clinpsychapps

Guys thanks for reacting to my post because now when I refresh my email, I at least have new emails to look at ❤️

80% of my life is cycling between grad café, my email, r/gradadmissions and discord. ?

Just another day of obsessively refreshing my email. #thisistorture

My understanding is that we won't get official letters from UCSD/SDSU until we accept their offer. I received an offer from a PI in the BMed track, and they've already been in touch via email about stipend amounts, potential scholarships that might be good fits for me, etc. So if you're waiting on that information, I'd say you can definitely reach out to your PI to initiate those conversations now.

After interviewing, besides the person an offer was extended to, is it common for everyone else to be waitlisted? Or will they only waitlist their top few and send rejections to the others? I was just waitlisted at a school and was curious! 

Has anyone received any updates/interview offers from Harvard yet? Anxiously waiting.

Anyone on hear interview with the University of Houston this past weekend? I saw someone post an acceptance on the grad cafe results page and was wondering if anyone else had heard back from them already. I'm assuming since I didn't hear back I didn't get accepted, which I'm really bummed about, but holding on to some hope that maybe not all acceptances have been sent out yet.

I saw that Uni of Hawaii Manoa has lost a lot of funding this year. I also understand that notifications aren't set to go out until mid-Fed and early March. Has anyone heard anything at all about interviews ?? 

I didn't post it on the results page but the announcement was made on their website: https://www.psych.ucla.edu/grads/areas-of-study/clinical-psychology/prospective-clinical-area-applicants 
 
Was bummed about this one, my top choice

Hi All,
This post is a little blunt, but I hope that it is helpful.
I hope to offer a little bit of a unique perspective to the grad school admissions process. We've had a courageous professor that has stepped up and offered some insight, but I have yet to see any comments from current graduate student from an R1 university. To give you a little bit of a background of where I came from, I came from a disadvantaged background, and almost didn't make it through high school - I flunked out of calculus. Right now is a super anxiety provoking time of your lives during the admissions process even without COVID-19. Throughout this post, I am going to focus on what you may not all be considering and what is out of your control.
The first thing that is not getting enough attention is the virus. This caused a huge increase in the number of applications and a decrease in available funds. This means that a) the already small number of graduate student lines at my university decreased by a lot, and b) there were more competitive applicants than ever before. This application cycle is incredibly unusual and should not be considered to be normative. You all were extraordinarily unlucky applying this year.
Second, although there are structural limitations (e.g., GRE) that can prevent quality minority applicants from receiving interviews at top-tier R1 universities, I come from a university with grad students and faculty that are diverse and that have ongoing diversity initiatives to recruit diverse grad students and faculty. Because we have these initiatives, we recruit top quality diverse candidates. These students come from a different universities including R1 and even R3 universities. Regardless of their sexual orientation, race, or socioeconomic background, these applicants come in with several (sometimes first authored) publications, presented at several peer reviewed conferences, won several research grants, AND are excellent clinically.  Indeed, the most diverse graduate students in my department are often the ones with the best credentials. Further, a PI is not going to work with you unless you have those research "chops" that we like to talk about so much.
Third, if the numbers alone don't convince you, this is a competitive field. Many individuals want to be clinical psychologist, and let me tell you - it really is some of the most gratifying work I've done. This includes the research, grant writing, computer coding, course load, assessments, and therapy hours. But a lot of people want to do the work. This means you have to establish yourself as a competitive applicant, and I will tell you from several conversations that I have had with several who aspire to be clinical psychologist, many are not.
So here is my unsolicited advice for getting into graduate school and becoming what I believe is a competitive applicant in two pretty difficult steps. This first one is the most important: find a competent clinical psychological scientist that takes an interest in you as a person - this needs to happen. If it happens correctly, this person will advocate on your behalf that you are indeed a good person to work with to the potential PI of your dreams. Second, to be a really competitive applicant, you need to have observable skills, if I may be blunt: many faculty don't care about your GPA as much as this forum suggests. This means you need to publish (maybe even a few times), go to a number of conferences (to meet the PI of your dreams), and maybe even learn how to code and conduct some basic statistical analyses (time to start learning R). For some, this may mean getting a masters degree (many in my program have), for others, this will mean getting a post-bac position conducting good research with a quality PI. Many graduate students have to apply multiple cycles to get into graduate school because they do not know these things.
Finally, I do want to mention that there is always room for improvement and change in the system - we want and need more diverse representation in academia. As has already been stated, advocate for more funding to higher education and bug your state legislatures. Right now though, finding a high quality mentor and developing some observable skills as well as respecting some of the things that may be outside of your control may be the best option forward. Nevertheless, I wish you all the best of luck moving forward and hope you get in to the school of your dreams.
 

For the people posting about arizona state: is it a mass departmental invite or have you heard individually from your POIs?

To the UDenver poster that said they were rejected to the PhD program, did you mean PsyD? Or how did you hear you were rejected? So sorry by the way

The post on the result page was for The University of Arizona, so a different school. I also have not heard anything back from ASU either. I am hoping we will hear something this week. Good luck!!

Has anyone actually heard from ASU Clinical? There was an earlier post saying applications were being reviewed in January, but on the results page someone (hopefully a troll???) said all invites were sent in December.

This was super helpful, thank you

Yes! In an interview I had, there was a 45 minute lab meeting with the PI and grad students. It was to give a general overview of their lab, recent projects, publications, and future directions. I really liked it because it gave insight into the dynamic of the lab (grad student-mentor relationship, etc.). All the applicants invited to interview with that particular lab were there and we just went around a give a brief introduction of ourselves. It was mostly a presentation where we listened and asked questions. Hope this helped! 

Has anyone attended a lab meeting with their prospective PI as part of the interview process? If so, what was the nature of it? In our lab meetings, we always read and discuss a current paper so I was wondering if this is something I should be prepared for. Anxiety is real y'all 

Does anyone know if USC is done with interview invites? 

Is that considered rude or impatient?? Ugh, I feel like this is the most stressed and overwhelmed I've been in ages and no one else around me can relate or understand, so I'm forced to vent to a bunch of strangers online ? appreciate yall

If anyone has any insight into this... would love to know. Congrats to those with invites!

Same ? still holding onto a little bit of hope but was fairly certain I'm out 

Looks like from past years, all the invitations to interview via email are gone out at the same time... I don't have a good feeling about it ?. Already preparing for the rejection letter so I don't get my hopes up.

Yes! Congrats to those who received an invite! I'm also really curious to know get some info from those who are willing to share. I ended up emailing the admissions office yesterday re: my application status/when they might expect to send out invites. No response yet, but will share if I hear back. 

If anyone has any insight into this... would love to know. Congrats to those with invites!

Hi everyone. Hope everyone is hanging in there! Based on the results page, it looks like UCLA has sent out interview invites this morning? Don't know if all invites have been extended...but staying hopeful and crossing my fingers for good news. Sending everyone tons of positive energy during these times. Best of luck to everyone!