Due to competition and a 3.00 GPA you may have difficulty gaining admissions into a PhD Clinical Psychology program and may need to look at PsyD programs or another route.
For Clinical Neuropsychology it is a long process with a number of hurdles. First, you need to gain admissions and completed a doctoral clinical psychology program, preferably in an APA accredited program. Secondly, you need to complete an APA accredited predoctoral internship. Thirdly, you have to complete a two-year postdoctoral neuropsychology fellowship. Finally, it is highly recommended that you become ABPP Boarded.
When you have a low GPA it becomes crucial to have realistic expectations and apply primarily to programs where you have a realistic chance of gaining admissions.
There are programs that are very expensive and accept students with lower GPA and lower GRE scores and these programs tend to be exploitative and don't measure up to expectations. These programs make it easy to get into and hard to get out of or finish up and for students to gain success. Students may graduate but then find it difficult to pass the EPPP and become licensed.
Some of these programs are closing such as some of the Argosy, Alliant, and Forest Institute.
Some of the graduates of PhD APA accredited programs such as Fielding are not eligible to apply for licensure in some states because their curriculum is set up on mentor model with having courses on a monthly basis over four days of intensive classes and this model draws suspiciousness as not actually meeting APA guidelines.
However, some PsyD programs are high quality such as Denver, Baylor, Indiana, and others.
As a general rule, you want to gain admissions to a program with adequate faculty size to cohort class size which normally is 10-12 or lower number of students per class and 10-14 faculty members so faculty only have six or less advisees to mentor or have as RA and TA. If a program only has five full-time faculty and accepts 40-50 students per year and they have mostly adjunct faculty it most likely is very expensive and exploiting students.
Sadly, doctoral study preparation and application needs a Buyer Beware attitude using caution as you don't want to spend 6-7 years of your life with $200,000 or more in student loans without having success or obtaining licensure. Programs misrepresent information to applicants from many of the very expensive programs. APA and APPIC now has student statistics requiring programs to have accurate disclosure making it harder to misrepresent information to applicants. It does not make sense to attend one of these programs and only be able to work under your MEd license if you can't pass the EPPP and become a licensed psychologist.
There are many reasons for a low GPA and I have known of students who are very smart and gifted and had a lower GPA. However, the caveat for these students is finding a program that will accept them with a lower GPA due to competition with students meeting higher standards. Some students complete a postgraduate BA or MS Psychology degree and get accepted at a PhD Clinical Psychology program after reapplying to PhD admissions several years.
You are completing the Applied Behavioral Analysis MEd and some BCBA do very well with this credential. However, BCBA are now being regulated by Counseling or Psychology Boards requiring licensure under these boards for independent practice. It will be more difficult for teachers with MEd to gain BCBA credentials in the future without having LPC or Psychologists licensure.
