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- Jul 8, 2012
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Ok, but as Justanothergrad mentioned, what is your fit for a doctoral program if you're already ostensibly doing assessment (hopefully appropriately within the scope of your training and licensure) and therapy? What does the program have to offer you that you don't already do and what can you contribute to it?
Unless you've done more than what you posted, you really don't have much in the way of research experience, which is primarily what doctoral training would have to add to what you already do. It sounds like you collected test data for piloting/standardization/norming/etc. of psychometric instruments, which, while good, isn't really the level of research experience necessary for a doctoral program. What faculty are more looking for is that you're able to synthesize the literature into questions, specific aims, and hypotheses about a gap in the literature, design a study to investigate it, and pursue said study through completion, hopefully to a publication or at least a conference presentation.
Did you present any original research at these conferences you attended?
Thanks for the questions. I realize that school psychology isn't very well understood...we use neuropsychological assessments as part of work, in some states it is required by law to determine if a child has a disability, this kind of lack of knowledge about school psychology its kind of sad actually but I won't get into that. I work within my scope of practice, I just want to be clear on that.
I do not have a lot of research experience outside of my undergraduate thesis. As a graduate student I took research methods, and a whole host of other classes in stats, and research methodology but I did not develop my own research out of graduate school. My hope is to do so as part of a Phd program.
The reasons I want to pursue a Phd
1) Research Interest, I have questions, I want to pursue them, I want to contribute especially around the subjects of post traumatic growth and the development of research based interventions in conjunction with assessments, as well as other interests.
2) my aim is to become a practitioner that provides neuropsychological assessments to people beyond the age of 22, contribute to the field, and conduct research around my interests.
This list is not exhaustive, the people whom I work with clinical psychs and neuropsychs have encouraged me as well in this direction just based on my work, my interests, and their experiences in psych programs. I suppose I am posting here to get an understanding of what I may be lacking, is research experience the only thing you guys are seeing?