Three years post B.A. in Psychology. No research experience. Interested in pursuing a Doctorate's. Where to go from here?

[NewGuy25]

Hi All,

I am looking for advice on how to move forward.

I am 25 living in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, California.

During my time in undergrad at a UC, I never really considered pursuing graduate school. At the time, I 100% felt that I was destined for a career in Law Enforcement. Because of this, I did not participate in research and rather spent my time volunteering with campus organizations. I graduated from undergrad with a double major (Criminology and Psychology) and a 3.423 GPA (Unfortunately 3.118 in Psychology). After spending about a year and a half working for my family I went on to do some security work still thinking Law Enforcement was the goal. I eventually did a complete 180 and decided Law Enforcement definitely was not what I wanted. I am currently working at nonprofit in a case management position.

I reflected on my experiences so far and have decided I want to pursue graduate education in Psychology. I would like to eventually become either a clinical psychologist, working in a hospital setting or an organizational psychologist. I am just fascinated by the assessments and diagnoses used in order to develop plans to assist clients in reaching a specified goal (whether it be in a mental health setting or a business/company setting). Working with people to overcome obstacles and achieve these goals sounds worthwhile to me. I am willing to put up the 4-10 years necessary for schooling, internship, fellowship, licensing etc.

I am currently stressfully trying to determine how to move forward and make myself an at least somewhat competitive applicant for a decent PsyD/PhD program. I know I am at an immense disadvantage considering my GPA and lack of relevant experience. I know I'm not a competitive candidate, I know I messed up and did not use my time in undergrad wisely. But I am now seeking advice on how to get on the right track in order to be competitive and obtain my Doctorate's, hopefully before I get too old.

I know I have a few options on how to move forward: apply to a Psychology Post-Bacc program in order to get better Letters of Rec and to develop clinical and research experience, go through a master's program followed by PsyD/PhD, or go obtain research experience at a local lab. Though I am not certain how likely I will be able to exercise any of the options considering the lack of experience, gpa, and letters of rec.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank You,

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[summerbabe]

I would like to eventually become either a clinical psychologist, working in a hospital setting or an organizational psychologist.

Even though clinical and IO are both in psychology, they have very different focuses and while I don’t know much about IO, I imagine the prep needed to get into an IO program is probably gonna be different than a clinical program. The average clinical psychologist would be lost trying to do IO consulting for an organization and an IO psychologist is not legally allowed to treat patients since that would fall under the vocational psych subfield of clinical psych. Mitch’s guide for applying is likely a good resource to help your process, as well as networking to learn more about this field beyond your initial interests.

If you decide clinical/counseling psych is the path for you, I think either a Master’s program with research emphasized (e.g., participation on a research team that is actively trying to publish + completing an original thesis) or becoming involved with a lab could be good options for you.

The goal would be able to get hands on experience and hopefully contribute to some accepted posters and/or peer reviewed articles. If you’re going down the RA path (whether paid or unpaid), be really up front with the head of the lab about your goals so you don’t spend 2 years only managing data or helping run studies as that likely won’t boost your application enough, at least for getting into the average funded doc program.

The last thing I’ll mention is that since you’re in California, PsyD programs dominate the landscape and they are of varying degrees of quality in addition to leaving people with $200,000+ of student debt which the average psychologist salary would not justify.

 

[MAClinician]

Definitely need to figure out if you want clinical or I/O psych.

But if you decide to try the RA Route...this was recently posted:

Research Coordinator opportunities at San Francisco VAMC

Hi! I'm hiring again! Come work for me! Researchers from the San Francisco VA Health Care System and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) are recruiting paid, full-time research coordinators for multiple clinical trials and feasibility studies evaluating treatments for Veterans...

forums.studentdoctor.net

 

[Fan_of_Meehl]

Hi All,

I am looking for advice on how to move forward.

I am 25 living in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, California.

During my time in undergrad at a UC, I never really considered pursuing graduate school. At the time, I 100% felt that I was destined for a career in Law Enforcement. Because of this, I did not participate in research and rather spent my time volunteering with campus organizations. I graduated from undergrad with a double major (Criminology and Psychology) and a 3.423 GPA (Unfortunately 3.118 in Psychology). After spending about a year and a half working for my family I went on to do some security work still thinking Law Enforcement was the goal. I eventually did a complete 180 and decided Law Enforcement definitely was not what I wanted. I am currently working at nonprofit in a case management position.

