PsyDuck90

There is 1 free practice test from ETS you can take. There are also books from Kaplan, Princeton Review, and Barron which include practice tests. Most people recommend finding an undergrad intro to psych textbook and reading through that. The Psych GRE is basically just like a cumulative Psych 101 final. Psychology by Ciccarelli and White is what I use when I teach Psych 101. The 5th edition is the most current, but the pdf of the 4th edition can be found online for free. Or, if you have 1 lying around from undergrad, that'll definitely work too.

It's not ideal, but it looks like you can arrange an on-site visit once accepted so you can still gather that data before making a final decision. My suggestion would be to make sure you can speak to a few current students as well, and make sure at least 1 is a current student working with your PI.

I'm about midway through my program, so this change doesn't affect me directly. However, I really echo @PsychApplicant2 in that the general GRE is absolutely useless for clinical psychology programs (among others). Research has shown that it is only predictive of graduate school success for middle-class white males, so as scientists, I'm not sure why PIs are relying on such an invalid measure for student selection. The cost is prohibitive for many people are within a lower economic threshold (the test itself and the cost of sending scores alone are high, without factoring in prep materials) and it doesn't succesfully predict what it claims to predict. Hopefully this shift will help finally kick this stupid test to the curb once and for all.

I imagine the benefit would be the ability to practice law. What specifically are your career goals? An advanced degree is usually still a means to an end. So what is it you hope to do in terms of a day to day job?

Oh yeah, I don't know why the open access option slipped my mind. I immediately thought of the predatory "pay to play" type journals that don't really peer review lol.

I don't think any of the reputable psych journals charge for publishing, at least not to my knowledge. Even though you do not have an official mentor, is there any faculty member who are working with/is an unofficial mentor? If so, I would speak to them. Otherwise, look at the journals that most of your sources are from as a starting point for figuring out what journal may be a good fit to submit to.

The MSW is obtained by graduating the MSW. To get the clinical social work license, you need to do supervised clinical hours and I believe there may be another exam. When you say "psychological testing" what do you mean? The majority of psychological testing can only be done by a psychologist, which is a doctoral level licensure.

Good luck! Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions! I've lived and worked in the area for pretty much my whole life, except for several years away for school.

No car is going to be rough. The NJ transit bus system is fine if you're going to NYC but pretty limited for getting around in general. The Rutgers campus buses are better. I would seriously look into getting a car, even just for grocery shopping. NB is considered a food desert. The only real supermarket in downtown NB is Bravo down George Street, and then there's a Stop and Shop in Highland Park. There's lots of bodegas in NB, but they're more expensive than buying food in a Shoprite or somewhere. So it's a trade off, the places with easy access to fresh food are not easily accessible via public transportation.

You will probably get more bang for your buck in North Brunswick or other surrounding towns (with the exception of East Brunswick, which is pricier) but some New Brunswick complexes to check out are Raritan Crossing, Livingston Terrace, and Tov Manor. In North Brunswick, I would check out the North Village apartments and North Brunswick Crescent. In Highland Park I would look at the Park Apartments in that price range. Highland Park really has a lot of apartments for rent in houses. I am from this area and Highland Park is super cute but I've never actually known someone to live in the few traditional apartments around. They mostly find apartments within private houses. I would reach out to your department and see if they can connect you with any leads. I don't know how much COVID will help you. Undergrads either commute from home, live in dorms, or live in disgusting New Brunswick houses with 10+ people to a house. The grad students live in the area pretty permanently, and there are also just a ton of people who live and work in the area because it is a very central part of NJ (plus NJ is just over-crowded in general).

What's your budget? There are a range of prices, although the average, non-luxury 1 bedroom will be about $1200.

Some parts of Newark are nice, like the Ironbound section. South and West Orange are really nice, Orange is ok, and East Orange is about on par with Newark. Union and Hillside are good. Irvington is on par with Newark and East Orange. Montclair is really nice, but also really expensive. There's a lot towns within 30 minutes of Newark, so there's a lot to choose from. Also, I'm not sure if you or your partner have ever lived in NJ, but traffic can make something typically 30 minutes away turn into an hour plus commute. The Garden State Parkway exits for Newark and the Oranges get pretty backed up especially, so you can be waiting for 30 minutes just to take your exit during rush hour.

Interesting. Do you have the link? I couldn't find anything on that. I'm curious what that looks like.

