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In recent weeks I have had the same conversation with a number of aspiring graduate students and I am have been taken aback at the lack of long term thought most of these students have put into analyzing what the process of both grad school and beyond actually entails. Thus, I have decided to play devils advocate and write down all the important stuff I wished someone had told me prior to starting this process. I apologize if it comes off as cynical, but for those about to make this leap, I believe they should do so with their eyes wide open as to what they are signing up for.
(Full, well semi-disclosure. I am a 4th year PhD in a top 10 program located in major metropolitan area)
1. Getting In:
Getting in seems to the sole focus of most of the people thinking about going into clinical psychology doctoral programs and this point is well taken. Most programs (PhD's) have under a 15% acceptance rate and receive hundreds of applications for a very limited number of spots, generally 4-7 per class per year. I can not begin to explain what a pain the entire process of applying is and each school seems to go out of their way to make it even more complicated. The various essays, prerequisites, GRE's, Psych GRE's, letters of recommendations, transcripts, and application fee's. Just amassing all this stuff and hoping the schools receive it can seem daunting (one word: FEDEX). Then there is the psychology ambition tour you will embark on called interviews where you fly around the country (largely on your own dime), and then sweat it out till April when you hope a program picks you and offers you some semblance of funding. Whoo, but its all down hill from there right? Wrong, while getting into a program is no small feat, it is just the beginning.
2. The Best 5-8 years of your life:
Academia is the last bastion of indentured servitude. Don't believe me, ask the faculty (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1). Being a grad student is hard enough (have fun trying to live on that 22,000 stipend you feel so lucky to have gotten), however trying to get your PhD in Clinical Psych is even harder then you think it is. Combine all the classes the APA requires you to take for licensure, fulfill your hours as a TA or GA (if your so lucky), publish and try to build those clinical hours in order to give yourself half a chance of getting an internship and you will be lucky if you have time to sleep, let alone work in an attempt to stay solvent or maintain any other sort of healthy relationship with others or even (the kiss of death) have a child. Also this does not include the many hoops you will need to jump through during the process including but not limited too: completing classes, passing comprehensive exams, forming a dissertation committee, having your dissertation proposal accepted, writing and defending your dissertation, applying for internship, completing your internship, completing your post doctoral hours required for licensure, passing your state licensing exam, and becoming board certified (oh yes this is coming). Miss any one of these and you set yourself back at least another year. And you thought applying was a pain.
3. Internship:
This is a situation that looks as though it's going to get worse before it gets better. In 2009, 3825 applicants applied for internship, the most ever, and 846 applicants went unmatched. Further, due to the economic downturn, a significant reduction of funded sites occurred. So, while it remains to be seen for sure, it appears that the number of people applying for internship will continue to increase (think AT&T rollover minutes) while the number of sites is only decreasing. Spending 5 years jumping through hoops (see above) is no fun, especially when it's all for naught if you can't get an accredited internship, leaving you in serious graduate school purgatory for at least another year. If that wasn't bad enough, if you thought you maybe could get that academic position, maybe teach while you regroup and apply again or even after you get your fancy degree, you may as well wave goodbye to that fantasy. Between the hiring freezes and the lack of older professors retiring due to the economic climate "PhD's are stacked up like planes hovering LaGuardia" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/arts/07grad.html)
3. That Pesky Money Thing:
In my limited experience psychologists, and I'm generalizing here, tend to be averse to talking and dealing with money. Psychologist's practice to help people and that's very important. However, it's hard to help people when you can't make a living for yourself particularly after so many years of schooling. Any graduate student who is thinking about getting into this profession needs run these numbers for themselves, but here is quick overview based on stats you can easily find by googling around.
The 2009 APPIC survey of all the graduate students who applied for internship indicated that the average amount of debt incurred at the time of internship is $75,235 (SD = 65,782, median = $70,000) More than one-third (38%) reported a debt of $100,00 or higher, while 16% reported debt exceeding $150,000.
Further, according to payscale.com, in 2008 the mean salary of a clinical psychologist was $63,935 with a range of 50,000-80,000, depending on how long one had been in practice. However, it should be noted that even with 30+ years of experience, the mean salary was only 90,000 per year.
