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I would highly recommend not doing a psyd or a masters. They are not worth the cost to you and psyds come with a stigma that you’ll carry your whole career. If it’s feasible try to publish your independent research from undergrad while searching for an RA position (paid or volunteer). Finding an RA position now and then applying in one or two years is your best bet. Your gpa and honors thesis are big helps to your app.

Big name/highly-ranked school usually are more research-focused than clinically oriented. Beyond that, I would not think too hard about this. There is variability among the students at every school. There are students who publish 1-2 papers in graduate school and others at the same school who will publish 20 papers. While research experience is the most important aspect of getting into graduate school, most students go onto clinically focused careers.

Why are you only interested in a PhD/PsyD? Your master's degree in general management will not let you do therapy. An MFT or social work program will. If you're looking to get a quality return on your investment, those are the programs that will do it. You are not going to find a PsyD program in California that is worth the money. The 3 schools you named are all scams. APA accreditation is a bare minimum requirement.

Check out Aaron Blashill's research at San Diego State! They have a great clinical program.

A mental health counseling MA can lead to a Counseling Psych or Clinical Psych PhD. The difference is, if you have an MA in mental health counseling, you will usually take one year longer at a Clinical Psych PhD (6 years) than a Counseling Psych PhD (5 years). Keep in mind that mental health counseling MAs are clinically-focused degrees usually. So it requires you to boost your research experience independently, rather than it being built into the curriculum. Clinical psych MA degrees or general psych MA degrees are more likely to help with research experience.

Schools report the number of accepted students and the number of incoming students each year. You can tell how often people turn down offers by looking at the difference between these numbers.

Apply to counseling and clinical programs. You can seek identical careers and their training is very similar. You can even pursue externships that are aligned with clinical psych training if you go to a counseling program (i.e. seeing patients with severe mental illness in a hospital setting). Many counseling programs have higher acceptance rates simply because they get fewer applicants. Apply to more schools across the whole country. Don't just apply to places that get 500+ applicants. Any funded R1 or R2 will give you a chance to pursue the career you want. And don't cross schools off because you think you aren't a perfect fit with any professor's research program. You can always make the case that you are a fit in your personal statement. Professors vary in how they approach fit. But most of them don't want clones of themselves. Palo Alto would not be a good choice. It is unfunded in an area with the highest COL in the country.

University of Dayton has a clinical MA program that could work. You get clinical and research training but it looks like the hours wouldn't be toward licensure.

They will receive fewer applications than other schools because they are not accredited (yet). A good comparison is CUNY's new clinical program: Variable 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 Number of applicants 36 23 31 18 41 44 45 104 I'm sure you can guess when they got accredited based on these numbers. UCI isn't accredited so you can safely guess that they will be less competitive. If you have pretty good GREs, send them.

I think there are a few schools that will say "3-5 letters" which gives you the go ahead to add an extra letter or two. If you have a 4th letter writer than can say something about you that the others cannot, might be worth it to include it. For all of the schools that say 3 letters, only send 3 letters.

There are no magical programs with high acceptance rates and great training. The student to faculty ratio is just too high. If you apply this year and don't get in, that's okay. Most people do not attend right out of undergrad. You aren't a bad applicant. It's just very competitive. Master's programs aren't for bad applicants. They do great work just like people with doctorates. Don't get hung up on the doctor labels because that's what will steer you toward a PsyD. You can't "do-over" the decision to go to PsyD. It has permanent effects on your career and finances. But you can do-over your application next year or the year after.

Why only PsyD programs? If you are primarily interested in a clinical career, that's great. Most people who do PhDs do clinical careers. This is the elephant in the room in every clinical program. Yes everyone has to do research, including a dissertation and maybe a thesis. But you need research training to be an effective clinician in your career. It is a myth that PsyDs are better for clinically-oriented folks. They are worse across the board. Worse training, more debt, fewer career opportunities, stigmatized degree. There are loads of PhDs that will prepare you for the career you want. Of the programs you listed, Rutgers and UMass are worth applying to. None of the others are. You have a fine application. If you can submit something as a poster or a manuscript before you apply that would be pretty good for you. The quant score is low and I would recommend retaking. That being said you can ask your letter writers to specifically talk about your GRE in their letter to offset it ("I am familiar with so and so's potential as a graduate student and their GRE is not reflective of that.") Hard to say what your exact chances are of getting in. Personal statement counts for a lot. I would try to find another research job though now as insurance. You probably are worried your application isn't good enough. You are only a senior in undergrad and sounds like you had a bad experience with research. So you think you should include some iffy programs because if you don't get into your preferred program, hey at least you can have the career you want as long as you get in somewhere. Don't do this. You will face professional barriers the rest of your career. If you don't get in to a good program that's okay, just beef up your app and reapply. Don't go to a bad program.

You're ticking all the boxes. Your junior and senior gpa will be very helpful. I would start thinking about the personal statement now and just brainstorm. You don't have have to sit and write sentences, but just make notes to yourself. What are you interested in? How are you going to frame it? How do your interests make sense in your path? If you want to work your early college gpa story into the statement, that's fine, but it's not necessary. Better for your letter writers to address your low gpa. Apply widely. You're never going to know whether gre and gpa cutoffs are hard or soft and schools will rarely be explicit if they do. I interviewed at places that had supposed soft gpa cutoffs that I was below.

You'll need to calculate your gpa for undergrad and masters. You have to report this even if your schools didn't calculate it. I recommend you remove names of schools and professors in your post. You don't need to include all of that in this setting. Your application is good. Don't stress yourself out about not having a first-author paper yet. Study for the GRE. Magoosh is a good value. I would avoid reporting your current scores because of the low Q score. I would strongly advise you to expand your search beyond those three states. Identify professors you want to work with rather than places you would like to live. If you pursue a career in this field you will need to relocate multiple times (internship, postdoc, job). Also be careful about you discuss your art unofficial recreational therapist experience. A google search tells me this requires a license. Make sure you don't misrepresent your credentials.

I would really grind this last year to boost your gpa. Some schools focus on junior/senior gpa instead of total gpa which will help you. If you think you can apply to schools (it's a lot of work) and keep your gpa up, go for it. You will be more competitive in a year, assuming your submission is accepted by then and your gpa improves some. You should apply widely because there are schools that you will not meet the gpa cutoff for and they won't always say how strict they are. I interviewed for places that reported soft cutoffs even though my gpa was below.