gillis_55

Not sure if this is what Sunnyset was referring to, but apparently people lie on here about getting interviews/acceptances, for whatever reason. A poster in the US Psych thread said someone posted that they got an interview with her lab director, who wasn't even accepting students that year (which I suppose could also be a lie...). Another reason not to put too much stock in the "Results" tab.

Self-monitoring is a good idea, maybe I'll put a time limit or check limit on myself. I've also been going for walks without my phone or trying to read physical/books magazines to avoid being tied to my email and feeling my heart rate jump every time I get a notification! Good luck with finishing off the semester

Hi guys - anyone else suffering from GradCafe-induced stress? Now that many of my apps are submitted I am torn on lurking the forums, despite doing so daily lately. On the one hand its nice to have the support of others that are going through the same thing, but on the other I find it can increase my anxiety levels depending on what the posts are about. What are you guys doing to cope with the waiting period?

Some schools have a subscription for electronic score delivery through a data manager or server feed, so they receive scores immediately - [Link]. I think McGill and UofT have it for sure, given that they recognized my scores on the same day they were released. So you can ask about that, but regardless I think there will be accommodations this year for official transcripts and GRE scores given the postal strikes. I have been told by a couple of schools (OISE, UCalgary) that they would never not accept an application due to missing "official" copies of transcripts/GRE scores.

Are you guys using the same research proposal for provincial, federal funding apps? UCalgary Clinical is the only program I'm applying to that requires a research proposal, so I'm thinking of tailoring mine to that particular advisor and then re-using it for OGS and CGS. Would it be an issue that my OGS and CGS applications wouldn't match my POIs at all schools? E.g. the UCalgary one will be focused on child development, many other programs I'm applying to are with adults. Wondering if POIs see your OGS/CGS applications or if they just know if you were funded or not.

No problem, glad it's helpful. And I agree you can reach out to a 2nd person, especially when the interest was lukewarm - just include a line that you've been in contact with other faculty members like Dr. XYZ but you're also interested in this person's research for ABC reasons.

Contacting POIs ahead of time hasn't done much for me either - I've gotten very generic responses back, mostly saying they'll take a look if I make the shortlist. I would say the only time it's been helpful is to 1) Ask if they're accepting students if they're not listed on the website (and keep this email short and to the point), 2) Contact them IF they say you should do so - e.g. UOttawa and Dalhousie strongly recommend contacting POIs ahead of time with CV, transcripts, etc. but still say they might not be able to respond.

A few weeks ago I was reading The Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical & Counselling Psychology (2016/2017 edition) and was surprised to see them cautioning strongly against reaching out to multiple POIs: "Students have asked us whether it is acceptable to send letters to more than one faculty member at the same program. Despite the fact that applicants may have multiple research and clinical interests, most faculty (ourselves included) react negatively to learning that the same person has written to more than one faculty member. Remember, there is a certain amount of self-interest involved - we're looking for bright, motivated students to collaborate in research and practice. It can be awkward when an admissions committee is discussing an applicant, and two faculty express a desire to to work with him/her, only to discover that the applicant has been actively expressing interest in both of them. Our advice: unless a few faculty members share highly overlapping research interests, don't write to more than one faculty member in any graduate program. If you do write to more than one, be open about it in your emails." This runs counter to the advice I've seen on here, so make of that what you will. I personally have decided to only reach out to one at each program, but a case could still be made for reaching out to multiple POIs to increase your odds that one of them might take a particular interest in you. The risk is that all of them take an interest (what a great problem!), and you're left to explain why you sent an email to several of them - especially if their research interests are quite different.

