Little research experience success story

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neonapple

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Hey everyone,

I applied recently, and I think I vastly underestimated my chances of getting in since I had relatively little research experience despite a high GPA and high GREs. However, I had multiple acceptances to funded clinical PhD programs. It could just be the case that I was extremely lucky, but I thought this might potentially provide some hope or encouragement to those who are in a similar situation as the one I was in.

Basic info/stats:
High GPA (>3.8) from highly ranked undergrad
High GREs (>90th percentile for each section)
Applied while in undergrad, was majoring in psych

Research experience:
Slightly over 1 calendar year at time of application (volunteered in several labs at once though). This was all unpaid/volunteer, and it was basically data entry, recruiting participants when studies involved something other than intro psych students, and data collection/running participants.
Was working on an honors thesis
No posters
No publications (some work as 7th/last author on a manuscript, but we had barely started it, so I mentioned it but didn't draw much attention to it).

Clinical experience:
Volunteering at a day camp for kids with autism
Resident Assistant at my school for 2 years (put it on there since we got training in crisis intervention and extremely basic counseling skills)
Overall, not a lot, and I didn't get asked a lot about any of this in interviews anyway.

Letters:
I obviously never saw these, but I have reason to believe that one of them was absolutely phenomenal. The other two should have been positive, but I don't think they were particularly strong.

Info about places I applied to:
10 clinical PhD, all fully funded, tried to do a range of competitiveness (based on acceptance rates), and I applied to geographically diverse programs.

To sum up, I thought the largest weakness in my application was lack of experience and productivity, but things worked out well regardless. It doesn't seem like it's common to be able to get in with such little experience, but it does seem at least vaguely possible. I don't want to give people false hope if I just got very lucky somehow, but I thought I'd post this in case it's useful info for anyone to have.

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Congrats on the acceptance, it can happen with little research and/or research product. I'd say the biggest boon in terms of numbers are the high GPA and very good GRE scores. Those will definitely offset some in the lower end of the research scale. Having worked in multiple labs was also a good call.
 
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Congrats on the acceptance, it can happen with little research and/or research product. I'd say the biggest boon in terms of numbers are the high GPA and very good GRE scores. Those will definitely offset some in the lower end of the research scale. Having worked in multiple labs was also a good call.

Agreed, and congrats. My advisor actually pulled me aside and told me that the main reasons he'd offered me an interview were my GRE scores (with an underwhelming GPA) and personal statement. I did have 2 years of research experience as well, but you never know what may set you apart in a particular POI's eyes.
 
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