rainydaychai

Adding to what @Mickey26 said, Simon Fraser University in Canada (where I'm starting my clinical PhD program this fall) is also superb for clinical forensics and especially psychopathy. We have a formal forensic track and my undergraduate honours supervisor there was supervised himself by Dr. Robert Hare, worked on the creation of the original PCL, and created the PCL:SV for his dissertation! Feel free to message me if you'd like more info on that, or Canadian programs in general. As for the study coordinator question, it's a tricky one. It would be fabulous if you got the position and it turned out to be all you hoped for! Fingers crossed for you. However, what @justacigar said about being able to take on similar duties without the formal title is also true, and conversely, in my own experience, I was promised a "study coordinator" role in my last position but was only given the simplest coordination tasks no matter how hard I fought for them. I believe it's very supervisor-dependent!

Hi there! It looks to me like you have a decent GPA and strong GRE scores. You're on the right track with the research experience you have thus far! Are you currently at any of the RA positions you mentioned? I would hesitate to tell you that you that you should apply this year or wait another, as this is a decision only you can make, but I think your top priority no matter what path you choose should be to work at gaining more research experience, especially in a "leading" capacity (e.g., an independent project that you conceptualize with help from a mentor, first author conference presentations and potentially publications). Would you feel comfortable asking for a meeting at the full time paid RA position and asking if you could take on more duties in additional to standardized assessments? Specifically, you could ask your supervisor if they have any already-collected data around that you could analyze in a unique way, under their mentorship. One option is to apply this year to throw your hat in the ring, per se, and understand that no matter the outcome, it is valuable practice for potential future cycles. However, this does involve a significant output of money for application fees, sending GRE scores, etc. and not everyone has the financial means to do so. One last note - I see you're interested in psychopathy! I'm starting a clinical forensic PhD program this September and have focused some of my past research on psychopathy and other forensic topics. If you're interested in a clinical PhD with a forensic concentration, shoot me a message! I'm very familiar with the forensic programs in North America and may be able to recommend some good research fits.

This might be a school-specific issue. Similarly to other people who have answered this, I applied to 8 clinical PhD programs last year and 11 this year - six of the same as last year and five new ones. Two of the programs I interviewed at last year actually did invite me for another interview this year, and I got accepted to one (it was my undergrad institution where I had a lot of prior connections, though). However, at another program I interviewed at last year, the PI expressed the strong desire to admit me as a second student but he couldn't secure the funding for two, so I was ultimately rejected. I had high hopes of being selected for an interview again this year, but no dice. In sum, my experience has been that often schools with very selective applicant pools (e.g., they only invite 3 students/PI for interviews) may not invite you for another interview no matter how your stats improved, but having connections with your PI might override this!

Simon Fraser University - Clinical Psychology PhD! Just formally accepted my offer this morning.

Hey there, I was actually in an extremely similar situation last year. I came close to admission into a few fully funded Clinical PhD programs but ultimately only received an admission offer from a partially funded Clinical PhD program in the US. As I'm Canadian, the out-of-state tuition would have been just under $20k each year after the "partial funding" was applied. Personally, after some thought I released the offer as I did not want to go into debt for my graduate studies. Instead of applying to Masters programs (Canada doesn't have many - or any? - so it would have been a similar situation, paying out-of-state tuition for an American program), I secured a research coordinator position within my subfield of psych (forensic) and was actually able to make money while gaining experience the past year! I tried again this application cycle and was offered admission to one of my top program picks - it's not funded, but as it's a Canadian university, tuition is much much cheaper and the TA/RA ships offered more than cover it. Many of the faculty I interviewed with this year cited my current position as one of the stronger aspects of my application. As for factors I considered, the financial aspect was a huge one - it would have totaled roughly $100k USD of debt after I graduated the program I was accepted to last year and I wasn't willing to do that to myself or my partner. It was also one of my last picks, so if I had interviewed and loved it, it may have been a different story. I might have been much more willing to shell out $$ for a top pick program. Keeping in mind that this is my own experience and there may be many other aspects to your situation that I don't know about, have you considered research or lab coordinator jobs over a Masters? You can often earn the same amount of publications/conference presentations/other experiences, especially if you work for 2+ years (same duration as a Masters). The only situation that I have generally heard a Masters is better in is if you have scant research experience, as it may be harder to secure a coordinator position with very little past research experience. Feel free to DM me if you have any questions or want to talk more!

