Canadian student questions!

[CanPsychGirl]

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Hi everyone,

I'm soooooooo glad I found this forum! And my honours supervisor will be too... I won't be bombarding him with questions from now until December-deadline time 🙂

I'm a Canadian student who will graduate with B.Sc. specializing in psychology this spring; hoping to get into a clinical program for next fall, also applying to counselling psychology (backup #1), and some people have suggested social work (backup #2?). My main questions are for the clinical apps:

I'll only ask this once, since I know no one can really tell me if I'm going to get in, but perhaps I'm just looking for encouragement? My GPA (depending on which school, and how they calculate it) will be somewhere between 3.4-3.6 (not stellar), my GRE general combined score is 1310 (V-630, Q-680), and I haven't taken the psychology test yet (November 7). I worked in a clinical research unit for a summer, currently volunteer in a research lab at school and am completing my honours thesis this year. Will my GPA really bring me down, or do you think I can redeem myself with all the other aspects of my application?

My second question is to do with non-clinical masters programs - could I theoretically complete a masters in developmental psychology and then re-apply to clinical doctorate programs with better grades? Or will my chances be lower since my graduate education would not be clinical?

Any feedback appreciated 🙂

 

[thewesternsky]

In response to your GPA question-- that's not a terrible GPA. It is lower than the average applicant, so there are some schools where they might write you off because of it. Your chances are better if you did well in psychology courses and/or in upper-year courses. (If your low marks are confined to courses like chemistry and physics in Year I and II, and you've been getting A's in psych all along, the low overall GPA likely won't be a problem at all.)

I'd also be a little worried about that GRE score. It's not bad, but it's slightly lower than the average accepted score at most Canadian clinical psych programs. If you think you can improve it substantially (1400+), I'd re-take it before November. If you can't improve it in that time frame, don't worry too much-- it's only slightly under average, and won't get you written off everywhere.

In response to your last question: Yes, you can get an M.A. in something like developmental and then re-apply to clinical Ph.D. programs. In fact, I'm a Canadian student who did this very thing. However, be very very careful. There are plenty of potential pitfalls in this approach. If you do go this route, I suggest you make sure that your M.A. supervisor knows right off the bat that you don't plan to continue for the Ph.D.. Another (more common) option involves taking a year or two off and finding a full-time research assistant position, and then re-applying to clinical psych Ph.D. programs.

 

[CanPsychGirl]

Thanks westernsky. I'm curious what the pitfalls of going the developmental, then clinical route are. Do you mean that some supervisors would see it as 'abuse' (for lack of a better word) of the system? I.e. a student who wants to be in clinical, just using the developmental stream to boost her grades.

Also, you mentioned that my GRE scores a bit low for Canadian programs - did you mean to imply that some American schools would be more accepting? I've been trying to scope out some of the less competitive American programs that are close to the border.