A PHD in social work is a strictly research-oriented degree. There is no doctoral level licensure for social work, so it would be a bit of a different dynamic from a clinical psych PhD in which you spend time on clinical and research training throughout the whole degree and come out as being eligible for a doctoral-level clinical license. Depending on your career goals, a MSW/PhD program may be another option.

I'm so sorry about your dad's passing. I would also like to echo a lot of what transfatfree mentioned above, especially in regards to school psych. Also, most PhDs are funded, so you wouldn't be paying any tuition. Instead, you usually work as a research assistant or teaching assistant and get a stipend along with a tuition waiver. Just as a note, schools in desirable metro areas such as California get a lot of applicants simply because of location. You want to apply to PhD programs based on research fit with potential mentors. The typical clinical psych student will apply to about 10-15 schools. I would also recommend you check out Mitch's Guide to Grad School: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://mitch.web.unc.edu/files/2017/02/MitchGradSchoolAdvice.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjTi4TJporqAhX4g3IEHctyADIQFjAAegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw3UbQzDdWDrXVeX0-L58VK9. This is a really helpful starting point to distinguish between different types of degrees and career paths.

Each state has different requirements for licensure as a master's level clinician. It's usually called an LPC or something similar. You have to look at the requirements of the state licensing and compare those to the program. Chances are, a 1 year program will not be sufficient, as most counseling masters in the US suitable for licensure require 45-60 credits in alignment with state licensing requirements. Look up the requirements for the state(s) you would most likely want to practice in and then compare the education requirements with those of the program(s) you're looking at.

I would hold off until August/September before you start emailing faculty. Honestly, some schools still don't even know what next semester is going to look like and may be experiencing millions of dollars in lost revenue. Many faculty may not even know it they are taking a student this early on in a regular year. Given everything now, it is even less likely that faculty will know.

A lot of them will still require a research match. What I did when looking for programs to apply to is I looked at recent pubs within my area of interest and then looked up the programs those people were faculty in. I then made sure all the programs had APA-accreditation. Also, check out Norcross's Insider's Guide to Clinical and Counseling Psychology. It has information on pretty much every program that exists.

By and large, the PsyDs worth applying to offer funding. The ones that don't are more often associated with reputations of being diploma mills. Look at incoming class sizes. Some PsyDs have cohorts of 80+ students and offer poor funding if any, and then others have cohort sizes of 10 or less, and they offer more funding options. Quality, university-based PsyDs have a pretty commensurate research program to balanced PhD programs. For instance, I am at a funded university-based PsyD and I am spending my summer working on 3 separate manuscripts I am co-authoring (2 with faculty and 1 with a psychologist from my practicum site), as well as analyzing some pilot test data for my dissertation. During the semester, we spend at minimum 8-10 hours a week on lab related activities, but it usually comes out to more. Research is important for good clinical skills. If you don't know how to do the research, it is much more difficult to critique the research coming out and separating good science from junk science. Even if you aren't planning on a research career, having an in depth understanding of research methodology and statistics is going to go a long way when examining research on efficacy and effectiveness of treatment interventions and assessment tools, which inform good, evidence-based practice.

I would check with each school. For instance, Rutgers does not allow you to apply to both the PhD and PsyD programs. MSW programs are usually housed in different departments so they may not know. However, there may be communication. With that, I would consider the benefit of that MSW program. The doctoral faculty may question your desire to complete a doctorate over a masters--as in, why should they take you if you can accomplish your career goals with an MSW? Not saying they necessarily would, but that is a possibility.

So yeah, this school is better ranked and is fully funded, meaning no debt. If you have any interests in academia, which you hinted at in your original post, rankings do matter. It really comes down to if your family can make the logistics work, and if you are comfortable with the way that will look.

