<p>It’s not too late to <em>apply</em> to PhD programs, but I do believe it’s a little too late to figure out what subfield you want to enter and then apply. </p>
<p>A few notes:</p>
<p>1) In my experience, many professors will encourage their more promising students to get a PhD in their field, even if it’s not 100% in the best interests of the students they are advising. There’s a strong desire on the part of professors to generate the next generation of scholars and to see their best students go on to how they measure success, which is academia. I wasn’t in the room when your professor advised you to consider a PhD program, but it’s possible that he advised you of that given your stellar stats. However, great stats/potential doesn’t necessarily translate into a NEED for a PhD.</p>
<p>Basically speaking, if you want to be a professor of psychology, you should get a PhD. If you want to be a research scholar in psychology - either at an academic institution or some other type of place, such as a military/government research lab or a think tank, then you should get a PhD. If you don’t want to do either of those things, the value of a PhD is far smaller for you. Possibly you should consider a PhD if you want to be a counselor, but there are many ways to be a counselor/talk therapist. Depending on the way you want to do that, getting an M.Ed in school counseling, an Ed.S in school psychology, or an MSW/LCSW may be the way to go as opposed to a school/clinical/counseling PhD.</p>
<p>2) Don’t get a PhD because you don’t want to pay for a master’s. The trade-off for funding in a PhD program is WORK. This may seem self-explanatory, but the reason they are paying you a stipend is because they expect you to work for it, and work for it you will. If you want a job that only requires a master’s, just get a master’s. School counselors don’t have to go to Harvard to get a job, so you could likely go to the flagship public of whatever state you are from and get a relatively inexpensive M.Ed, and still get hired. (Becoming a school guidance counselor was also my plan before I decided to get a PhD in psychology.)</p>
<p>However, taking counseling psychology has made me less sure, and in addition, I was discussing my options with a professor and he said I should really seriously consider switching my plans to a PhD program. In school counseling, since it is pre-professional, the schools that I have contacted offer little prospects for graduate aid, and in the best case scenario, I would still have to take out loans for living expenses. On the other hand (and I’m not assuming this is so), I may be competitive for aid at a doctoral level in a research psychology field, since I have a very high GPA, research, TA experience and looking like good GRE scores, plus at least one excellent rec letter and other letters should be solid enough. </p>
<p>So the question is, what do you want to do?</p>
<p>1) If you don’t know the answer to that question even vaguely, postpone your applications. Figure out if you actually want to be a professor and/or a research scholar in psychology.</p>
<p>2) If you don’t know what subfield you want to apply in, postpone your applications. Not only do you need to figure that out but you need time to develop a compelling personal statement to explain why you want to study in that subfield. It is difficult enough to transfer PhD programs within subfields; trying to transfer between subfields (like from developmental to cognitive or cognitive to social) is nigh impossible unless they’re closely related or the research you do has applications in both. You will be seen as wishy-washy. This is not a process you can rush through in a couple of weeks so you can begin to prepare applications for December/January; psychology apps are relatively early because most subfields interview. There is NO SHAME in taking a year or two off, and many successful PhD applicants do so.</p>
<p>Some PhD programs (like mine) do require a professor to fund you, and others don’t. However, in all psych programs, you will need to be a research match with at least one professor in the department. This will take some time rifling through papers that interest you, finding out who wrote them, and then tracking them down. Conferences are also a great way to chat with professors who could potentially be mentors/PIs at schools.</p>
<p>A suggestion is to apply for research coordinator/lab manager positions in large research labs at universities. Students who take those positions are very successful in getting admitted to PhD programs in psych after 2-3 years of working. Many of them get to present at conferences and even coauthor papers with members of the lab. Our lab manager of 2 years just began her first year here as a PhD student, and our manager before her spent 3 years here and then went off to UNC-Chapel Hill’s clinical program.</p>