Hey Everyone!
Im in my last semester of my bachelors and I have some time to kill before I start applying for PhD. Programs in Clinical Psychology. I have been a research assistant for 2 years and will (likely) be getting a second authorship out of it. I have been offered to spent the next year working on a new project where I will be the first author, amongst work on other projects that I can not get authorship for. Although the project is clinically oriented and I will be payed well, I still lack clinical experience. So my other option is to get a job as a Mental Health Technician at a hospital or clinic and start getting experience in the field (which at this time I lack).
What is more valuable for someone applying to a Clinical Psychology PhD. program?? Clinical Experience?? or a first authorship??
Thanks!
Well, it kind of depends on the type of clinical psych PhD you’re going for. A clinical science PhD program (like Michigan or UCLA) would certainly prefer the first authorship. A mid-ranked scientist-practitioner program would prefer the first authorship, too, unless the candidate has no clinical experience whatsoever.
Here’s the thing - and I’m glad you gave context. As you probably know already, the cycle for publications is a long one. Even if you join the project at the stage in which you can begin writing a paper right away (in other words, no analysis to do - which would be very unlikely), the actual writing of the paper takes several months and iterations with your co-authors. Then you have to submit to a journal. Even if you are lucky and get a revise/resubmit at the first journal you submit to, it can take three months or more for the peer reviewers to give you that R/R, and then another two months for you to revise it and resubmit it. If you are lucky, the journal editor accepts it right then without another round of review. So even in this ideal, best-case scenario, you’ve got 8-12 months from then time you start writing the paper to the time that you actually can put “Smith, J. (accepted)” on your CV.
More realistically, there’s a second round of review, which can take another 3 months; and/or the first round of review takes longer than 3 months; and/or your revision period takes longer than two months. Another realism is that the project probably won’t be ready for you to start writing the minute you show up. There will likely be some data cleaning and analysis to do, which in and of itself can take 3-6 months depending on how familiar you already are with the data. So a more realistic estimate is 12-18 months from the time you join the project to the time that you can actually put it on your CV as a completed task. (And that’s assuming that there are no complications with the data analysis or the project itself or in your personal life!)
I’m assuming you are starting this project in January 2016 after you graduate in December 2015. f you are applying for a fall 2017 start, you almost definitely won’t have anything to put on your CV by the time you apply to programs in November 2016-January 2017. You may not even have that first authorship to report if you apply for a fall 2018 start.
Still, more research experience can be valuable in it’s own right. Nobody expects PhD applicants to have any papers, let alone a first-authored one. So I circle back to my original argument: if you are going for top-tier clinical science programs, where the goal is to turn out researchers and professors in clinical psychological science, then the research is probably the better choice here. If you are applying to scientist-practitioner programs that are more oriented towards turning out clinicians, and if you have the long-term goal of becoming a practicing clinician, you’ll be less competitive without the clinical experience and should maybe go that way - but the research is a good choice too.
Thank you! You just make my decision a bit easier 