Psych D or Ph. D

[centersharpie]

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Ok... I normally hail from the pre-allo forum, but my friend is in a serious dilemma. She's a junior this year, graduating next year. Now this friend of mine is completely lazy and doesn't know what she wants to do. I am fearful that she is going to miss certain deadlines so I need some serious advice.

1. She can't decide between clinical and research. She is going to do research with a professor this upcoming semester. So I don't know if that will help change her mind or not.

2. She hasn't taken her GREs yet. So I need to know. When is it the best time to take them, and when does the application cycle for both programs start. She will be applying for the incoming class of 09.

3. What helped you guys pick between clinical and research?

4. What are the best east coast schools that have really good psych d and phd programs.

If you guys could help me out that would be amazing.

Thanks!

 

[RayneeDeigh]

If your friend is "completely lazy" then no amount of detective work on your part is gonna get her into grad school, and DEFINITELY will not get her through it.

The only way to choose between research and clinical degrees is to figure out what kind of career you want down the road. However, most clinical degrees require research anyway.

If she wants info on schools, the best book is the Insider's Guide which can be ordered from any major bookseller online.

Deadlines are in the winter (Dec-Jan). The best time to write the GRE varies depending on one's personal schedule. I wrote my subject GRE in April and General in June when I did it.

But honestly... while your heart is in the right place wanting to spark your friend's interest in getting started, she has to do it herself. If she misses deadlines she misses deadlines. The programs take so much work, the motivation HAS to come from within.

 

[centersharpie]

If your friend is "completely lazy" then no amount of detective work on your part is gonna get her into grad school, and DEFINITELY will not get her through it.

The only way to choose between research and clinical degrees is to figure out what kind of career you want down the road. However, most clinical degrees require research anyway.

If she wants info on schools, the best book is the Insider's Guide which can be ordered from any major bookseller online.

Deadlines are in the winter (Dec-Jan). The best time to write the GRE varies depending on one's personal schedule. I wrote my subject GRE in April and General in June when I did it.

But honestly... while your heart is in the right place wanting to spark your friend's interest in getting started, she has to do it herself. If she misses deadlines she misses deadlines. The programs take so much work, the motivation HAS to come from within.

I completely understand... she is lazy but she is extremely smart. It's the simple fact she doesn't think about the future until either the last minute or when its too late. I mean she got inducted into the psi chi honor society program at our school. She even told me herself that she is afraid of what her future holds. I'm just trying to nudge her in the right direction that's all.

Thanks for the advice.

Another quick question. Does she have to take both the general and the psychology subject GRE?

 

[RayneeDeigh]

I completely understand... she is lazy but she is extremely smart. It's the simple fact she doesn't think about the future until either the last minute or when its too late. I mean she got inducted into the psi chi honor society program at our school. She even told me herself that she is afraid of what her future holds. I'm just trying to nudge her in the right direction that's all.

Well that kind of sounds like she would struggle A LOT in grad school... you have to think about things years in advance. First years have to start recording their clinical hours for internships they won't apply to for at least four years. You could point your friend in the direction of the forum or ask her if she's thought any more about wanting to go to grad school, but I wouldn't nudge... she might not be ready. Applying in itself is a full-time job.

Another quick question. Does she have to take both the general and the psychology subject GRE?

It depends on what kinds of programs she's going to look at. Generally I think it's a good idea to take both so all your bases are covered, unless you know for sure that none of your schools require it.

 

[JockNerd]

she is lazy but she is extremely smart.

I agree with RD.... she doesn't sound close to being ready for grad school by your description. Being smart is great and all, but lots of people are smart. Being hardworking is vastly, vastly more important.

I'd say try to get her volunteering at a crisis centre or something similar, and volunteering as an RA. Both of those things are important to grad school applications, and doing them will let her know if this is for her.

 

[islandgirl1]

as a holiday present, get your friend :

Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology: 2008/2009 Edition (Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical & Counseling Psychology)

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

At this level, *EVERYONE* is really really smart, so the ones that tend to make it are the ones who work harder/smarter than others. Your friend really needs to do this work, or she'll be dead in the water. She may find it rewarding to find out more information, often people get sucked into the process. 😀

-t

 

[parto123]

At this level, *EVERYONE* is really really smart, so the ones that tend to make it are the ones who work harder/smarter than others.

-t

You guys are making things out to be far more difficult than they really are, but I guess that’s natural.

If you look at the average gpas and gres (and the colleges they came from) for phd/psyd students in most programs in the country, they really arent that impressive. If someone has a strong gpa, does decently on the GRE and gets some research, they wont have too much trouble getting into programs. They may not get into the very best programs, but they would get into decent ones.

Im sure everyone here knows people (i know i do), who are mediocre academically, and didnt do too much leg work investigating grad programs and still got into phd and psyd programs.

