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Canadian Fall 2015 Applicant Thread


Mandy P.

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It's because they don't make all 13 offers at the same time. They would love it if they could get their first choices in applicants, but they can't always, of course. Here's a hypothetical timeline of events to illustrate:

1. School makes 8 offers to their first-choice applicants.

2. 5 of said applicants accept, while 3 others end up declining (presumably in favour of another school's offer).

3. School now has only 5/8 slots filled, and starts going through its waitlist to send out 3 more offers, replacing those which were declined. At this point, POIs who didn't even get priority to invite a student in the first offer round may get a chance to take someone.

4. The 3 waitlisted applicants are thrilled to recieve their delayed offers! However, two of them have already heard back from and accepted offers from schools higher on their lists. The third applicant from the wait list accepts. Now there are 6 students attending from 11 total offers sent.

5. School digs even deeper into its waitlist to send out a final 2 offers. By this time (with all the waiting for earlier offers to be confirmed or declined) it is after April 15th. The two applicants who receive them are ecstatic - they hadn't been accepted anywhere else and had resigned themselves to probably reapplying next year. Both candidates enthusiastically accept the offers.

6. Tada! School welcomes a newly enrolled class of 8 clinical students in Fall 2015, despite having made a total of 13 offers (8+3+2, 5 of which were declined overall).

 

This is probably precisely right!

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Also, people who applied to York Clinical psych did you email your POIs beforehand? Swear I've emailed so many profs and none of them are taking students at York. I don't mind sharing - jane Irvine, Walter Heinrich's, Joel Goldberg, Norman park, Shauna rosenbaum, Gary turner. WHO was I supposed to apply to..

I ended up applying to Jane Irvine and Paul ritvo (in the kinesiology dept but takes clinical students sometimes. Not sure if this year, but I know him from my job at Cancer Care Ontario).

Geez York.. Way to waste my money.

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This might sound ignorant but what can you do with a masters or PhD in experimental psych other than be an academic researcher as a prof of some sort?

I am actually wondering about the same thing regarding clinical psychologists. I mean it is a very specific job that calls for a certain personality and skills, which are not very common... Yet there are 2-4 times more applicants to this field that to other fields of psychology. Why is it so popular? I think a balance is needed among different fields of psychology, so that clinical psychologists can base their practice on research and achievements in other areas.

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I am actually wondering about the same thing regarding clinical psychologists. I mean it is a very specific job that calls for a certain personality and skills, which are not very common... Yet there are 2-4 times more applicants to this field that to other fields of psychology. Why is it so popular? I think a balance is needed among different fields of psychology, so that clinical psychologists can base their practice on research and achievements in other areas.

 

My guess is that it's because Clinical gives you more opportunities. You can be a scientist and teach, just like those with a PhD in experimental psych, but also have the option of private practice. Private practice = $220 an hour. As for personality and skills and whether all those hundreds of applicants actually have those, the answer is most certainly no. Even licensed clinical psychologists are not necessarily great at what they do.

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Info on Guelph clinical:

They will take 5-6 students. They are meeting Monday as an area to decide who to make the first round of offers to, and within the week we will all know if we have been made an offer, wait listed, or rejected.

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My guess is that it's because Clinical gives you more opportunities. You can be a scientist and teach, just like those with a PhD in experimental psych, but also have the option of private practice.

 

The flexibility that clinical affords is very appealing to me. What I like is the ability to create a different balance of research and clinical activities at different points during my life. Based on my location, living situation, financial needs, and my own emotional health and capacity for different responsibilities at different times, I'll have more freedom to do all of A] take more or fewer clients as a practitioner, B] supervise more or fewer students as a professor C] set up my own clinical practice at some point, D] take on more or less administrative responsibility in other roles... the list goes on.

 

For me it's not at all about postponing a decision between two options - I already know that my ultimate goal is to fully incorporate both research and clinical practice into my career. That alone has already pushed me towards clinical programs (despite freakishly high competition for these spots! Eeek!) I love research, because the pursuit of knowledge is incredibly intellectually satisfying for me and has the potential to marginally improve many many lives and society has a whole. And I also love clinical work, because providing those services directly to individuals can more deeply impact and improve the lives of those we serve.

 

It's about the sum total of intellectual + emotional fulfillment; I know I need both to be happy, and if I couldn't find a career that offered both I know I'd wind up searching for some hobby or side job to fulfill the other anyway.

Edited by FliesKites
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I kind of think clinical psychologists get less training in research just because they have to focus on their counseling skills.

As for admissions: I emailed Saskatchewan, and surprisingly the coordinator answered very fast. He said they are still in the process of decision-making, and will announce decisions soon... Apparently they don't conduct interviews with social psych applicants.

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The flexibility that clinical affords is very appealing to me. What I like is the ability to create a different balance of research and clinical activities at different points during my life. Based on my location, living situation, financial needs, and my own emotional health and capacity for different responsibilities at different times, I'll have more freedom to do all of A] take more or fewer clients as a practitioner, B] supervise more or fewer students as a professor C] set up my own clinical practice at some point, D] take on more or less administrative responsibility in other roles... the list goes on.

 

For me it's not at all about postponing a decision between two options - I already know that my ultimate goal is to fully incorporate both research and clinical practice into my career. That alone has already pushed me towards clinical programs (despite freakishly high competition for these spots! Eeek!) I love research, because the pursuit of knowledge is incredibly intellectually satisfying for me and has the potential to marginally improve many many lives and society has a whole. And I also love clinical work, because providing those services directly to individuals can more deeply impact and improve the lives of those we serve.

