<p>Hello everyone,
I have been lurking on here for awhile but I have not posted yet. </p>
<p>Briefly:</p>
<p>I graduated from a state school in NY in May 2005 with an overall GPA of 3.974. During my senior year, I worked in an on campus psychology (not clinical) research laboratory. Additionally, during the summer of between my soph and junior years of college, I intered in a research/therapy clinic. I am not good at taking standardized tests but I am hoping to score around 600 on both sections. I have excellent analytical skills and in the practice GRE course that I took, I usually would score between 4-6 on both essays. I will also probably have excellent recommendation letters. Over the last year and a half I have worked in a sales position because I was unable to find a research lab job (that I desperatly wanted for the experience).I have no honors thesis and I do not have my name on any publications.</p>
<p>My questions are:</p>
<p>1) What are my honest chances of admission to PhD programs? When I look at the statistics for who gets in, the average age is much higher than mine (I am 23), and it looks like <2% who apply actually get in. Also, the Q score on the GRE is almost always above 700 (how finding the area of a triangle will prove that you can handle psych research stats beats me). I don't think I am even going to apply for PhD programs for the following fall (2007)....I was thinking of applying for psych MA programs, get the research experience and go from there (praying that I will gain acceptance to a true PhD program). I have friends who were already published and had their masters and only got into one or two PhD programs after applying for seven or eight. However, I have heard that unless you go to the same school for your PhD that you got your MA from, much of your time and credits will be "wasted", (you have to start from scratch).</p>
<p>2) Would I be better off working for a little bit longer (I am still applying to labs) and then applying for PhD programs in the fall of 2008? </p>
<p>3) I would really like to go into anxiety research. However, very few schools in the US seem to have anxiety labs. As far I know the only ones who do are Boston, UCLA, Stanford, Buffalo, Albany and UPenn. Should I really just focus on these schools or should I also apply for just general Clinical Psych PhD programs?</p>
<p>Sorry for the long post....But I am a little confused about these things.</p>
<p>-Flyer</p>