Thus, even if you got your loans at a reasonable rate (say around 5%, good luck), it would take close to 8 years of paying back $75,000 loans at $1000 a month to pay them off. Not to mention the nearly $20,000 in interest. A salary of 60,000 dollars generates about 3300 a month after taxes, minus that 1000 leaves you with 2300 a month which is less then 30,000 a year. This is not to belittle this amount of money, however compare those starting salaries to the professions with equal or less years of schooling: Medicine (Psychiatry 157,000), Law (80,000), MBA (73,000) and it makes you wonder how you can be making about the same amount after taxes and loans that you did during your time as an actual student. Also, this does not begin to include debt incurred as an undergrad or during/post internship.
4. The Great Beyond:
The information here is has largely been garnered by talking to other who have recently entered or have been in the field for some time. Once you have finished your degree, your post doc, maybe your fellowship and you have all those fancy degree's hanging in your parent's basement where you now live (kidding, sort of), you will be excited to know that your new status does not get you as far as it once did. We covered the world of academia (See # 2), and the world of private practice is not looking as shiny as it once did either. Insurance companies would much rather pay some LCSW or the coming soon degree, the Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) to do what you do, cause they will do it cheaper then you and they are far more abundant. Further, reimbursement rates are going nowhere but down. That is if you can navigate the literal maze of paperwork it takes to get reimbursed, and I do mean reimbursed (have you ever heard of cash flow). Which brings me to my final point. For all of you that are going to ignore what I have just written and get into all this anyway, do yourself a favor and walk over to the business school on your campus and sit in on some freshman econ and finance classes. Running a private practice is akin to running a business and that's not an easy thing to do. Why the APA makes you take 4 different classes on learning, but not a single class on accounting, finance, taxes, liability or basic econometrics is lost on me. Since it seems the majority of people want to run their own practice, but (and I'm speculating based upon my own experience) maybe shied away from those classes in college, it might not be such a bad idea to learn or refresh on what the differences are between and LLC and S-Corp are or how to fill out a Schedule C. I believe it will serve you far more then knowing all of Erickson's stages of development.
I hope this utter and complete triad has only served to increase your desire to go thought with your plans to pursue the PhD in counseling or clinical psych. I'm positive that I am not 100% correct on any single point, rather the idea is that these are things that should be considered and in my opinion are not being talked about either pre, during or post degree. So please, eviscerate my logic, call me names, or simply read this as a means of procrastinating a little more.
(Full, well semi-disclosure. I am a 4th year PhD in a top 10 program located in major metropolitan area)
1. Getting In:
Getting in seems to the sole focus of most of the people thinking about going into clinical psychology doctoral programs and this point is well taken. Most programs (PhD's) have under a 15% acceptance rate and receive hundreds of applications for a very limited number of spots, generally 4-7 per class per year. I can not begin to explain what a pain the entire process of applying is and each school seems to go out of their way to make it even more complicated. The various essays, prerequisites, GRE's, Psych GRE's, letters of recommendations, transcripts, and application fee's. Just amassing all this stuff and hoping the schools receive it can seem daunting (one word: FEDEX). Then there is the psychology ambition tour you will embark on called interviews where you fly around the country (largely on your own dime), and then sweat it out till April when you hope a program picks you and offers you some semblance of funding. Whoo, but its all down hill from there right? Wrong, while getting into a program is no small feat, it is just the beginning.
2. The Best 5-8 years of your life:
Academia is the last bastion of indentured servitude. Don't believe me, ask the faculty (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1). Being a grad student is hard enough (have fun trying to live on that 22,000 stipend you feel so lucky to have gotten), however trying to get your PhD in Clinical Psych is even harder then you think it is. Combine all the classes the APA requires you to take for licensure, fulfill your hours as a TA or GA (if your so lucky), publish and try to build those clinical hours in order to give yourself half a chance of getting an internship and you will be lucky if you have time to sleep, let alone work in an attempt to stay solvent or maintain any other sort of healthy relationship with others or even (the kiss of death) have a child. Also this does not include the many hoops you will need to jump through during the process including but not limited too: completing classes, passing comprehensive exams, forming a dissertation committee, having your dissertation proposal accepted, writing and defending your dissertation, applying for internship, completing your internship, completing your post doctoral hours required for licensure, passing your state licensing exam, and becoming board certified (oh yes this is coming). Miss any one of these and you set yourself back at least another year. And you thought applying was a pain.