 

[RayneeDeigh]

If someone has a strong gpa, does decently on the GRE and gets some research, they wont have too much trouble getting into programs. They may not get into the very best programs, but they would get into decent ones.

That's really not what the stats say, at least not for clinical.

I don't think we're making it out to be harder than it is. In fact I think it's extremely important to know how hard it actually is. The shock of not getting in anywhere is a lot worse than the anticipation knowing that you have to put a lot of effort into appliations.

 

[scienceisbeauty]

I don't think anyone is making out to be harder than it really is. It is hard to get in. It's very hard to get into clinical psych programs. Sure we might all perhaps know mediocre people who got in -- but they are the exception, not the rule.
Plus there are far far more qualified people I know who didn't get in. It's the nature of the admissions procress.
A lot of people on this forumn work really hard, really really hard -- to even insinuate that we're "making it all up" and are "exaggerating" is somewhat irritating.

 

[parto123]

I don't think anyone is making out to be harder than it really is. It is hard to get in. It's very hard to get into clinical psych programs. Sure we might all perhaps know mediocre people who got in -- but they are the exception, not the rule.
Plus there are far far more qualified people I know who didn't get in. It's the nature of the admissions procress.
A lot of people on this forumn work really hard, really really hard -- to even insinuate that we're "making it all up" and are "exaggerating" is somewhat irritating.

Everyone wants to believe what they are doing is extra difficult or impressive.

I guess “hard” is all relative. For college, its hard to get into Cuny-QC, its harder to get into NYU, its even harder to get into Columbia, and its harder to get into Harvard.
While it is “hard” to get in, you guys are making it out to be Harvard hard. There are plenty of phd and psyd programs where the average gres are < 1300 and gpa< 3.5. While there is a lot more to the application than just numbers, it does give you a sense where your competition stands academically. Most programs aren’t filling classes with 3.9s/1580s.

What im saying is if someone does reasonably well academically and gets some experience, they will have a good shot at getting into a decent program, as long as they are not too picky. Yes, there are plenty of psychology programs that are super difficult to get into, but lets not pretend that every program is a “Harvard.”

 

[RayneeDeigh]

While it is "hard" to get in, you guys are making it out to be Harvard hard. There are plenty of phd and psyd programs where the average gres are < 1300 and gpa< 3.5. While there is a lot more to the application than just numbers, it does give you a sense where your competition stands academically. Most programs aren't filling classes with 3.9s/1580s.

In my opinion, it IS "harvard hard." In fact I would say it's even more of a crapshoot than getting into an undergrad program at Harvard would be because there are so many other requirements.

I had a good GPA, a 1440 on my GRE, and tons of research experience. I barely scraped into a program. I know plenty of people with better qualifications that didn't get in anywhere.

It's not a case of us wanting to appear superhuman and stroke our own egos. It is HARD to get into a clinical psych program. It's also healthy to feel that way beause it motivates you to work really hard on applications rather than take them lightly as your viewpoint would suggest.

 

[scienceisbeauty]

Parto, you seem to have some issue understanding the difficulty involved in admission to clinical psych programs. If it's really so "easy" then why in this forum alone do we have so many posters posting about their rejection from several programs -- when they have excellent qualifications otherwise?
Yes there are different standards for different programs. But just because that's true doesn't mean that it's not difficult to get in.
There's so much involved in getting in, to say that it's just a matter of doing a bit of reasearch and having high grades is just *shakes head* wrong on so many levels.
I'm not going to beat a dead horse so...whatever, buy what you want.

 

[KillerDiller]

Looking at the statistics, getting into Harvard as an undergrad is pretty comparable to getting into many clinical psych Ph.D programs. For the class of 2011, Harvard reports accepting 9% of applicants. Although the mean acceptance rate for clinical psych doctoral programs as of 2003-2004 was 21.2%, the median rate was only 11.1%, meaning the distribution was positively skewed. A full quarter of schools have acceptance rates under 6.2% (keep in mind, too, that this data is from three years ago and acceptance rates usually go down over time). Although, clearly, there are programs who accept a decent sized portion of their applicants each year, these are not usually what research-oriented students are looking for. If you want to get into a funded, university-based Ph.D program where you can do research as well as clinical work, you are likely looking at acceptance rates that are more often than not below 9%. And if you are looking at doing that, you're unlikely to be comforted by the possibility of admission into a professional school with higher acceptance rates.

