Chances for Psychology Ph.D. Programs

Graduate School
1

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>I am applying to several psychology Ph.D. programs for admissions this fall and would like to receive some opinions as to how an admissions committee would evaluate me. </p>

<p>I received my A.A. degree through my local community college with a 3.91 GPA, graduating summa cum laude.</p>

<p>I took 27 credits through Brigham Young University all upper division courses in genetics, english, and psychology, achieving a 3.33 GPA. </p>

<p>I graduated from an online college, Charter Oak State College, with a local GPA of 4.00 and received an "A" on my capstone course/paper.</p>

<p>All in all, my cumulative GPA is around 3.63 assuming that I get A's in the courses that I am currently taking. </p>

<p>On my GRE's I scored 770 on the quantitative and 400 on the verbal. I am retaking this exam tomorrow and will post new scores (hopefully better).</p>

<p>My research interests concern relating the study of microexpressions to conformity. I would like to get my Ph.D. in clinical psychology/applied social psychology. I have done my own research into microexpressions independently and have written an unpublished 30-page paper on the topic. My research was conducted using 150 high-school students. </p>

<p>I have three professors writing me letters of recommendation: 1) an English professor who says that I am one of the more outstanding writers that she has ever taught, 2) the professor who advised me during my capstone paper, and 3) a clinical psychology professor who has been in the profession for 60 years (I scored the highest, a 98, on his midterm). </p>

<p>In addition to these pieces of information about me, I also want to add the following:</p>

<p>1) I am a member of Psi Beta psychology honor society.
2) I am 16 years old and hold my B.S. degree.
3) I have been accepted into a Master's program in Human Sciences that I will begin this Spring before I would begin any psychology Ph.D. program if accepted.
4) I received 80 college credits through AP examinations while in high school.
5) I am graduating with about 150 college credits plus 15 graduate level credits that will be completed before I begin any doctoral program in the fall.
6) I am a professional tutor in mathematics at my local community college, tutoring all levels of mathematics.
7) I have taken 51 credits in psychology, spanning the concentration in both depth and breadth. </p>

<p>The schools that I am interested in are as follows in no particular order:</p>

<p>University of Maryland Baltimore County
West Virginia University
University of Illinois
University of Iowa
University of California San Diego
University of Arizona</p>

<p>Please let me know how these schools would view my application based on the stats that I have provided. Please also let me know of any other programs that you would suggest that I look into with my statistics (programs that have reasonable tuition and allow the opportunity to serve as an instructor for an introductory psychology course).</p>

2

<p>You have some good stats but for clinical programs you pretty much need a 1300 to even be considered. Also, you will probably need some more research experience to be seriously considered by doctorate programs. I have no idea if graduate schools will frown upon admitting a 16 year old. Clinical programs might be uneasy about having a client practice psychotherapy (even under supervision) before they are legally an adult</p>

<p>But I’m just another applicant so what do I know :P</p>

<p>Good Luck!</p>

3

<p>Your GRE Verbal is on the low end, I understand that age might be your issue but if you get your GRE Verbal to at least 550 (“average” in every grad school), you will have a good chance. Your stats is excellent, especially with your age and that shows maturity.</p>

<p>Seconding cogneuro, you should 1) get higher Verbal GRE and 2) ask advisors of those 6 universities if age matters at all.</p>

4

<p>Definitely need a lot more research experience and higher GRE for UCSD–and take note that UCSD only offers an Experimental Ph.D. program. They have a joint Clinical Ph.D. with SDSU, though it’s one of the most competitive in the nation in terms of selectivity and number of applicants.</p>

5

<p>Definitely need more research experience and clinical experience would be great too. Those rec letters are also not the best: two from professors who will say ‘this student did well in my course’ is not ideal. If you could work in a lab, get more experience, and get a rec letter from that PI, you would do a lot to improve your application.</p>

6

<p>I retook the GRE today and achieved a 790 quantitative and 560 verbal. With this new information, where should I apply? During my master’s program this spring I will be taking 5 graduate classes in counseling and will have the opportunity to coauthor a publication in experimental psychology. This publication has something to do with learning in dogs and does not interest me at all, should I still participate in the study, just so that my name appears on a publication?</p>