 

It's about the sum total of intellectual + emotional fulfillment; I know I need both to be happy, and if I couldn't find a career that offered both I know I'd wind up searching for some hobby or side job to fulfill the other anyway.

 

Well put - totally agree :)

 

I kind of think clinical psychologists get less training in research just because they have to focus on their counseling skills.

As for admissions: I emailed Saskatchewan, and surprisingly the coordinator answered very fast. He said they are still in the process of decision-making, and will announce decisions soon... Apparently they don't conduct interviews with social psych applicants.

 

 

I don't think there is necessarily less research training in clinical, just the focus is more on clinical research methods, so that means that Clinical students are required to take more courses than in Experimental (research courses + clinical courses). Thankfully my supervisor has lower expectations of me in terms of research productivity, because they know a lot of time is taken up with clinically-oriented activities, but I also know of several purely clinical labs that are ridiculously active and productive in research, a lot more than most experimental labs. And let me tell you, they work super hard to run these studies, practice and tackle a larger course load :$

Edited by DeltaSkelta
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Does anyone know how the process works at York if both of my POIs are not actually taking any students.. Do I get rejected or do other profs get to look at my application?

 

I think only those who have been invited to the open house are being considered, so if you've received an invite, it's promising that someone else might be interested. I had the same problem, though, that none of the faculty whose research I was interested in was accepting students, so I really had to stretch.

Edited by DeltaSkelta
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I think only those who have been invited to the open house are being considered, so if you've received an invite, it's promising that someone else might be interested. I had the same problem, though, that none of the faculty whose research I was interested in was accepting students, so I really had to stretch.

Oh invites have gone out already? Hmm guess I can rule out York then.

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Oh invites have gone out already? Hmm guess I can rule out York then.

 

I'm only going by the results page comments. It sucks, 'cause they don't tell you till about April when they update MyAccount or whatever it's called.

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I'm only going by the results page comments. It sucks, 'cause they don't tell you till about April when they update MyAccount or whatever it's called.

Oh I only see one interview invite and rest of the invites to open house were for clinical developmental. If both clinical and clinical developmental have the same open house, I guess I can cross York off.

:/

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Oh I only see one interview invite and rest of the invites to open house were for clinical developmental. If both clinical and clinical developmental have the same open house, I guess I can cross York off.

:/

I am clinical developmental, but the open house is for both clinical and clinical developmental. The invite they sent says its for both programs.

 

The open house is this friday (feb 13), so there may still be time for invites to go out.

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I am clinical developmental, but the open house is for both clinical and clinical developmental. The invite they sent says its for both programs.

The open house is this friday (feb 13), so there may still be time for invites to go out.

Thanks for the info!

Thatd be awfully last minute if they still send out invites.. But I hope you're right! Thanks!

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Thanks for the info!

Thatd be awfully last minute if they still send out invites.. But I hope you're right! Thanks!

No problem! I have 3 friends who got an email from york saying they were "shortlisted" but who were not invited to the Open House, so I think anything could happen at this point

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Wow, glad to know that York's open house may be for clinical and clinical-development only(?). 

 

No problem! I have 3 friends who got an email from york saying they were "shortlisted" but who were not invited to the Open House, so I think anything could happen at this point

 

 

Do you by any chance know anyone else that applied to York, but for the other streams? XD; I applied to developmental science but no news yet... and I was worried that I wasn't invited to the open house.

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Anyone have any information whatsoever about the University of Victoria's Clinical program (specifically the clinical neuropsychology track)? 

My application status has read "forwarded: interim review" since December... 

 

My application had the same "Interim Review" status from December right up until last week. I received my official admission offer on Jan. 30th but my status on the UVic webpage didn't change for about a week so they clearly don't update it very often.

 

As for clinical, it seems that most universities send out the experimental offers first followed by the clinical offers a few weeks after so you should expect to hear something during the last week of February/first week of March. This seems to make sense because if you look up Victoria in the "Results Search" section you can see that two people listed that they were accepted to the clinical program during the first few days of March in 2014. 

 

Best of luck to and in case you haven't seen it already here are the stats on UVic's clinical program:

http://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/psychology/assets/docs/clinic/applicationsOffersAndEnrollments.pdf

Edited by Tacoma
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Wow, glad to know that York's open house may be for clinical and clinical-development only(?). 

 

 

 

Do you by any chance know anyone else that applied to York, but for the other streams? XD; I applied to developmental science but no news yet... and I was worried that I wasn't invited to the open house.

I'm sorry, no. I don't know anything about non-clinical programs. However I know for a fact the open house this friday is ONLY clinical and clinical developmental :)

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Wow, glad to know that York's open house may be for clinical and clinical-development only(?). 

 

 

 

Do you by any chance know anyone else that applied to York, but for the other streams? XD; I applied to developmental science but no news yet... and I was worried that I wasn't invited to the open house.

 

My friend who applied to social/personality was invited to the open house on Feb 13, I don't know about developmental science though...

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My friend who applied to social/personality was invited to the open house on Feb 13, I don't know about developmental science though...

 

I'm sorry, no. I don't know anything about non-clinical programs. However I know for a fact the open house this friday is ONLY clinical and clinical developmental :)

 

:huh: Ahh... I guess I'll email my POI tomorrow... Thanks for the replies you two!!!

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