I reflected on my experiences so far and have decided I want to pursue graduate education in Psychology. I would like to eventually become either a clinical psychologist, working in a hospital setting or an organizational psychologist. I am just fascinated by the assessments and diagnoses used in order to develop plans to assist clients in reaching a specified goal (whether it be in a mental health setting or a business/company setting). Working with people to overcome obstacles and achieve these goals sounds worthwhile to me. I am willing to put up the 4-10 years necessary for schooling, internship, fellowship, licensing etc.

I am currently stressfully trying to determine how to move forward and make myself an at least somewhat competitive applicant for a decent PsyD/PhD program. I know I am at an immense disadvantage considering my GPA and lack of relevant experience. I know I'm not a competitive candidate, I know I messed up and did not use my time in undergrad wisely. But I am now seeking advice on how to get on the right track in order to be competitive and obtain my Doctorate's, hopefully before I get too old.

I know I have a few options on how to move forward: apply to a Psychology Post-Bacc program in order to get better Letters of Rec and to develop clinical and research experience, go through a master's program followed by PsyD/PhD, or go obtain research experience at a local lab. Though I am not certain how likely I will be able to exercise any of the options considering the lack of experience, gpa, and letters of rec.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank You,

Just a bit of context about the use of 'assessments' to inform treatment planning in everyday practice. I know almost no one who sees psychotherapy clients on a full-time basis who regularly uses what I would consider significant 'whizz-bang' assessment / testing instruments like the MMPI or PAI. I'm sure they're out there and I know they can be useful for the occasional clinical case. But, routinely, these days 'assessment' involves basically self-report symptom inventories (checklists) like the PHQ-9, GAD-7, PCL-5, etc. And, while these basically give you quantitative and norm-referenced info regarding self-report of symptoms (plus response bias--e.g., over- or under-reporting of symptoms), in my experience they don't really give you a whole lot more info (or resolve any 'mysteries') than a good solid clinical interview. Just saying this to disabuse you of any notions that (outside of maybe specializations like forensic or neuropsychology), the average practicing clinical psychologist who sees clients doesn't really have the time or inclination (generally) to routinely use tests that 'solve mysteries' or provide exciting info about the case--at least in my experience.

 

[R. Matey]

I reflected on my experiences so far and have decided I want to pursue graduate education in Psychology. I would like to eventually become either a clinical psychologist, working in a hospital setting or an organizational psychologist. I am just fascinated by the assessments and diagnoses used in order to develop plans to assist clients in reaching a specified goal (whether it be in a mental health setting or a business/company setting). Working with people to overcome obstacles and achieve these goals sounds worthwhile to me. I am willing to put up the 4-10 years necessary for schooling, internship, fellowship, licensing etc

Keep in mind that I/O psych doesn't do this. Think more sitting at a computer all day running statistical models so you can report to your manager that x and y did z under alpha conditions when controlling for beta, gamma, and epsilon. I/O psychs tend to work for large companies and many of them don't even have Ph.Ds. Those that do are in academia or working at very large corporations, which skew the national salary figures. Unless something's changed very recently, I/O psych is also not a licensed practice area.

Like others are saying, you need some clear goals for training. I know that this can be difficult because you don't know what you don't know. I would start with maybe getting some experience in a local lab and then consider some post-bacc work rehab your GPA. A master's degree with a research focus could be in the cards, but it widely depends on what opportunities the lab can offer you.

I am currently stressfully trying to determine how to move forward and make myself an at least somewhat competitive applicant for a decent PsyD/PhD program. I know I am at an immense disadvantage considering my GPA and lack of relevant experience. I know I'm not a competitive candidate, I know I messed up and did not use my time in undergrad wisely. But I am now seeking advice on how to get on the right track in order to be competitive and obtain my Doctorate's, hopefully before I get too old.

I took time off in between degrees and I certainly don't regret it. My doctoral cohort consisted mainly of people who went straight through (bachelor's-master's-Ph.D.; much more common in counseling than in clinical psychology), but the clinical psych program across the street had many people my age or older. The people I work with now, who are in a similar position to me, are around my age and those younger than me are graduate students. The point is that you have time to formulate clearly what you want and make a plan to get it.

Good luck.

 

[CheetahGirl]

Look into Volunteer Programs to obtain clinical experience while looking into viable research experience, as soon as you can. You may get those opportunities to present themselves before paid research gigs.

Several nights per month, I volunteered as Sexual Violence Survivor Advocate/Rape Crisis Counselor (got certified through a training program in NYC through Office of Health and Human Services) early on in my career, and it was valuable clinical experience, while I worked research gigs during the day.