kbean]

Thanks so much for the advice! I'm definitely content with working with children during grad school in a clinical setting only, provided that doing so would not be closing doors for me in terms of working with children in the future.

It sounds like it might be a good idea for me to apply to some programs where I'd be studying adult populations, but to make sure that their clinic/practica sites would allow me to work with children--or to apply to programs where the topic I would be studying would be applicable to both adults and children.