I am honestly just feeling so grateful that I can even post on this thread. A huge congrats to everyone, we all know what a huge accomplishment this is! I am currently working full time as a lab coordinator so will have to stay in the position until the end of July, but I intend to savor the feeling of free evenings and weekends until the fall. As the university I am 99% attending doesn't start until September, I am planning on taking all of August off to spend time with family, find and set up a new apartment, potentially get a pet, and take a few little vacations. While it is a trip for a conference, I am going to Poland in June and am excited to explore that new area of the world. Oh yeah, and I am getting married spring of 2021 (at the end of my first year of grad school - yes, I'm insane) so after the year mark passes, I intend to get as much of that planning out of the way as possible before school starts!

Has anyone who was accepted to SFU received their official letter of acceptance (or even had their application go from the green circle to the checkmark in the app portal)? I would love to accept my offer soon but feel like it won't be "official" until the letter comes. Can you formally accept an offer if the official letter hasn't come yet? (Note: I am very well acquainted with the program so I don't need to wait for letter to know funding details, etc.).

So much yes. As you said, I know they are trying to be cordial, but receiving these same sentiments multiple times last application cycle while getting no offers was pretty crushing. I have already promised to myself to never say this to an applicant if I'm ever a prof. 😅

I did receive an email from my POI asking to set up a time to call (at 10 pm! and he called right after when I said I was free, too!!) but he explained it as a special circumstance since he was overseas. He mentioned he would have cold called if it was during work hours.

Last week I had the pure happiness of receiving an unofficial offer from the SFU Clinical Psych PhD program!! As it seems that no other unofficial offers have gone out from SFU yet, I wanted to update that they should be going out any day now - I have an existing relationship with one of the faculty who advocated for my admission, which explains why I was notified early. Feel free to DM with any questions!

Yes, I applied both last year and for this current cycle and from what I've seen/heard, 3-5 at most is most common for one spot. That being said, I also have experience with programs that invite 8-10 applicants for one spot (I can think of two programs in particular) and frankly, like others have mentioned, it rubs me the wrong way. One of them specifically states that the odds are stacked against you if you choose to interview via Skype and do not come in person and that puts a massive financial burden on applicants for a ~ 12% likelihood of acceptance.

I just had my first "official" interview today via Skype, with a graduate student, and wanted to get opinions on a tough question I received (and further collective knowledge so you guys can prepare for it ). It was "what are your clinical weaknesses?" As I've never been in an official clinical role (I only have a BA), but do have a decent amount of experience interacting with the population I hope to practice with, it was more of a "lack of experience" more than anything but I feel like I could answer it better. Has anyone got this question before?

School: University of Nevada, Las Vegas Type: Clinical Psychology PhD Date of invite: 1/16 Type of invite: Email from DCT (likely mass) after preliminary phone interview this week Interview date(s): 2/14

School: Fordham University Type: PhD (Clinical) Date of invite: 1/10/2020 Type of invite: Mass email from DCT (email for PIs) Interview date(s): 1/24/20 or 1/31/20 :)

School: University of Nevada, Las Vegas Type: PhD (Clinical) Date of invite: 1/9/2020 Type of invite: Email from PI asking for a phone call to discuss ongoing lab research, my research interests, and my career goals early next week. I'm not sure if other UNLV profs conduct phone interviews before in-person invites. This also might be a situation specific to myself and my PI, as we have had prior email contact. DM for PI.