When people say 2 years of research...? (PhD clinical Psych)

[PsychBabe95]

What exactly do people mean when they say 2 years of research? Is this two years part time? A few hours a week or more like 20? I understand the more the better, but what is the minimum for a two year time period? Also, my GPA is a 3.5. What GRE should I shoot for? Is apply to 8-10 schools enough? These are not Ivy leage or anything special. I'm new at this and I've gotten so many mixed answers. 

TYIA

[PsyDuck90]

Often times, people will take on paid research assistant positions as jobs, and these are two year commitments. I'm assuming that is where you've heard that number. There isn't really a magic number for years of research. More so, what you've done in that time counts. Having products such as posters presented at conferences and publications in journals are fantastic to have and show you had a large hand in the research project. 

For GRE, look at the average GRE for the schools you are applying to. Every APA-accreddited program is required to publish outcome data, and this often includes average GPA and GRE for the incoming class over the last few years. You want your stats to be close to that. 

The number of schools is up to you, but 8-10 is around the average I believe. Clinical psychology PhDs are competitive, regardless of ivy league status (rankings for undergrad don't really mean the same thing for grad programs, although the ivy league schools do still draw a lot of big name researchers to them). Two things to consider are research fit and geographic flexibility. Research fit is crucial when applying to programs, as you often apply to work directly with specific faculty. Geographic flexibility can also be helpful. Schools often get many applicants (well over 100 at the minimum) and usually admit approximately 5 people. Schools in desirable locations like NYC, California, Boston, etc. tend to get even more just because people are applying to live in that location. 

Check out the Psychology forum on here. There are tons of threads on applying that may be helpful for you, including a recent one about what people learned in applying this past season. 

[juilletmercredi]

There's really no minimum. Generally, when people say that, they're referring to two years of part-time experience as a research assistant - the junior and senior years of college, probably somewhere in the 10 to 20 hour per week range. But there's really no minimum - the impact of what you did in that time matters more, as well as what you learned and how well you express it. One student may be able to get admitted straight from undergrad with two years of part-time research experience, where another student needs to work full-time for three years after college to get into a program.

Eight to ten schools is pretty average.

You should shoot for the highest GRE score you can get. Don't take it more than twice, though; it's not really worth it. Get the highest score you can aim for, and then build yourself up in other areas - the GRE is probably the least important component of your application. (In psychology, a good target to aim for is a 155+ in each section.)