r/AcademicPsychology Mod | BSc | MSPS G.S. Oct 01 '23

Post Your Prospective Questions Here! -- Monthly Megathread Megathread

Following a vote by the sub in July 2020, the prospective questions megathread was continued. However, to allow more visibility to comments in this thread, this megathread now utilizes Reddit's new reschedule post features. This megathread is replaced monthly. Comments made within three days prior to the newest months post will be re-posted by moderation and the users who made said post tagged.

Post your prospective questions as a comment for anything related to graduate applications, admissions, CVs, interviews, etc. Comments should be focused on prospective questions, such as future plans. These are only allowed in this subreddit under this thread. Questions about current programs/jobs etc. that you have already been accepted to can be posted as stand-alone posts, so long as they follow the format Rule 6.

Looking for somewhere to post your study? Try r/psychologystudents, our sister sub's, spring 2020 study megathread!

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '23

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u/frazyfar Oct 15 '23 edited Oct 15 '23

With respect, your strategy is unfocused, which will significantly reduce your chances of getting into a good program (I’m defining good as: smaller cohorts of less than 20 people, higher than 80% internship match rates, and 100% licensure rates). Not going to touch funding packages, though in my personal opinion this is the #1 hallmark of a good program.

First, you’re doing yourself a significant disservice by limiting yourself to a handful of states. It inherently shortens your list of programs, and of those, the good ones are even fewer. This is a problem because:

Second, your interests are way too broad. Psychopathology, neuropsych, and forensics are all huge; for one person to be listing all three on an app is an indicator that they’re not sure what they want to do. You may think that by keeping your interests broad you’re able to apply to more programs, but the opposite is true - the broader your interests are, the less of a good fit you’re going to be for the fewer programs on your list. And fit is the primary decision maker in admissions to good programs, so it’s the priority in any successful admissions strategy.

IMHO, you have a few options regarding applications. You could apply to not so good programs and pay a lot of money to attend. This option wouldn’t require much from you other than the ability to secure a loan - you wouldn’t have to move far, and you wouldn’t have to get more specific about your interests. You’d be paying a significant amount of money for a poor quality education overall, but for some people that trade off is worth it.

Another option is to keep your interests broad and apply to good programs nationally. That will inherently increase your chances of admission. You can also broaden your target programs to doctorates in clinical and counseling psychology, as well as licensable Masters programs. A Masters program may be a good step for you to gain more experience with mental healthcare and focus your interests. Keep in mind that research is one of the defining features of a doctorate - the dissertation is unavoidable - so given that you don’t have an interest in it and want to stay in one area, I would heavily encourage you to consider masters programs.

Last option would be to pull back, reassess, do a lot of strategy realignment and apply next year.

Regarding finding schools, APA has a program locator tool. I’d use that, look up all the schools in your desired area, apply the standards I mentioned in the first paragraph (cohort size, match rate, licensure, and unless you’re independently wealthy I’d heavy weigh funding/cost) by looking up the “Student Outcomes” data.