dancedementia

Hey everyone! I was super active here a few years ago when I went through PhD/PsyD recruiting my first time around. I had a few acceptances but decided to decline all and work in the field as a masters level therapist to gain some experience and see if I really wanted to do psychology long term. I ended up being premed for 2 years hahaha. And then decided that med school was not for me. I'm applying again exclusively for cheap PsyD schools in-state. My school list: University of Houston Clear Lake - PsyD Clinical/School Psychology Our Lady of the Lake University - PsyD Counseling Psychology Nice and easy Will keep y'all updated! I am definitely sending in my GRE scores. I have a 168 Verbal and a 162 Quant (and a 5.5 AW but who looks at that) soooooo xD

That's because the latest available prep book published (Princeton Review's) is before they changed the format. There hasn't been anything published recently that matches the current scoring system AND covers the same material. All of the subject test GRE books still use DSM-IV. Just something to be aware of - the current offerings are very outdated

Not at all. Masters programs are REALLY easy to get into (because they're unfunded!) Take it from someone who had a 2.9 GPA and no research experience

Out of curiosity, what is your 1 year of counseling experience from? Your post implies you don't have a license yet. How are your finances? Do you need a fully funded grad program or are you okay shelling out some money for a program with your specific focus?

You will not be paid more for being dual-licensed, and frankly no one cares in practice. The one area that is IS beneficial is if you want to be a dually-licensed supervisor. There aren't a lot of those, so you can charge more and/or hold double the amount of supervisees.

I'm curious where you're getting your "ranking" from. Are you talking about Carnegie designations? USNWR? Certain schools who may not be ranked highly on either might be top schools in your subfield, based on what you're researching. I would not put too much stock into arbitrary rankings unless you have been explicitly told by professors in the subfield that it is not a respected school.

I did NOT study for the exam and scored 80% percentile purely based on test taking strategies. I second the poster who said that the Psych GRE is a very different beast to other standardized exams. It was the first one I've taken that was purely knowledge recall (as opposed to tests like math and physics, or the general GRE, which incorporate problem-solving strategies). I did buy the PR book but only made it through the first chapter because the information was so. freaking. dense. and I felt super overwhelmed. In hindsight, I should have skimmed it and read a little closer on areas I was not familiar with (my biological and cognitive scores were abysmal). That said, most PhD programs don't even ask for the psych GRE! I only took it because ONE of my schools required it (damn you Rutgers).

Depends on the program. Some of them specifically require Abnormal/Psychopathology as a prerequisite. You can take it at a community college for cheap if your program doesn't offer it. TA-ing is not a requirement to get into a PhD program. I would focus more attention on research over TA-ing, although if you have time for both it certainly won't hurt.

IPNB is a very niche theory and won't be heavily focused on in grad school. Most masters programs will be generalist. If you're interested, I would do PCC's certificate course (online): http://climb.pcc.edu/ipnb

Makes sense! I take it you're planning on applying to PhD programs in Counselor Ed?

That's a robust list haha. If I had the $$ I would totally apply to a ton of schools. But damn, this process is expensive

Thanks for the feedback, @Sherrinford. If you scroll up a bit you'll see that I got a nice research coordinator position I'll be working in for 2 years and then reapplying to PhD programs.

Yep, mainly from those two sites that @higaisha referenced earlier up on this thread. I also go directly to the sites of AMCs and scour their career sections. I applied to 8 positions from McLean just from looking up open positions. Gosh, I never even thought about this! I might reevaluate some of my school choices to include more counseling programs. Thanks for the info!

I'm curious about this. Was this explicitly stated by mentors/POIs? How were you able to overcome this bias? (I too have a masters in counseling, and not even counseling psych, but a CACREP counseling masters).

I'm curious about your transition from psych to counseling! (I'm making the opposite move). What about counseling was a better match for you?