 

[parto123]

Looking at the statistics, getting into Harvard as an undergrad is pretty comparable to getting into many clinical psych Ph.D programs. For the class of 2011, Harvard reports accepting 9% of applicants. Although the mean acceptance rate for clinical psych doctoral programs as of 2003-2004 was 21.2%, the median rate was only 11.1%, meaning the distribution was positively skewed. A full quarter of schools have acceptance rates under 6.2% (keep in mind, too, that this data is from three years ago and acceptance rates usually go down over time). Although, clearly, there are programs who accept a decent sized portion of their applicants each year, these are not usually what research-oriented students are looking for. If you want to get into a funded, university-based Ph.D program where you can do research as well as clinical work, you are likely looking at acceptance rates that are more often than not below 9%. And if you are looking at doing that, you're unlikely to be comforted by the possibility of admission into a professional school with higher acceptance rates.

Please, it is not Harvard, unless youre trying to get into the very best programs. It sounds as if youre under the false impression that Harvard has and average SAT of 1250.

Acceptance rates alone are almost meaningless. There are third tier colleges with acceptance rates lower than top tier schools, but when you look at their scores, you can clearly see which is more competitive. In other words, a 20% acceptance rate with an average score of 1500 isnt the same as a 20% acceptance rate with an average score of 1200.

So the comparison with Harvard is pretty off. A more suitable comparison would be second tier colleges with 20% acceptance rates, and decent scores and grades (like some cunys and sunys, which have 20% acceptance rates).
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandr...college/rankings/brief/webex/lowacc_brief.php

 

[Anon15]

Having successfully navigated both (Harvard + clinical psych) I can without a doubt say, in my experience, getting in a clinical psych PhD program was not nearly as difficult as getting into Harvard.

 

[Ollie123]

I do think you're ignoring the fact that GRE/GPA are not very important for admission. I know many schools very regularly turn down people with high GREs/GPAs because those aren't very useful compared to research experience. GPA/SAT is among the most important factors for undergrad admission...for graduate work you basically have to make an arbitrary, relatively low cutoff, and then its barely even looked at. Thus the statistics can be quite misleading.

However, I do think the way things currently stand is about right in terms of difficulty to get in, challenging but far from impossible. It is incredibly misguided if you think a decent GPA, decent GRE, and a semester or two of research experience will get you into anything but the bottom of the barrel schools. It won't even get you an interview at most places. The point isn't to trump up the difficulty of getting into clinical psych - the point was that the original poster's friend does NOT sound ready for graduate work. I mean...if being inducted into Psi Chi is supposed to be a marker of her academic success....Psi Chi isn't terribly meaningful and I'd say half the people in it have near-zero chance of getting in.

All that being said, I don't completely disagree with you. The issue is that there are idiots and mediocre folks in all fields. How many idiot MDs are out there? Tons. How many idiot lawyers? Also tons. I have friends in medical and law school (even at top programs) and there are plenty of people there who you have to wonder how they made it in. Some people just get lucky, or know the right people, or look good on paper and manage to put on a show for the interview. I wouldn't judge any field by the lowest common denominator, because there's always other factors to consider. I think if someone is reasonably intelligent, a hard worker, and plans well, its pretty reasonable to make it into a program for just about anything (clinical psych, medicine, law, engineering, business). Intelligent and hard working are, after all, surprisingly rare qualities these days😉 It might not happen on the first try, but I think anyone with the above qualities has a good shot of getting in if they're persistent. What really separates folks out is what they are able to do once they get there. Getting into x or y doesn't mean crap if you slack off once you make it in - there are plenty of folks with Ivy League educations who couldn't hack it once they got in and are now struggling.

 

[scienceisbeauty]

Parto's seeming disregard for the difficulty in getting in to clinical psych. Also more so Parto's underlying holier-than-thou vibe ...
But I have a friend who went to Princeton and who is stuyding clinical psych at Princeton who said getting into clinical was much more difficult.
For undergrad he said, and I quote: you need wicked grades and wicked SATs and good rec letters, but for graduate work you needed all three + awesome research + awesome personal statement (to him the personal statement for undergrad was taken very lightly)

But we, as researchers and scientists, know that a sample of 1 (my friend) or Anon15 is relatively...well, not that awesome.

Just thoughts on this...

 

[Anon15]

But I have a friend who went to Princeton and who is studying clinical psych at Princeton

Princeton has a clinical psych program?

 

[scienceisbeauty]

No, oops: my friend didn't want me to say which clin psych program he was in, he said it'd be "identifyin" -- but it's an ivy league school; so I picked a different one

 

[KillerDiller]

Please, it is not Harvard, unless youre trying to get into the very best programs. It sounds as if youre under the false impression that Harvard has and average SAT of 1250.

I don't think I'm under that impression at all. I actually got into Harvard as an undergrad (though I didn't go). I didn't, however, get into clinical psychology Ph.D programs the first time I applied. Like Ollie pointed out, you can't really compute your chances by GRE and GPA alone (I exceeded the average of the programs I applied to on both of these, yet they apparently chose to interview and accept applicants with lower scores). Everyone's experience is going to be a little different, I just thought I'd chime in with my point of view since the "getting in isn't all that hard" argument is difficult to stomach for me when I remember how painful it was two years ago to see all those rejections come in.