7

<p>Yes, you should work on the study, but no, a publication doesn’t really matter.</p>

8

<p>Here are my most recent scores:</p>

<p>790 Quantitative (if I had 10 more seconds, it would have been an 800)
560 Verbal (very happy!)
5.5 Analytical (did an amazing critique on the argumentative)</p>

9

<p>(Background: I’m a first year in a School Psychology PhD program with a child clinical focus)</p>

<p>Your new GRE scores should get you past the first round of screening, which is generally what GRE scores and GPA are most used for in clinical programs.</p>

<p>Strongly disagree with NeuroGrad–publications are VERY helpful in the process, and you should definitely try to get authorship, even if it isn’t directly related to your goals! Relatedly, have you considered revising and submitting your unpublished research for publication? That might help a lot, too, but keep in mind, that there’s pretty much no chance of it actually be published before you apply (the publication process can be really drawn out–peer review alone takes at least two months, often more, and manuscripts are rarely accepted without revisions). Even if the paper(s) under review will help your app, though.</p>

<p>The number of credits you’ve earned (APA and otherwise) probably won’t matter. Both the online schooling (clinical psych is generally not that supportive of only training) and your age will probably both hurt you at clinical programs, maybe less so at social psych ones. As someone else said, your age may present a liability when seeing clients. I might try contacting individual schools about this.</p>

<p>Is your MS program online or back and motor? If the latter, you might consider finishing out the program, allowing you to turn 18 and get a lot of additional research and maybe some clinical experience. Research experience (including and especially presentations and publications) is key when applying to psychology PhD programs, especially some of the very research heavy programs, like Arizona, UMBC, and UCSD/SDSU (referring to clinical specifically–which clinical programs are yopu considering and which social programs are you considering?). If you still at 18 when you finish your masters or you don’t get in the first time around, consider working for a year or two as a paid research assistant. It’s a common route.</p>

<p>Good luck! What you’ve accomplished at your age is quite impressive!</p>

10

<p>Wait, if you took the GRE yesterday you wouldn’t have the AW score back yet. </p>

<p>Is the Master program you are doing in spring a year long program or just a half year? If it’s a year program, you will still be in it next fall and won’t be able to attend a fall term PhD program. </p>

<p>You can talk about your independent research in your SoP (btw, about that, was that supervised? If so, why aren’t you using your supervisor as a LoR writer?) but you really need actual clinical or supervised research experience to be a competitive applicant. The number of credits you have (especially high school AP) is not something PhD programs care about, as long as you’ve fulfilled their requirements.</p>

11

<p>psych_ - He needs research experience for sure, but publications are secondary. Should he go work in a nutrition science lab (not sure why I came up with this example!) if it means he can get a publication? No, that won’t help him nearly as much as working in a clinical/social psych lab, even if he doesn’t get a publication. </p>

<p>Do projects and work in labs that are as related as possible to your research interests, regardless of whether you can expect a publication or not. If you get a publication, great. If not, you can still say “I worked in the lab of well-known person X doing this, this, and this,” which is what admissions want to see.</p>

12

<p>No, you shouldn’t get off the wall research experience with no relation to what you want to do and ultimately, it is the experience that matters. Experience in what you want to do is very helpful, I completely agree. HOWEVER, the OP’s potential publication would still be in psychology, and showing the ability to produce results of your research is also key. I know I’ve gotten a lot of opportunities in grad school because I came in having already presented and published. The publication process is a VERY important part of research (if no one sees your results, they can’t do anything with them), and publishing teaches how to do that. A published researcher is a researcher that has a known ability to produce results viewed as meaningful by peers and to write, both which are very important. So, yes, the OP should def. get experience in his area of interest but getting experience publishing, even in another area of research, is almost very important, ESPECIALLY at the research heavy programs the OP is applying to.</p>

13

<p>Just to comment on one issue brought up, my Master’s program is offered traditionally at a physical campus that trains with a more clinical emphasis than a research emphasis. My school offers one of the only (maybe the only) Master’s programs in thanatology (the study of death and dying).</p>

14

<p>Also, I have applied to UMBC and I am thinking of applying to University of West Virginia. I think they will be the only two for this year; please let me know of any other schools that you believe I would have a chance to get into with my current statistics.</p>