Psych_School

CGS-D came out, for those who are waiting. Came up short this time... and probably the end of the road for clinical psych grad school chances this year. Good luck and see some of you next application cycle!

Long time lurker here! Wanted to share my excruciating, roller-coaster ride of an affair with these applications. 
School: University of Toronto (UTSC)
Concentration: Clinical Psychology (Psychological Clinical Science)
Type: MA
Date of acceptance: April 4, 2019
Notified by: My POI called me with the good news and I got a formal offer of admission via email the same day
Note: I only first heard from my POI last Tuesday! (Like, March 26th)
This was my second year doing applications after 7-8 years of deciding that I eventually want to become a clinical psychologist. My first year I applied to 10 schools, interviewed at 2, but didn't get in. This year I only applied to the 2 schools where I felt most passionate about the research. I interviewed at the in-person interviews for one school back in February and was put on the alternate list, and hadn't heard anything from the second, so I thought I was done for. Then I randomly got an e-mail at the end of March to interview! It does happen!
TLDR: It takes so much work but if you honestly want it, you can get it! I've made every big life decision over the past several years with this goal in mind and it finally paid off. YAY!!!

+++ This is only my personal opinion +++
After being through a couple cycles and receiving an offer this round I found the most helpful thing was building a relationship with my potential supervisor.  IF there is someone you are interested in working with who is in your geographic area and you are able to volunteer/work as an RA or possibly a research coordinator and build a strong working (and personal) relationship with them it will greatly increase the likelihood of them taking you on as a student vs. an outside person who they speak with for a couple of hours (max).  This might be obvious and it is anecdotal (worked for me) but I think it is worth consideration.  Obviously GPA, GRE, pubs/presentations should be stressed as well
Hope this helps a little bit!  
 

OK to settle this I found the FAQ on the CPO website and it lists a psychologist as someone with a PhD, EdD, PsyD or DPsy problem solved LOL

I've spoken with faculty members from both types of programs and essentially there is little difference in practice between the two degrees. The two fields were very different 50-60 years ago, with counselling focused on vocational/well-being issues (especially in educational/military settings) and clinical focused more on psychopathology; however, at this point the overlap is huge.  You won't have access to different populations based on the degree - that's entirely dependent on your program's training and practicum sites. If you stack up hours with the population you want, there's no issue.
That being said, clinical degrees are still seen by some in academia as having more prestige - but that perception continues to fade as the fields converge. If you're interested in a research career, it's really your CV/pubs/funding record that's important, not the type of degree. 
If I were you, I would go with the better research fit - 6 years is a long time to study something you're not very interested in.

There isn't much a difference depending on the school, some counselling depts i.e., McGill, UBC push into quasi clinical territory, York's clinical department for sure pushes into counselling, and this is fair to say of most of the older clinical departments. That said, some places like UTSC, Ryerson and Queens are much more hardcore clinical and wont be confused for a counselling program anytime soon lol (likely because of their CBT focus), but you can still acquire counselling type external practica from a clinical program (and vice versa, as @gillis_55 mentioned).

Congrats on your admissions, that is great!
As for the difference, and someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I think the lines are slowly blurring bewteen the two, with those in counselling wanting more severe psychopathology training and those in clinical wanting certain elements of counselling training. I'm sure you know the broad differences between the two already. I know that regardless of degree level, counselling tends to be less focused on severe psychopathology in favour of more general life problems/stress and their correlates. Despite the two overlapping, however, they are still pretty different in their core approaches from what I have been told.
Also echoing what @gillis_55 has said above, I think you should go with the better research fit. If you are studying what you are interested in and seek out opportunities within the program/practica for exposure to the population you are interested in, you will get to where you want and be happier along the way!

Yup! It definitely can happen if you have a master's thesis that is clinically related; although it is rare I would say. 
I've been talking to some student who were accepted directly into PhD , and a couple of them came from counselling. I myself am coming from an MSc in Psychiatry and am going directly into PhD for clinical. The one stipulation is that there has to be spots available for PhD which you can't always bank on-- for example, in my case, a PhD student left the clinical program for personal reasons so a spot opened up; otherwise they may reserve all PhD spots for current clinical students at the master's level). 
If you are admitted directly into PhD the way it works is you may be spared some electives if you have graduate level courses from your masters, but you will be with the MA1 cohort doing all the core courses (it's possible some of them will overlap with counselling and you will be exempt). As such, you'll likely do 5 years for your PhD instead of 4 as you're catching up (although some crazy cats manage in less)-- ultimately you're still saving time and do not have to redo a master's thesis. 
It definitely varies by school in terms of their willingness but what I'm describing is the case for a couple of schools I was accepted to (one in Toronto and one in Montreal). 
Hope that helps! Feel free to message me

Yes, me! My MA is in counselling psych and I was admitted directly to PhD without having to make up any MA course/clinical work. There are others in my year who had another Master's (MA or MSc experimental psych or MEd counselling psych) and they either catch-up by doing MA clinical work or else re-doing the whole MA clinical degree. It really depends on the program you did, how your thesis work (or previous research) fits for your POI and how you can position your degree work as equivalent to that of the MA program you are hoping to skip  it's definitely possible and not as unusual as you would think!