How competitive I am for clinical psychology PhD?

Graduate School
1

Hello!

I am an undergraduate rising senior, currently thinking of applying to clinical psychology PhD programs. I know clinical psychology is very competitive right now, so I’m trying to adjust my expectations. I would really appreciate any feedback on how I could strengthen my application and where I might stand currently.

Academics
Major: B.S. in Psychology (joint university, top 20 in the US)
CGPA: 3.75/4.0 (I’m trying my best to maintain it)
Dean’s list with distinction for 2 semesters, dean’s list for 1 semester

Research
Research assistant for 2 labs: one as an experimenter, and the other for summer research (data collection, running experiments, and writing manuscripts). Same mentor for both labs.
Conducting independent research under my mentor’s guidance. I did a within-subject study in an area I want to focus on in graduate school, hoping to get the manuscript under review by the time I apply.
Publishing two meta-analysis papers, one as the first author and one as the second author. They are currently under peer review and should be published by the time I apply (fingers crossed).

Overall, I expect to have around 4 publications: two as the first author and two as a co-author. I might have one or two poster presentations later.

I’m doing as much as I can to have more research experience, the thing I’m worried about is that clinical psychology is becoming more neuro-based. Most of the stuff I’m doing is not neuro-related, I’m also not interested in it. So it’s one of my concerns, but I’m also looking everywhere to find mentors who have the same interests.

Other experiences
Interned in the counseling department at a high school and as a social worker for a community health program. Currently working as an international community assistant. I was mainly focusing on doing research in my junior year so honestly I do not have a lot of other experiences.

Recommendation Letters
I should be able to receive two very strong recommendation letters from my research mentors, but most grad schools require three. I’m thinking of reaching out to a professor from my psychopathology class to ask if they are interested in guiding me in another independent research project. I’m a little exhausted at this point after a whole year of just doing research, so I’m still hesitating, but we’ll see. It might not be independent research, but just an independent course to work on a psychopathology-related project.

Overall, I don’t know if my skills right now are enough for me to get into a clinical psychology PhD program. I would say the lack of experience is my biggest weakness right now, so I’m doing as much as I can to gain more. I’m just not sure where I currently stand or how competitive I am.

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

2

You should be having these discussions with your professors not a bunch of random strangers on the internet. They know the grad school scene; they know which of their students in the past have gotten in where; they know which programs are looking for students like you and which ones are moving towards Neuro.

Your timing is perfect. If the consensus is that you aren’t competitive for the type of program you seek, you’ve got senior year ahead of you so you can pivot. And if you ARE competitive, they can advise you on what to do to make yourself even stronger for application season.

Good luck.

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You are definitely doing everything right to make yourself competitive. Getting one or two of those papers accepted would be a really big boost (most places don’t count “submitted” and while abstracts/conference presentations are great and help pad the publications section of the CV, accepted articles are the coin of the realm). I know you think you will have 4 accepted by the time you apply, and if you do you will be very competitive, but things often take longer than expected (e.g. a paper could sit 6 months waiting for a review) so work toward the goal without thinking it strictly necessary (it’s not common among accepted applicants to have 4 published papers straight out of undergrad. In psych, having two papers straight out of undergrad would already be great. Most people have worked in lab a couple of years after undergrad which is how they get more papers.)

The GPA is important. A 3.75 could be excellent (U of Toronto) or average (Brown), but the prestige of the undergrad school can work for you even if the GPA in the context of that school doesn’t stand out.

You need stellar letters. If your supervisors are on your side, appreciate your work and can see you as a successful researcher, and you’ve already worked for them for at least a year, you’re good. For you third letter, it doesn’t need it to be a research mentor, it could be a prof from a Psych seminar where you made presentations, participated actively, wrote papers and distinguished yourself. (Ideally, you’d want the person to say you were one of the top students in a competitive/honors/upper level type class.)

Don’t worry about the neuro trend. Potential supervisors want you to have experience in the area you have applied to. Often important is experience with specific methods or software that the prof you’re applying to uses or thinks is useful to add to the lab’s approaches (on your CV list all technical methods and software, e.g. Qualtrics, CMA, SPSS, R (including any advanced stats techniques you know, if any) etc. any questionnaires you know how to administer/score, etc)

I wouldn’t worry about getting more clinical experience. You have that and if you are interpersonally strong, it will be evident in your letters and interviews. Given the number of applicants, and the general unselectivity of clinical experiences, most PhD programs focus on factors that allow them to identify uniquely qualified applicants, i.e. research commitment and experience, academic performance, and intellectual maturity (ability to talk and write fluently about your field because you’ve read a lot and thought a lot.)

Finally, as you likely know, sometimes admission is based on connections: e.g. your prof is friends with another prof in the same area, you present at a conference and have the opportunity to meet and impress the person, your prof talks you up to them etc. If you have the opportunity to go to a conference to present an abstract and meet potential future supervisors, that would be great. For your applications, I’d target research labs that investigate similar topics to your current mentors, identify collaborators of your advisors and people they cite, read their work and see if it interests you, and discuss with your mentor where you are thinking of applying (giving good intellectual reasons) and get their input.

Good luck! You are doing what you can and hopefully you will have success but as you likely know, it is absolutely the norm to have to apply more than once (many places have 3% acceptance rates and accept people who have worked full-time as a lab coordinator for at least a year after undergrad).

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Thank you!! I really appreciate it, I’ll try my best

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