 

[parto123]

I don't think I'm under that impression at all. I actually got into Harvard as an undergrad (though I didn't go). I didn't, however, get into clinical psychology Ph.D programs the first time I applied. Like Ollie pointed out, you can't really compute your chances by GRE and GPA alone (I exceeded the average of the programs I applied to on both of these, yet they apparently chose to interview and accept applicants with lower scores). Everyone's experience is going to be a little different, I just thought I'd chime in with my point of view since the "getting in isn't all that hard" argument is difficult to stomach for me when I remember how painful it was two years ago to see all those rejections come in.

I clearly stated that its not that hard to get into a program if youre not too picky. Obviously I agree that there are many very very competitive and selective doctoral programs, but you guys must also realize that there are far more programs that are not too selective. And im not even talking bottom of the barrel. There are literally hundreds of phds and psyd programs. Here is a link to give you an idea

http://www.appic.org/downloads/APPIC_Match_2000-06_by_Univ.pdf

My point wasn’t that its easy to get into every program. I was responding to the posts on this board that were pretending that simply getting a doctorate in psychology was some type of Herculean task. If you think so then you haven’t researched enough schools.

And psychology isn’t like business or law which are very prestige/name whorish, and lock you out of decent jobs if you don’t go to top programs. In psychology, many of the top internships have students from bottom phd and psyd programs.

 

[biogirl215]

Yes, but many of those programs have really low internship acceptance rates, which can be the professional "kiss of death," leading someone to spend years and sometimes upwards of $100k without being able to complete a degree (most schools, even professional ones, require an APA/APPIC internship placement) or with a degree that is essentially useless.

 

[JockNerd]

I clearly stated that its not that hard to get into a program if youre not too picky.

It's not hard to get into anything if you have low standards. If you have a ton of cash, bonus! You can buy a degree in prettymuch anything, including MDs, one way or another.

I'm not sure how many people on the board aspire to mediocrity. It would not have been possible for me to attain all my goals if I had been less "picky" about what school I go to.

 

[deleted176373]

You guys are making things out to be far more difficult than they really are, but I guess that's natural.

If you look at the average gpas and gres (and the colleges they came from) for phd/psyd students in most programs in the country, they really arent that impressive. If someone has a strong gpa, does decently on the GRE and gets some research, they wont have too much trouble getting into programs. They may not get into the very best programs, but they would get into decent ones.

Im sure everyone here knows people (i know i do), who are mediocre academically, and didnt do too much leg work investigating grad programs and still got into phd and psyd programs.

LOL, Think again TONTO. To get into a competitive program takes ALOT of work. I may not be the smartest guy on the planet, but with a fair amount of research experience, a 4.00 GPA, and a 1300 GRE, I wasn't scraping the bottom of the barrel and it still took me 2x to get into a decent program.

If you don't mind being saddled with $100,000 in debt, then yes, getting in is not as difficult. To secure a spot in a university based Ph.D./Psy.D. program with full funding, well that's a different ball of wax.

 

[michalita]

Ok... I normally hail from the pre-allo forum, but my friend is in a serious dilemma. She's a junior this year, graduating next year. Now this friend of mine is completely lazy and doesn't know what she wants to do. I am fearful that she is going to miss certain deadlines so I need some serious advice.

1. She can't decide between clinical and research. She is going to do research with a professor this upcoming semester. So I don't know if that will help change her mind or not.

2. She hasn't taken her GREs yet. So I need to know. When is it the best time to take them, and when does the application cycle for both programs start. She will be applying for the incoming class of 09.

3. What helped you guys pick between clinical and research?

4. What are the best east coast schools that have really good psych d and phd programs.

If you guys could help me out that would be amazing.

Thanks!

Wow, this board really took off.

To answer the Original Poster's questions -- I would agree with many of those who said that your friend ABSOLUTELY has to do this ON HER OWN. She isn't going to lean on you to do the work through graduate school, is she?

She also could explore the possibility of getting a master's degree (there are some more research based, not just clinical/counseling) to expand on her interests, but then again, she'll have to decide between clinical, counseling, or research. In terms of deadlines, it would definitely do her some good to work a while to determine her interests and when she feels ready enough to do this work on her own (including the research), she will know what to do. At that point, you can be a very supportive friend and egg her on. Nudging her now really won't help her as much as stepping back and letting her take the responsibility for her own career.

Another point I'd like to make: Graduate school is really hard. Harder for most than undergrad. It's serious business, and you don't have a lot of free time, especially at the doctorate level, so she really has to be determined to do this.