PsycUndergrad

Don’t worry about having a cracked screen.To echo the last poster, no one should see you on your phone. You’ll be busy with interviews and tours most of the time, and it definitely isn’t appropriate to use your phone while there, even if it’s just a social with grad students or something. You want to look engage and interested!

It sounds like you're Canadian, but correct me if I'm wrong. It really depends on the school. Some schools fund their students from departmental or university money, while others require supervisors to fund their students using grants. External funding tends to be more of an issue for schools in the latter category, since faculty might be waiting on grant results and unsure of their financial situation. In that case, a student with their own funding will be more appealing. I don't think this tends to happen at schools where, for example, everyone is funded through TAships. I'm guessing you had to disclose whether you applied for funding on your application, so your POI knows that you didn't apply for external funding there. If they decide to interview you anyway then I wouldn't worry about it. They won't interview anyone that they know they might not be able to afford.

Good luck! I interviewed there last year and was only notified ~10 days beforehand so you still have time! I don't think I was very clear in my initial post, but if anyone here applied to the Concordia clinical program with a developmental or neuro supervisor, I wouldn't expect to hear back yet. According to friends who applied, they do interviews much later than the few clinical/health profs.

I'm familiar with their admission process and it's kind of unusual. The interviews on the 25th/26th are most likely only for students applying to work with the small number of professors belonging to the clinical research centre. If you applied to one of these people, I think emails would be this week or next week. Professors in other areas (e.g., developmental, neuro) do interviews on an individual basis and they might not contact applicants until February.

Hey guys! I'm thinking of submitting a section of my undergrad honours thesis for my writing sample. I'm wondering if it's unethical to edit it before submitting since if I edited it, it wouldn't really be the same thesis I submitted to my department. I'm conflicted because I know I can make it better, but I don't want to do anything wrong. I don't plan on submitting the whole thesis, and there's no way for them to see the original unless I send it to them but I don't know.

I used the Princeton Review book, and it helped me do very well on the exam. I would recommend it if you've taken a lot of psych classes and mainly want a refresher for the major topics. If you are unfamiliar with some of the areas or have been out of school for awhile, I wouldn't recommend it as it isn't very long and definitely isn't detailed enough if you haven't studied a topic before.

Thanks guys! I ended up emailing her and she sent me an encouraging reply! I kind of knew I should, but the application paranoia clouds my judgement occasionally

Thank you both for the detailed replies, I really appreciate it!!

I just discovered a professor today who does research in my area. The deadline for applications is December 15th, so while it is getting late to email her, it isn't that last minute. The problem is, she has a detailed list of instructions on her website for applicants, and apparently she expects people to email her in July!? I didn't realize we had matching research interests in July... I had another POI in mind for this school, and he finally emailed me back today to say he wasn't taking students, so I started investigating other professors in the department. Her department bio is outdated and misleading, so I thought she was in a different area of research until now. How can I email her without looking like I've procrastinated, or telling her I didn't know she existed? I don't want to NOT email her because her site doesn't say if she's taking students, and she seems like she prefers applicants to email her. Thanks in advance to anyone who bothers to read my neurotic ramblings

Hey guys! Is anyone here familiar with UTSC's clinical psychology program? I just noticed that they have some faculty members in my area of interest, but I don't know much about the program. Does anyone have any idea how competitive it is? I'm assuming it's very competitive given that it's a clinical program in Toronto, but I'd like to have an idea of the number of applications, offers, etc if possible. There's also the issue of accreditation. I know it's a pretty new cohort, but I still have reservations about applying to an unaccredited program. Is it a bad idea? I assume they intend of applying for accreditation once they've graduated, but I don't know when that'll be. Does anyone know anything about this? Thanks in advance for any replies I know I could email the department, but I'm hesitant to contact them about stuff like this!

I've seen a lot of posts recommending to apply to places where there are at least 2-3 people you could work with. That would be ideal but it seems a bit difficult, in Canada at least. At Canadian schools, it seems like there's usually only one person per department who studies each topic, yet some departments still recommend mentioning multiple potential supervisors. There are lots of people I'd like to work with, but they don't do the same type of research as my main POIs. Is it okay to list people who don't do research in the same area? Obviously I want to maximize my chances, but I also don't want to look like my interests are all over the place. It's also probably pretty clear from my past research experience who my top POIs are, so would the others even be interested? What did you guys do?

Does anyone have any ideas for volunteer positions that might look good to clinical psychology programs? I have some free time now due to previous volunteer programs ending, so I'm looking for new positions. I know volunteering isn't very important to PhD programs, but I want to do it anyway, so I might as well do something that'll help my future applications. I live in a pretty small city, and the typical places like crisis lines and psychiatric facilities are unfortunately full. There seem to be lots of opportunities for homeless/disadvantaged people, intellectual disabilities, recent immigrants/refugees, and physical disabilities like epilepsy, hearing/visual impairments, etc. Would any of those look better than the others? Or would they all be okay since they involve interacting with diverse groups of people?

My area of research can fit pretty well with both CIHR and SSHRC, depending on how I tailor it. I'm applying to grad school this year and initially planned to apply for CIHR CGS-M, but would it be better to apply for SSHRC if my research meets their criteria? I've always heard that CIHR is harder to get, and most schools do have way more SSHRC scholarships. Basically, I'm just wondering if CIHR is significantly harder to get than SSHRC at the masters level.

I'm taking at least a year off before applying to clinical psychology programs. I've been in my current lab for almost a year and plan to volunteer there for the foreseeable future. The problem is, my undergrad institution is not great and research opportunities are lacking. I managed to get into two other labs before my current one but they had nothing to do with clinical psych and I didn't stay long (a semester in one lab, 8 months in the other). I left the first two labs because I wasn't interested in them at all and neither let undergrads move beyond doing basic tasks. I also did a summer of research at a medical school. And now I'm probably going to join another lab that I'm interested in, but the research still isn't my main area of interest. Will it look bad that I've kind of jumped from lab to lab? I know I need more experience, but I'm afraid that adding another lab will make me look really unfocused since my experience has been in a bunch of vastly different areas. I know doing paid research or increasing my hours at my current lab would be better options, but neither is possible unfortunately.