bubble_psych

First off, I'm so sorry to hear what you and your family have been going though. After reading what you've posted though, it might just be best to take an additional year before applying again. You're going through a lot, and rushing yourself to try to meet deadlines when you are exhausted might not be the way to go. Taking an extra year before applying can help space out your goals/milestones for applying, which will make the process less overwhelming. Not to mention, when you actually are in the PhD program, things get increasingly difficult and one of the reasons why people drop out is due to unexpected family issues/concerns. As for juggling everything, and trying not to feel overwhelmed, def suggest using the pomodoro method (google it!) when working on assignments, and using mindfulness meditations.

While I definitely understand the anticipatory anxiety that can come with applying, looking back, those gap years when I was working were great. Only having to work 40 hours a week back then meant that I had a lot of time to catch up with all my friends. I began saving month by month for a trip to travel around Europe, and I found my current LTR SO during that time (we've been together for more than 5 years at this point!). My advice is to live life to the fullest during those years, since the PhD at times can take up all of your free time and in essence, sometimes you have to place your life on hold. For dealing with the anxiety of applying though, best advice is to start early to get the info you need. I highly recommend Mitch's advice for getting into grad school if you are interested in clinical psychology. Also SDN tends to have good tidbits of information as well as the advice you encounter on this site.

I took 4 gap years, and I think it was a great decision - working allowed me to start grad school debt free, and it allowed me to obtain a diverse skillset as well as develop more mature work-based communication styles.

Remember they are looking at the whole package and your LORs are just one component. If your letters from last year were good, I wouldn't change them. Theres nothing wrong with reusing LORs from year to year. Even if there was something bad about that, I'm sure programs wouldnt be digging too deep to know if you reused your letters. I would not recommend the letter from the nannying job

There are a lot of good questions you have in your last post, that can be answered by reading this: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://mitch.web.unc.edu/files/2017/02/MitchGradSchoolAdvice.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi6vIuc-KXsAhXIpXIEHboDChoQFjAAegQICxAC&usg=AOvVaw3UbQzDdWDrXVeX0-L58VK9 Hope it helps!

You might want to flesh this out a little bit more. Think about how working as a therapist or researcher will help you advocate for women and children that have gone through abuse. I can certainly see this though the research route. Through the therapy route, you may be mostly treating the emotional effects related to the abuse. You may want to get an idea of what the day to day activities are really like in research and in therapy to see if you want to pursue these in the long term. Without knowing all of the little processes that go into providing therapy and conducting research, you may be overestimating the amount of change you can make and overestimate how much you would enjoy the activities. Sorry if came off as a bit pessimistic, but I think it's important to understand these things before you make a commitment to pursue clinical psychology

This happened to me with one of my letter writers back when I was applying, and it actually turned out she was on maternity leave, therefore not checking her email, and I left her some voicemail messages at her office. She got into contact with me shortly before the deadline and was able to write a letter. Just putting out this experience to help quench some of your fears. Would recommend calling her office number.

The rest of your application looks pretty good and while your scores may be lower than the averages at some schools, I think its worth it to apply. Committees tend to look at the whole package, and your undergrad/masters GPA look good and are a marker of your academic ability. The two things I could suggest to make your application stronger are to keep progressing on those papers you are working on, and spend the time learning R to proficiency. R in particular is a major plus to have in your repertoire and many POI's look at this experience favorably.

Cognitive assessments like the WAIS and general mood and personality measures can be used in general clinical work. The thing that is not so kosher is using neuropsych assessments (and I'm guessing also forensic assessments too?) when you do not have the training (or your supervisor does not have the training) to understand and interpret the measures. As I understand it, this would be a violation of the ethical standard regarding competence.

At the end of the day there is no high tier, mid tier etc. for doctoral level training. The things you should be looking at for the programs you are applying to are: 1. How good is the research fit 2. Does the program philosophy match up woth my needs? In clinical programs this is: Clinical science-heavily focused in research, but you will still get basic therapy skills taught Scientist-practitioner-mix of research and clinical training 3. Look at the outcome data to see how many applicants a program gets each year and gow many people they admit - this will give you an idea of how competitive the process is. Apply to schools with a mix of competitiveness 4. Look into what funding is provided for the program, and if you will be funded for all of the years in the program Some of what im writing is specific to clinical psych programs so YMMV

I'm in the second cohort of a newly established program, and it hasn't really hindered me in any way. We currently have accreditation on contingency but didn't when I started the program. Its always worth it to apply and then assess after interview day if you think its worth attending. Overall I'd say that if you make it to interview day, try to get a good grasp on how organized and prepared the DCT and faculty are in applying for accreditation. Be sure to ask questions about the process. If they appear prepared I'd think its less of a risk than you would imagine.

Not sure if this was mentioned, but another point is that as a grad student, you may at some point hold a position of power over the undergraduate or people in their social circle whom you both associate with. For example if you were TAing, or managing a lab where the undergrad or people in her/his social circle were either your students or research assistants. An imbalanced relationship in this context may blur the lines of consent.

Agreed with Psyduck90, I wouldn't advise applying to chicago school. Of your other 2 options, a quick look at the outcomes data shows that GWU has larger cohorts and is much more expensive (46,000) compared to Loyola (31,000, smaller cohorts =more individualized attention from the faculty to help you meet your goals). As a side note, it is also important to see if you want to pursue a doctoral degree. If you only want to do therapy, then a 2-3 year masters level degree may be more suited to your needs. You can do therapy as a MSW, or as an LPC (typically through masters in counseling or social work). This would require less time to complete your degree, less opportunity cost, less tuition costs, and you could start working in the field sooner. If you have an interest in doing research some day, or doing assessment, then it may be worth it to pursue a doctoral degree. But note that it is a long and hard road (5-7 years) where you have to constantly be waiting for the payoff.

It could be worth it, if you have some research project you are working on, to try to present a poster at a conference. Its getting easier to do this now that almost all the conferences are virtual. You could present a poster on a literature review you are doing, i've seen posters like that at conferences I've been to. It may be easier than trying to publish a paper. As the other posters said though, even for a poster presentation would be good to get some supervision from a grad student/post-doc/PI in your lab to make sure the abstract is accepted. There are a lot of other skills that go into being a good researcher than writing publications. Be sure to mention other experiences like running participants, doing data analysis, contributing to the design or planning of experiments, literature reviews, etc. It is great that you already have a publication so be sure to talk about how you contributed to that too.

Do you have any poster presentations? 1 pub should be ok, I don't think you should focus on getting another one (esp since app deadlines are around November/December and the publishing process can take a lot of time), and def don't use your money to publish in an open access journal. I've only seen PI's do that if they had grant money put aside for that expense. Think you should also take the time to narrow your research interests a little bit and consider your research goals as they relate to the research of the POI's you are considering. I.e. see what the researchers you are interested in working with are working on. Often your focus may change a bit if you are not able to get a 100% fit with what the POI is researching. Also maybe plan to retake the GRE once more and see where you end up. I think 4 times may be a bit excessive and you might not see much incremental gain. Personal note: when I was applying I had 8 presentations and only a pub under review and still got in. I would suggest focusing on retaking the GRE and figuring out how to "market" yourself and your research interests in your SOP