What do I need to do in the next two years to be at all competitive for clinical psych PhD programs?

[TrishaK1997]

I am currently an undergraduate student; major Behavior and Health. I'll be entering my senior year this fall. For the first two years of undergrad I was preparing to go into occupational therapy, so most of my extracurriculars and work experience were related in some capacity to community outreach and rehabilitation. Here's a list of pretty much all my experiences since beginning college. 

I worked a recreational therapist for a year at a rehabilitation center/assisted living facility. I worked with individuals with Parkinson's, Dementia, and Alzheimer's. 

 I worked as a summer teacher (had to design lesson plans in science, mathematics, and reading and writing) for inner-city children aged 5-7.

I volunteered with my university's prison book club, I was the materials coordinator. 

I interned at an outpatient mental health facility for individuals with Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Unspecified Personality Disorders. 

Now for research experience...

I volunteered in my school's Motor Development Lab for a semester. I was helping the lab manager to write a meta-analysis regarding the risk of falling in elderly patients who underwent bariatric surgery. Unfortunately, this was a pretty shitty, disorganized experience. She let way too many people help out and just didn't have enough work for everyone. There were no regular hours and my role just didn't feel significant. This experience sort of made me dislike research and I actually didn't even reach out to any labs for my entire sophomore year. I know, big mistake. However, research experience also wasn't that important for OT school, which was my goal.

I studied abroad the first semester of my junior year, and that's when I decided to switch from OT to clinical psych. When I came back (from study abroad) I immediately got involved with research at one of my school's psych labs. It has been going very well (studying emergent social language in children with Autism), and I secured funding to also conduct research during the summer. I'll present my summer research at my school's undergrad research symposium. I'll also be writing an Honor's Thesis with the same lab.

Obviously, I will not be ready to apply this fall. I am planning to take a year off to work in a research lab, hopefully one focused on developmental psych. Will I then be ready to apply for programs in Fall 2019? My GPA will likely and hopefully be between 3.7 and 3.75. Also, I'm sort of curious if my non-research experiences will at all help me in the application process. 

Edited April 19, 2018 by TrishaK1997

[PsyDuck90]

The biggest thing that programs care about is research experience. Try to get some stuff out there: present posters or talks at conferences (preferably national ones). The non-research experiences you've amassed are definitely a benefit as long as you discuss their value appropriately in your SOP. 

Based on my experiences applying this cycle and having read a lot of threads on here and SDN, make sure your GRE scores meet cut offs and that you have solid research experience. You have some clinical experience, which is good. I wouldn't worry too much about adding more. If you only focus on 2 things, I'd suggest they be research and GRE scores.