Hi there! Good idea to have your references specifically comment on your quantitative abilities. If it were me, I would emphasize the time limits of the GRE as being an issue, and showcase strong grades in quant classes. Same thing for Verbal, depending the scores required by Acadia for that section of the test. However, I wouldn’t spend too much space in your SOP explaining away your GRE scores - a couple lines at most. Focus on making an argument for why your research experience complements this particular program and this particular researcher - you want it to seem like your acceptance to this program is the logical next step in your story, which it sounds like it is! In addition to providing additionally compelling reasons to discount your GRE scores, it’s a great chance to showcase your writing ability. Also, some schools let you submit an explanation of your GRE score right in the app or as an attachment - see if that’s possible at Acadia, and keep your SOP focused on your strengths if possible. Good luck! Feel free to post your SOP or message me if feedback could help.

@TrindStarr Ah that is very smart, thank you so much! Makes things much easier now. And thank you @hsnl as well, looks like I've got more research to do on how each school funds their students.

@Piagetsky This is very encouraging, as I've been concerned that taking 6 years off working in a somewhat related field could put me at a disadvantage due to my lack of publications in that time period (all my research was internal to the companies I worked at). Hoping that those 6 years is not a write-off based on your post

Hi all - glad there is a Canadian-specific thread to share in during this stressful process! This is my first time applying to 15 clinical and counselling programs (see my signature for which ones), which is an enormous amount of work but I'm very eager to get at least one acceptance. I'm coming from a career change after 6 years working in marketing research and I'm excited to get back to psych research. Marketing research was initially interesting and fast paced, but eventually became very repetitive and limited in scope. I quit my job as a research manager in August to take a position as an RA at a community agency that focuses on child maltreatment, as I wanted to brush up on my academic research skills and hope to study the impact of traumatic life events on mental health outcomes in grad school. I took a considerable pay-cut to do that, so it would be disappointing if I was rejected this year and missed out on a year's salary as those savings would certainly help with spending 6-8 years in grad school. My background from undergrad is 3.7 / 4.0 GPA from UofT as a psych research specialist, where I did an honors thesis and an independent research project, and volunteered at 4 different university & hospital research labs. I have 1 publication and 3 conference presentations. From work I've gained experience in project and people management (which should be helpful), data analysis, and interview + presentation skills. I think I'll have a good chance if I can get to the interview stage at a few places - that's been a strong suit of mine after doing a ton of job interviews and presentations over the years. My weakness is my lack of any publications or conferences over the last six years, as all my research projects were internal to the companies I've worked for. Also nothing concrete in terms of POIs - I've had contact with a few POIs who said they would keep an eye out for my application, but nothing super positive. I'm still working on that. In terms of standardized tests, my Psych GRE was 830 / 99th percentile and I just took the General GRE on Monday - 166V (97th), 157Q (65th), AWA not available yet. I am beyond relieved to be done with standardized testing, it was a crazy amount of pressure to add on top of the application process. @TrindStarr I have a question for you about CGS-M - I know this year we have to select 3 institutions instead of 5, which is unfortunate as it seems like every advisor and school mentions how critical it is to have funding and that receiving tricouncil funding significantly ups your chance of acceptance, as you said. How did you decide which 3 schools to pick? Part of me wants to select the ones I would be most likely to attend if I were accepted due to location, but then I wonder if I should be picking based on how many awards the school has to hand out, access to other funding (e.g. all ON schools have OGS, but I don't qualify for Quebec specific awards because I'm not a resident), or how competitive it is. For example, I've heard Waterloo is insanely competitive for CGS - though I would love to go there, I'm wondering if it would be a waste to submit my CGS application there. Any advice?

This question is several months old and I’m sure you’ve made your decision already, but thought I would answer it for future people seeing this question. I am not a social worker but I’m a research assistant at a social services agency and have heard many conversations about this between the SWs and their managers. Both schools are reputable in social work and known to be more applied in their emphasis. But based on what I’ve heard I would strongly recommend an in-person program versus an online one. Both directors of clinical work (one of which is a professor at York as well) said they think online classes are not equivalent to in person classes for learning and training. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t hire someone who had an online degree, but that they would need to compensate for it with lots of applied experience. Obviously this is anecdotal and plenty of other managers may disagree. However, U of T also has very strong connections for placements - they basically guarantee them whereas other schools sometimes make you find them on your own and some struggled with that (not sure about WLU specifically). I’m curious what you ended up choosing and what your experience has been so far - I’d love to be proven wrong about online programs as it’s a huge benefit to be able to keep working.

