Difficulty of experimental psych programs?

[Psychology10530]

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Hey, how are you guys? I plan on applying to experimental psych programs next fall and I've been having a tough time gauging how difficult they are to get into. I got into a few psy d programs last year but then decided it was totally not the thing I wanted to do so I;m going in the exact opposite direction. I have a 3.33 undergrad GPA about two years of experience total (clinical setting for a year and research assistant for a year) and received around a 1200 on the GRE (700 on the quantitative) Can anybody give me a rough idea of what's being looked for on their part?

 

[Psychology10530]

bump

 

[Psychology10530]

can anybody help?

 

[Ollie123]

While generally less competitive than clinical programs, they can still be quite competitive. Obviously there is a wide range of programs and Stanford likely has different expectations than your average R2 state school. Your GPA is certainly on the lower end, your GREs are okay, but not great. Clinical experience probably won't count for much at an experimental program, so I'd focus on 1) Building up that research experience and 2) Consider a master's program to prove you can handle graduate coursework in the event you have troubles getting in.

More information might help you get more replies. Are you looking at small n studies of vision in humans? Research directly on clinical populations, just not treatment-focused? Dissecting rat brains? Experimental encompasses many things. Similarly, some thoughts on your actual career goal (i.e. what you want to do with the degree) might help, as well as the sorts of schools you are looking at (i.e. if you only want to go top-tier, the recommendations would likely be different).