WAMC/ LOR help

[mdeminic]

Hi I graduated BU in 2020 as a psych major/pre-med. After getting into masters of medical science programs and having them pushed off due to COVID I had time to work in the medical field. After working as a CNA and a medical assistant, I decided the medical field wasn't for me. I had time to reflect and ultimately felt that I both naturally excelled in psych and truly enjoyed it so I decided on clinical psychology/ forensic psychology.

I had a few short research experiences in undergrad
1. BU offered a summer program in Neuroscience where I shadowed in the neurosurgery department and helped a PI in the radiology department analyze MRIs using basic data analysis. I presented on my findings for the department of neurosurgery and other researchers.
2. I studied abroad in London and helped out in a developmental psychology lab for 2 months. I did video coding and data analysis.
3. I volunteered as a research assistant in an autism lab for about 5 months until covid cut my time short. I conducted behavioral analyses and scored them. I also did basic data entry.
4. I am now about 7mo into a sleep lab at BWH. I do psg/ train others on psg, I do basic data analysis, I do recruitment, and I conduct study visits.

For clinical experience, I worked at an inpatient psych hospital for 3 months and parted ways with them due to issues with management.

In terms of academics I got a 3.45 in undergrad having taken all of the pre-med courses. My psych gpa was a 3.9.

I am very interested in aggressive behaviors in children with conduct disorder and preventing children from entering the juvenile system.

I do not have any publications or official poster presentations.

For LOR I have a professor and my PI in my lab now. I had my advisor/professor agree to write my LOR but she has since ghosted me and is not answering.

I am wondering if I should apply this cycle or if I should possibly leave my lab for a lab more closely related to what I want to study and that will give me the opportunity to do independent research and get published or do a poster presentation. I also don't know if I should reach out to professors I did well in their class but know very well and maybe set up some meetings for us to get to know each other or if I should take another class. I also don't know if a masters right now would be my best bet. I do have a large amount of loans from undergrad already.

I am a first gen college student so please help!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[summerbabe]

I am very interested in aggressive behaviors in children with conduct disorder and preventing children from entering the juvenile system.

I imagine you’re interested in applying to labs studying this topic. When folks come into clinical psych with a well-defined interest, they are competing against a pretty small pool of similar-minded applicants (at least for programs where each PI largely or exclusively decides who gets an offer) so how you stack up to these other interested candidates matters a lot. One sticking point might be that your experiences likely diverge more from others with more focused experiences in this subject area.

For labs that have active and updated webpages, you can look at current students and alumni and see if you can find their CVs online and deduce what types of experiences they had coming into the PhD. If the norm for a lab is that everybody consistently has 1st or 2nd author pubs already, you may need to boost your CV. If people are more likely to come in with experience but not pubs or presentations, you probably have a better shot. You can also look at how often the PI publishes. Producing pubs monthly versus a couple a year versus maybe once a year is a sign of what that PI may be looking for in grad students.

This kind of deeper dive will hopefully give you a better sense of whether you’d be competitive this next cycle or if not, what types of experiences you should ideally try to get.

If you feel like you could be competitive (or would like to take a shot and see what happens), you can circle back to the 3rd letter writer.

I also don't know if a masters right now would be my best bet.

In general, when in doubt, more classes or a degree is probably not the right call since anything that you’ll need to pay for should play a very specific role in helping get you to the next step. Good luck!