TC Psychology in Ed MA vs BU Psychology MA vs Mercer U Clinical Med Psych PhD

[cab3be]

Okay, a slightly convoluted and three-pronged question here:

Which program to pick between Teachers College Psych in Ed MA (Personality and Psychopathology Track), Boston University's Psychology MA, and Mercer University's new Clinical Medical Psychology PhD?

Ultimately, my goal is to obtain my PhD in Clinical Psychology, however I feel I need a better background in psychological research to gain admission to a good PhD program. I threw out my application to Mercer (small Georgia university) on a prayer, just to see what happened. It's by no means a top program, but they have a good rep in the state and the program itself is in its inaugural year.

Otherwise, I've been dreaming of Boston for months now, but TC also looks like it has some great things to offer. Anyone have any thoughts, advice or first-hand experience they could share? TC's deadline is in a matter of days, and the grad app anxiety is on full force right now.

Thanks for any and all help!

[ghanada]

Okay, a slightly convoluted and three-pronged question here:

Which program to pick between Teachers College Psych in Ed MA (Personality and Psychopathology Track), Boston University's Psychology MA, and Mercer University's new Clinical Medical Psychology PhD?

Ultimately, my goal is to obtain my PhD in Clinical Psychology, however I feel I need a better background in psychological research to gain admission to a good PhD program. I threw out my application to Mercer (small Georgia university) on a prayer, just to see what happened. It's by no means a top program, but they have a good rep in the state and the program itself is in its inaugural year.

Otherwise, I've been dreaming of Boston for months now, but TC also looks like it has some great things to offer. Anyone have any thoughts, advice or first-hand experience they could share? TC's deadline is in a matter of days, and the grad app anxiety is on full force right now.

Thanks for any and all help!

May I ask why you don't just become an RA in a psych research lab instead of paying for an expensive Masters? I am doing engineering now, but I did my undergrad in psychobio and worked in a clinical/neuropsych research lab for about 5 years. All my bosses were Clinical Psychologists and my fellow labmates were all trying to get into Clinical Psych PhDs. Out of the 20 or so clinical psychologists or aspiring clinical psychologists I met throughout that time, not ONE person had a Masters or was interested in getting a Masters first. And lots of people that come out of my lab doing psych research and that published papers had no problems getting into good clinical psych PhD programs. As you said yourself, psych research is the key to gaining admission to a good PhD program. Think about it, if you were on the admissions committee, would you rather take a Masters student with some psych classes and a little bit of general research, or rather a full-time researcher in a specific field that has published papers, presented at conferences, worked in clinical settings, etc?

I know this isn't what you were asking, but just thought I would throw out other options. Why pay for a Masters when you can get just as good or even better experience actually doing psych research and getting paid at the same time? I know I am not personally in clinical psych myself, but that has been my experience. And for what it's worth I was doing all this research at UCLA, which I think is supposed to be a good clinical psych school.

[cab3be]

Hey ghanada,

Thanks for the feedback, and yes, this is some good advice that I have received before. I guess my reasons for pursuing a Masters are two-fold. The main reason is that I did not take full advantage of research opportunities during my undergraduate years, and following graduation, I have found it very difficult to find a good RA position while lacking extensive previous experience (much less a paid RA position). On another note, I also want to strengthen my abilities in psychotherapy and my personal areas of interest simultaneously, as I hope to pursue a science-practitioner based PhD program and one day participate in both research and applied clinical work.

An RA position sounds great, but it has seemed both difficult to obtain and one-sided in regard to my career goals, so I felt that spending a little money for some further education made sense.

Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way, and if you think I'm wrong on any of this, by all means please clear it up for me! There are multiple roads to the PhD, which I suppose can be both a burden and a blessing.

Thanks again for your feedback!

[ghanada]

I guess I didn't think getting an RA position was that tough, but again I was at UCLA and it seemed like there were billions of psych labs looking for people. I understand your desire for getting a Masters, but I still think a good RA job in a productive lab is invaluable. As an RA, I was able to work about 4-6 hours/day with patients running cognitive tests and neuroimaging, be a project coordinator on a study, manage the entire database, run all the stats and analyses, contribute to papers, train and manage other RAs and undergrads, etc. In 3 years of full time work I probably had 2,000+ hours of clinical experience, 10+ secondary author pubs, and 2 first author posters at international conferences. I gained a billion times more practical research experience doing all that than the last 3 years I have spent doing my Masters since then. It also gave me numerous letters of recs from well known clinical psych advisers that could speak in detail about my value as a researcher. Since PhD programs primarily care about how successful of a researcher you will be, having a strong research background is priceless.

I had a 2.57 undergrad GPA, but will be attending a top 10 engineering PhD this fall, and the reason for that was because I got recruited specifically by a PI for the work I did when I was an RA. I have been both an RA and a Masters student and I can honestly say that the RA work was way more useful than the Masters. The only reason I am doing a Masters is to catch up in engineering coursework to be eligible for an engineering PhD and raise my GPA. Otherwise, working as an RA would have most definitely opened doors for me to get into psych PhDs if I had chosen to go that route.