homeschooled1

This is very true,and in fact being young is only a detriment to doctorate admissions (very different than undergraduate where it is positive) and NOT a positive thing. They do NOT want to hire a teenager, you're a liability at that age, that's the reality. My son actually passes off as a 20 something year old, however when applying age must be stated He hopes 18 will be easier than 16 when applying,at least he will be a legal adult.

tswift1

Update for any young applicants reading this thread

I applied to biomedical PhD programs as a 20 year old college senior and got interviews at nine out of the ten schools I applied to. All were top programs at prestigious institutions. Age wasn't an issue at all during the interviews, professors were happy to see young students excited about science and eager to start. I've only worked in one lab and never had anything published, but most professors were perfectly okay with that. Seemed like you're fine on research experience if you have proven that you are comfortable and confident in the laboratory environment, and that you are on top of things with your own research project. I've never done most of the techniques commonly used in the labs of professors I was interviewing with, but I wasn't even questioned about it. No one seemed to think I would have trouble getting trained or catching up.

I don't think I'm at a huge disadvantage being young, and I'm glad most of the professors and admissions committees agree. The Ivies were the most friendly, with a lot of professors telling me how happy they were to see young students like me. Stanford was the worst. Lot of rude professors, directed question-and-answer style interviews instead of conversations, and all the current students were old.

zobroward

there is no such thing as reverse discrimination! it is discrimination plain and simple.

juillet

tswift1 - I'm assuming that you were 20, and was nearing if not already 21 by the time you finished your BA and started graduate school. That's not that young - I was only a year older than that (21 when I applied, 22 when I started graduate school). Most people are in the 21-23 age range when they graduate from undergrad if they have followed the traditional high school -> college pathway. That's very different from a 17-year-old applying to PhD programs.

I believe that this young woman also evidenced that she didn't know what graduate school was about when she mentioned that she "received nothing but straight As in the last semesters of classes." Graduate school is not about getting straight As, and many students who were successful in the structured environment of undergrad are not necessarily successful in the very unstructured environment of graduate school. It requires a maturity and perseverance that a lot of 17-year-olds do not have. Clinical psychology PhD students have to do clinical hours counseling people. I would not want to be seen by a 19-year-old clinical student, nor would I want to be seen by a 23-year-old clinical psychologist. Will she even be able to see clients in her first year? She's a minor!

Cassandra108

I have a friend in grad school for clinical psychology. He is a fourty-something year old recovering crack cocaine addict with six years of sobriety. All of the psychologists at the treatment center where he first got clean were also in twelve step programs themselves. If she were going into a different field it would be less of an issue, but it is unclear to me what patient population she intends on working with and how her life gives her the depth to connect with them and earn their trust. I read recently in the NY Times that there is a small market for counseling prodigies, but other than that it is unclear to me what growing experiences she has had that shaped the way she perceives the world. To use the old cliche, graduate programs are looking for people, not numbers.

My advisor gives the same advice to zealous young achievers that she was given, "Don't feel like you have to rush, you'll never have the years again." It is more out of care that they do not get sucked too deeply into the idea that they have to be nonstop success that they forget to become well-rounded people who have lived full, varied lives.