I have a few thoughts. The first is that you want to ideally try to shoot for funded programs. Unfunded programs can put you in a lot of debt that can have lasting impacts on other life decisions, such as buying a home, raising a family, etc. The reality is that psychologists do not start off making enough to justify 6-figures worth of debt (look up average starting salaries for psychologists compared to medical doctors--$200k worth of debt is not as crippling in the latter). The funded PsyD programs are about the same competitiveness as balanced PhD (scientist-practitioner) programs. Clinical Science PhD programs, while still teaching clinical skills, typically put a greater emphasis on research than scientist-practioner or practitioner-scholar programs. When choosing doctoral programs to apply to, you want to look at a few things. 1. You want to look at their APA-accredited internship match rate (it should really be 100% or close to it consistently for the last few years). 2. You want to look at their licensure percentages. How many people who are eligible have gone on to get licensed? If it is a PsyD program, that number should also be hovering around 100% because the vast majority of people who go into these programs do so in order to get licensed and practice. 3. You want to look at the sizes of the incoming cohorts. Smaller cohorts allow for more individual attention from faculty. For instance, my PsyD program cohort has 8 of us. The small class sizes are great for having in depth discussions. Grad school is less lecture and more application/discussion than undergrad. Also, the director of clinical training knows each student and his/her/their interests. It is much easier to get the individualized attention you need to grow as a clinician when your faculty can give you detailed feedback regarding your work and your career trajectory. 4. You want to examine the faculty list. What kind of research are the people doing? Regardless of PsyD or PhD, you will need to do some research and write a dissertation (possibly more lax of a project for a PsyD than a PhD but not necessarily). You want to select programs that have faculty who study the things you want to study and who's lab you can join and who can serve as your dissertation chair. Some PsyD programs, like mine, follow a mentor model similar to PhDs where you enter the program matched with a specific faculty mentor due to research interests. One way to start developing a list of programs is to read articles of interest and see where those authors are teaching. 5. Look at what kinds of practicum experiences the program has available, as well as if they have a clinic. If you have an idea of what kind of population you want to work with, it's a good idea to make sure you have the opportunity to gain that type of experience in that program. Two great resources to check out are Mitch's Guide to Grad School, which can be found here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://mitch.web.unc.edu/files/2017/02/MitchGradSchoolAdvice.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjTz7TOyufpAhVJlHIEHRmWBpMQFjAAegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw3UbQzDdWDrXVeX0-L58VK9 and Norcross's "Insider's Guide to Clinical and Counseling Psychology" which you can find on Amazon or wherever you prefer to purchase books. In terms of beefing up your application, the best thing to do is research. It's awesome that you were able to present at your school's research symposium. Try to see if you can get more research products. See if you can submit a poster for a regional or national conference or help co-author a publication with a professor. The more research experience, the better. I honestly don't think getting your CNA license will really help your application. I doubt it will harm it, but there are probably very few faculty who would see it as a particular plus unless you can very clear show how this experience ties into your goal of being a psychologist. Crisis line counseling is a pretty good option depending on the service. Volunteering for a local domestic violence agency hotline or a suicide hotline looks better than something like 7cups where training consists of an online course. Lastly, you mention masters programs. If you are interested in getting a master's level license, such as an LPC, LCSW, or MFT, you want to make sure the program meets those requirements. There are master's programs in psychology (including clinical psychology) that do not lead to a master's level licensure, but are instead stepping stones to PhDs/PsyDs. Given your GPA, it doesn't look like you need to get a master's en route to a doctorate. Most of the time, people do so to make up for a low undergrad GPA or if they majored in something completely different. You're better off spending that time trying to get more research experience and further build those connections to get solid letters of recommendation, especially since most masters are unfunded. There are some that provide funding, and there have been threads here on them. William and Mary and Wake Forest are the 2 that jump to mind right away. However, if you think you are fine working as a master's level clinician, then that is a great way to go. The program is much shorter, so you're out in the workforce sooner. It all depends on what your specific goals are. Some require a PhD or PsyD, others don't. Mitch's guide explains all the different degrees pretty well. I'm sorry. This is probably way more information than you really asked for. However, it sounds like you are just starting to look into programs and options, and these are all things I wish I knew when I was an undergrad thinking about grad school. Feel free to ask any other questions!

To clarify, is the fully funded program higher ranked as well? Personally, I would go with that program. Less debt is always a good way to go. With kids, I'm assuming that money can be put to much better use. However, I guess it depends on how feasible it is for you to relocate or be away from your family.

I am in an unrelated field, so keep that in mind. However, 2 questions strike me as I read this. 1. Can you get the type of career you want with either degree? Can you use the infectious disease knowledge from UNMC to do biodefense research? 2. Can you feasibly afford paying back $200k+ in student loans post graduation? What are average starting salaries in your field? I would err on the side of caution and go by the lower estimates you find. You want the degree to enhance your life, but is it worth it if it saddles you with so much debt you will not be able to buy a house, afford to provide for a family, travel, or anything else that you may want to do in your life? Because, don't forget to take compound interest into account because that $200k will be way more later.

Hi there! Welcome to GradCafe. There is a GRE subforum under "Applications" where people typically post these kinds of things.