student896

Did anyone else get an email from CGS-M yesterday? It just said "the status if your application has changed" but when I logged into research portal nothing had changed...

You need to apply to more schools. You should apply to at LEAST 8. Personally, I applied to every school I could possibly tolerate being at for 5 years (schools with profs who had research somewhat related to what I wanted to do and were not more than 6 hours from home). If you had one shot at winning the lottery for the year, would you buy only one ticket? No, you'd buy as many as possible. You cannot be choosy. Getting an offer from a clinical psyc program is akin to winning the lottery, no matter how strong your application is. A number of very random factors need to line up for you and the chances of it all are quite low. Every school you apply to is another chance to win the lottery. I don;t think strengthening your application will help. It's already very strong and the majority of people I know who got in this year had much weaker applications than you do. Focus instead on contacting profs EARLY (May is a good time to start), introduce yourself, write a personalized couple of sentences about why you are interested in them (and mean it!), attach your cv or better yet include a link to an online cv that includes a picture of you. Be persistent but not annoying. If they are even considering taking a student for next year, do everything you can to get a meeting with them before the end of the year. Find out if they are going to conference you can meet them at, or if the school is relatively close to you, go to their office hours. The vast majority of people I know who got offers this year met the prof personally before the formal interview process and made an impression, making the prof want to fight for them because they liked them and felt that "fit". Do not discount the importance of a good "gut feeling" in this process - profs are people too, and they can't help it if they get a good feeling about one applicant and think they may like to work with them closely for the next 5 years, even over a more qualified applicant. This is all stuff I wish I knew earlier, but throughout this process it has become loud and clear. Hope it helps you.

I'm wondering what your application looked like to be offered admission to both programs. Could you share some details like that. I am very familiar with both programs (good friends in each program) and would be happy to share some info in return

Same! I'd really like to know if my POI took a student at all.

For Guelph Clinical, results were announced 2 days after the interview

Whoever got accepted to OISE, would you let me know your POI, if you could? And congrats to that person!

You probably need to do an honours thesis in psychology. Try and see if you can do this as an elective. Otherwise, I guess a research opportunity where you collect data and then analyze it yourself and write up a full paper and submit it for publication. Not sure what you mean by a published abstract? But that's probably the only way to overcome a lack of an honours thesis. If you do not have an undergrad degree in psych, you will absolutely need to write the subject gre and get at LEAST 90th percentile (aim for 95).

People on here will disagree with me, but take both. Try to carry both for as long as you can to see which one will give you the best chance for publishing something. Even then I'd probably keep both (I worked in 5 labs in 2 years). If you are trying to get into clinical, you need anything you can get in your corner. You also need all the references/prof connections you can get. It's the most important thing for getting in.

Thanks so much for the info!!

Clinical Psych may be the single most competitive grad program, period. It's not that you've done anything wrong, your app looks great (although your GRE scores are below cutoff for many schools)... but essentially you are competing for 1 spot per school (your POI - if they even end up being allowed to take a student). Your best bet is to form a relationship with them well in advance of applications and make them want you. Next year when you apply, contact POIs VERY early, try to skype with them and get them to look at your CV, plant a seed and make them want you. I'm convinced it's the only way to get in. And I would re-take the GREs, because some schools will not look at your application unless they meet a certian cut off.

All of my interviewers asked where their school "ranked" with me and what other schools I was considering. No one asked if I had other offers directly, though.

I have checked my email probably 100 times in the past 12 hours hoping to hear from OISE (one way or the other, I just want to know!). I'm ashamed to say I kept waking up in the middle of the night to refresh my email Not sure why I expected a prof would send me an email at 4am, LOL. EDIT: Interesting that this is the first instance of an OISE SCCP interview being posted on the results page... maybe interviews are new for this year?

I've never heard of an undergrad applying to clinical programs with this type of experience. How would someone not already in a PhD program even have this kind of opportunity without personal connections? What I am saying is research alone is not enough to get into a clinical program in most cases. You need to show potential ability to work with clinical populations and have someone be able to speak about this ability. The main way to get this experience is to collect data from clinical populations, which is exactly what I said. You may call this research experience, and indeed it is, but it's not the same research experience as doing a meta-analysis or having participants come in and complete a survey on a computer.

Would the person who received the invite to interview at OISE SCCP please email me their POI? I'd greatly appreciate it! I thought they didn't do interviews... very interesting.

What I think is being overlooked about York here is they have SO many faculty. It's hard for them to know in the summer or early fall who is going to be allowed to take a student the next year.

I simply disagree. Clinical experience is what seperates you from someone applying to an experimental psych program. The key is just that you need both. For example, the opportunity to collect data from clinical populations and then going and analyzing this data, writing up a paper, etc. You need both. Many, many schools will ask you to have a prof speak about your clinical suitability, and the best references are from profs that can say you worked with a clinical population. Don't underestimate the importance of this! It's just that clinical experience without research experience afterwards is next to useless.

If you were rejected after an interview, there is an extremely good chance there was NOTHING wrong with your application and that your POI, having only one spot for a student, found someone who seemed like a better match/had experience in a research direction they wanted to pursue. In some cases, the POI may have known a student previously and already knew they wanted to continue working with them. I think if you are rejected post-interview, I would just say thanks for their time and wish them luck, because it honestly is not that your application was weak (if it was even somewhat weak, you would not have gotten an interview). This is just my opinion. If you didn't receive an interview, you could ask what was wrong I suppose.

Most of the schools I applied to asked for not only academic/research skills references, but clinical recommendations from professors who could speak on behalf of my ability to succeed as a practitioner and had observed me work with clinical populations. Definitely get involved with a lab where you can collect from clinical populations and have a professor speak to that experience.

Which do you mean, utsc or oise? Oise has not made any offers yet, and I'm not sure utsc is done making offers.

LOL! Perhaps both open houses are being held on the same day, and being kept completely separate? I just know the invitation says clinical/clinical dev students only

I'm sorry, no. I don't know anything about non-clinical programs. However I know for a fact the open house this friday is ONLY clinical and clinical developmental

No problem! I have 3 friends who got an email from york saying they were "shortlisted" but who were not invited to the Open House, so I think anything could happen at this point

I am clinical developmental, but the open house is for both clinical and clinical developmental. The invite they sent says its for both programs. The open house is this friday (feb 13), so there may still be time for invites to go out.

To the person accepted at Guelph: could you PM me and tell me if you were at the interview day and also your poi? Thanks!

Everyone wore a suit at mine even though the invite said "business casual"