@SarahTonin awesome thank you

Hi @SarahTonin - do you mean they had 2 years of experience while doing their undergrad? Or 2 years full time after graduation? Thanks!

@Clinapp2017 Not too blunt, I appreciate the honesty, thank you - I'd rather find out now than after I apply. For more background, I have 1 journal publication and 2 conference presentations from my undergrad, plus an honors thesis and 2 independent research projects. Volunteered in 4 labs in my undergrad in my third and fourth year. Compared to my peers who got into schools in Canada at the time, that was competitive research experience. I haven't taken either GRE yet but on practice tests I've been getting 90th percentile or above for Verbal and 80s on Quant, plus 99th percentile on Psych Subject test - hoping that is enough to get past the initial pruning of applications. I would say my job is related to psych research from a data analysis perspective - I use stats (SPSS, SAS) and programming (SQL) in much of my work. Other potentially relevant experience would be professional reports I've had published, survey design and analysis, strong presentation and communication skills from working with clients. I'm drawn towards applied research (e.g. CBT treatment design, efficacy, drop out rate) especially due to my work background - every piece of analysis I do has to be well supported with clear takeaways and action points. I have debated quitting my current job as Analytics Manager and taking an RA position; but looking at the job specs they seemed mostly clerical /administrative and I don't know that they would increase my research skill set too much in the next 8-9 months; certainly didn't seem like there would be much work on manuscripts or anything that could lead to a pub/presentation. Am I wrong on that? My other plan is to work 4 days a week at my current job and volunteer with my former prof at his Depression/Anxiety research clinic at a hospital on my day off. Would that help? Also wondering if there would be an alternative "safety" plan to getting admission into a MA/PhD in Clinical Psych; like if I pursued a terminal research masters to get more experience on that side, I could apply to PhDs after that... Sorry for the the novel! I really appreciate your feedback, I don't have many peers to discuss this with.

@stinkbug4ever I'm with you there! I've been working in business analytics for the last 5 years after doing my undergrad in psych, so lots of data analysis, research, etc. I do think having work experience will help set us apart in a positive way, but I am nervous about it as well. On the one hand I think it's a great indicator that we're committed to psych, as we are coming back after trying something else and leaving full-time careers to do it. I also think that work experience gives you some advantages in terms of problem solving, time management, learning independently, and so on. I personally feel much better prepared for a PhD now than I did 5 years ago. I haven't reached out to my former professors yet (plan to do so soon), but I am definitely curious to hear their take on how my experience will impact my admission chances.

Hi there - very glad you started this thread, I'm starting to narrow down my list right now as well. I am applying for clinical psych programs at age 28 after taking a 5 year break from psychology. I've been working in business analytics doing data analysis and strategy - somewhat related but not helpful from a research publication stand point. I'm hoping all the research experience I have from my undergrad will help, plus I'm going to ask one of my old professors if I can volunteer with him again asap. If anyone has advice or knows someone who transitioned back into psych after working in another area, I would love to hear about it! I'm in Canada so the focus for me will be programs here, but I am also applying in the US to a few reach schools in case I do somehow get in. Still narrowing that list down. Canada: McGill, Concordia, Ryerson, York University, University of Ottawa, University of Guelph, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser, Waterloo, University of Calgary, U of T Scarborough, Western, University of Victoria US: Boston University, University of Washington, University of Minnesota, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Teacher's College at Columbia Looking forward to have people to talk to about this whole process - everyone I know is already 5 years into their PhD or chose not to pursue grad school.