undergrad thesis or project & name on an article?

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[PsyDr]

is the lab clinical or experimental?

 

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[Ollie123]

Which would be closer to the kind of research YOU want to do, and would result in producing better research overall?

Do that one.

Unless your GPA is a complete disaster, 2 A's isn't likely to bring it up by a subtstantial margin so I see that as a non-factor. I'm not clear on where you are drawing the line between experimental and clinical work. Plenty of clinical psychologists (if not the majority) are largely doing experimental psychopathology work and treatment is not necessarily a direct component of their research. If you are referring to experimental as social/cognitive/neuroscience/etc. that is a different story, but you could still potentially apply constructs in those to a pathological population - some of the best work done in the clinical field has been largely based off more "basic science" work.

Edit: You replied while I was typing😉 If you have ideas that tie into work with one of the basic science professors at your uni, that fit well, go for it. Otherwise I don't think ANYONE will care if the study you ran was through your university or another one and whether or not you got graded on it. What matters is you got relevant experience.

 

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[cmuhooligan]

Thanks for the reply, Ollie -- I have just been gearing up for the thesis but this volunteer thing really seems like the better match. I could conceivably ramrod some crazy people into someone's cognitive lab, but that would take a lot of spin, whereas the volunteer lab is already into the crazy people. I just didn't want to abandon an "official" thesis if it was considered to be a crucial component of undergrad prep (since my original undergrad prep was pretty lame!)

Just FYI, you should probably be a little more sensitive in the language you use to describe the people you are planning on working with some day (e.g., "crazy people").

 

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Sometimes I guess I just get tired of everything being taken so seriously. I'm sorry if I've ever said anything that seemed insensitive. I'll bow out of here now.