preparing for grad school in clinical psychology -- Virtually Advising Q+A

The Q: I really want to get into a good graduate program in psychology (clinical studies). I'm still at a junior college and I've been looking at a couple of different schools and programs, such as UC-Berkeley and Pepperdine. I'm trying to take all the right classes and get the right degree. Which is better for clinical psychology, a B.A. or B.S.? Do you know of any organizations I should join or anything else I should do to help my chances?

The A: Whether your undergrad degree is a B.A. or B.S. does not particularly matter for graduate school admissions in psychology. What does matter is the content of that degree. You’ll want to have a solid background in developmental, social/personality, clinical, experimental, evolutionary and biological psychology, as well as a good grounding in statistics. Most accredited four-year universities will be able to provide you with a thorough psychology curriculum, and your junior college will probably be able to give you a good preparatory load of courses in introductory psychology and statistics that would help you in your grad-school application process.

Grad-school admission in clinical and counseling psychology is extremely competitive, as it seems you already sense. In addition to the steps you mentioned in your message, there are several things that you should accomplish in order to make yourself into a good candidate:

1.) Maintain at least a 3.5 GPA in your psychology courses, and at least a 3.3 cumulative GPA.

2.) Join the American Psychological Association (www.apa.org) as a student affiliate, and consider joining some other related organizations, such as your state’s psychological association (California’s is outstanding) and the American Counseling Association. These memberships will give you access to professional conferences and opportunities to network with professional psychologists. They’ll also allow you to enter student research competitions and keep up with the latest research in psychology.

3.) Join your local chapter of Psi Chi, the psychology honor society, as well as other academic honorary organizations. Also join your campus's psychology society or club. This will allow you to interact with peers who aspire to the same career goals, giving you colleagues with whom you can share information, attend seminars and take part in workshops on applying to graduate school.

4.) Get involved in research-related endeavors. You can volunteer as a research assistant for any psychology faculty member or doctoral psych student on your campus. By doing so, you’ll acquire invaluable knowledge about processes like study design, data collection and the use of statistical software such as StatView and SPSS. Moreover, working closely with faculty members will allow you to have a personal relationship with them that could translate to an outstanding grad-school recommendation letter, and could also help you develop your research interests.

5.) Speaking of well-developed research interests: Over the course of your undergraduate education, spend time exploring your research interests and discussing your research ideas with your major adviser, research mentor or another faculty member that you simply feel close to. Having a well-honed base of research interests is paramount in selecting a graduate program that’s suitable for you -- and in getting the faculty at that program interested in you as well. When picking out potential graduate students for admission, faculty want to work with an applicant whose experience proves that they’re interested in the faculty’s research projects, rather than an applicant who just wants to go to graduate school as a means to an end. Similarly, it’s imperative that you genuinely feel excited about what you plan to study for at least the next four years (five to seven in most cases) after you graduate college. Your dissertation-writing process might be vastly more difficult if you’re not interested in the content of your work.

6.) Get some useful clinical experience. Get a part-time or volunteer job at a psychiatric facility; volunteer as a counselor at a crisis hotline, as a peer mentor at the student health center or as a student counselor at the career center; or become a resident assistant. Having hands-on work experience with people in need is essential in order to be considered for a good doctoral program in psychology.

7.) Prepare well for your GRE -- and, for some programs, the GRE Subject Test in psychology. Score requirements vary from grad school to grad school, but most programs want someone who scores at least a 600 on each portion of the general test (verbal, math and analytical). If standardized testing is not your strong point, I suggest taking a prep course with Kaplan or Princeton Review to help you prepare.

8.) In addition to taking your required psych courses, make sure that you diversify your college curriculum. It will make you a better candidate for graduate study, and a more erudite person in general, if you have a broad-based education outside of psychology. So take classes in gender studies, biology, business, economics, history, anthropology, architecture or whatever else floats your boat! Remember: College is not just about preparing for graduate school, and it’s not just about exposing yourself to different fields of study. It’s also there to give you the opportunity to learn more about yourself and the world around you.

On that note, if you get the opportunity to have a unique educational experience -- such as studying abroad, joining an interesting extracurricular organization or spending the summer at an intriguing internship -- take it! You will learn a lot about yourself, and more pragmatically, it’ll make you a more compelling candidate for graduate study, particularly during interviews.

Also make sure that you’re involved in extracurricular activities outside of psychology. Your graduate program will want to know that you have a life outside of psych, and that there are other hobbies and interests that you enjoy pursuing.

9.) Know the difference between a Ph.D. (scientist-practitioner) and a Psy.D. (practitioner-scholar) degree, and develop a sense of which of the two you find more appealing, both personally and professionally. If you need more explanation about this particular matter, please feel free to write back, and I'd be happy to go into more detail.

As for selecting graduate programs, I also have a few suggestions: First, when the time comes for you to apply to grad schools, consider that there is no single “best” program in clinical or counseling psychology. Each program is different: Some emphasize clinical skills over research, while others emphasize research over clinical skills, and others offer you a balanced exposure to both aspects of training. Some programs have a collegial atmosphere, while others emphasize more formal interactions between faculty and students. Some programs are located in bustling cities, while others are in small towns or rural areas -- and keep in mind that geographical location does affect the flavor of the program, because it will help determine the kind of population that you would be working with as a therapist-trainee.

You can get a sense of a graduate program’s flavor by visiting it in person, reading about it on the Internet (most programs have a detailed description on their universities' Web sites) or, failing that, by finding out when you attend an interview. You could also read "The Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology,” which provides a good synopsis of graduate programs in clinical and counseling psychology. The APA also regularly issues a list of accredited programs that is accessible from its Web site.

Second, it’s very important that, no matter which doctoral program in clinical or counseling psychology you select, you make sure it’s APA accredited. While there are certainly good programs out there that are not APA-accredited, the chances are much better that you’ll receive quality training as a psychologist in a program that has been accredited by the APA. The APA governs the amount of clinical and research training and the kind of coursework that one should obtain in order to be qualified for an APA-approved pre-doctoral internship, which paves the way toward licensing and qualifies a psychologist for most jobs in the field.

Third -- and last! -- keep in mind that a college's undergraduate reputation generally has little to do with how good its graduate programs are. Graduate training in a given program is guided by the leadership of the small group of faculty that shape that particular department, and by the research and coursework its faculty members produce. This means that a graduate program at a school with an established reputation as a great undergraduate institution may not be any better than a graduate program at a school that’s lesser-known in the undergraduate world. As I stated earlier, it’s important to research the specific graduate program you’re interested in, not just the university as a whole.

While it may seem that you have quite a lot to do (and learn) in the next few years, as a motivated young woman with a passion for the field, you can definitely accomplish it. If you have any more questions or need clarification on some aspects of this e-mail, please feel free to write back. I wish you the very best of luck in this exciting process! Whether you pursue this path or another one, you have a fascinating journey of learning ahead of you.

Best wishes,

—Myles Helfand, General Advisor

Response written March 2, 2005.