3. Internship:
This is a situation that looks as though it's going to get worse before it gets better. In 2009, 3825 applicants applied for internship, the most ever, and 846 applicants went unmatched. Further, due to the economic downturn, a significant reduction of funded sites occurred. So, while it remains to be seen for sure, it appears that the number of people applying for internship will continue to increase (think AT&T rollover minutes) while the number of sites is only decreasing. Spending 5 years jumping through hoops (see above) is no fun, especially when it's all for naught if you can't get an accredited internship, leaving you in serious graduate school purgatory for at least another year. If that wasn't bad enough, if you thought you maybe could get that academic position, maybe teach while you regroup and apply again or even after you get your fancy degree, you may as well wave goodbye to that fantasy. Between the hiring freezes and the lack of older professors retiring due to the economic climate "PhD's are stacked up like planes hovering LaGuardia" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/arts/07grad.html)
3. That Pesky Money Thing:
In my limited experience psychologists, and I'm generalizing here, tend to be averse to talking and dealing with money. Psychologist's practice to help people and that's very important. However, it's hard to help people when you can't make a living for yourself particularly after so many years of schooling. Any graduate student who is thinking about getting into this profession needs run these numbers for themselves, but here is quick overview based on stats you can easily find by googling around.
The 2009 APPIC survey of all the graduate students who applied for internship indicated that the average amount of debt incurred at the time of internship is $75,235 (SD = 65,782, median = $70,000) More than one-third (38%) reported a debt of $100,00 or higher, while 16% reported debt exceeding $150,000.
Further, according to payscale.com, in 2008 the mean salary of a clinical psychologist was $63,935 with a range of 50,000-80,000, depending on how long one had been in practice. However, it should be noted that even with 30+ years of experience, the mean salary was only 90,000 per year.
Thus, even if you got your loans at a reasonable rate (say around 5%, good luck), it would take close to 8 years of paying back $75,000 loans at $1000 a month to pay them off. Not to mention the nearly $20,000 in interest. A salary of 60,000 dollars generates about 3300 a month after taxes, minus that 1000 leaves you with 2300 a month which is less then 30,000 a year. This is not to belittle this amount of money, however compare those starting salaries to the professions with equal or less years of schooling: Medicine (Psychiatry 157,000), Law (80,000), MBA (73,000) and it makes you wonder how you can be making about the same amount after taxes and loans that you did during your time as an actual student. Also, this does not begin to include debt incurred as an undergrad or during/post internship.
4. The Great Beyond:
The information here is has largely been garnered by talking to other who have recently entered or have been in the field for some time. Once you have finished your degree, your post doc, maybe your fellowship and you have all those fancy degree's hanging in your parent's basement where you now live (kidding, sort of), you will be excited to know that your new status does not get you as far as it once did. We covered the world of academia (See # 2), and the world of private practice is not looking as shiny as it once did either. Insurance companies would much rather pay some LCSW or the coming soon degree, the Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) to do what you do, cause they will do it cheaper then you and they are far more abundant. Further, reimbursement rates are going nowhere but down. That is if you can navigate the literal maze of paperwork it takes to get reimbursed, and I do mean reimbursed (have you ever heard of cash flow). Which brings me to my final point. For all of you that are going to ignore what I have just written and get into all this anyway, do yourself a favor and walk over to the business school on your campus and sit in on some freshman econ and finance classes. Running a private practice is akin to running a business and that's not an easy thing to do. Why the APA makes you take 4 different classes on learning, but not a single class on accounting, finance, taxes, liability or basic econometrics is lost on me. Since it seems the majority of people want to run their own practice, but (and I'm speculating based upon my own experience) maybe shied away from those classes in college, it might not be such a bad idea to learn or refresh on what the differences are between and LLC and S-Corp are or how to fill out a Schedule C. I believe it will serve you far more then knowing all of Erickson's stages of development.
I hope this utter and complete triad has only served to increase your desire to go thought with your plans to pursue the PhD in counseling or clinical psych. I'm positive that I am not 100% correct on any single point, rather the idea is that these are things that should be considered and in my opinion are not being talked about either pre, during or post degree. So please, eviscerate my logic, call me names, or simply read this as a means of procrastinating a little more.
haha, yeah...
