A daughter of a friend just finished her Bachelor’s in Psychology. She wants to become a psychiatrist, but for logistical reasons, only applied to one grad school which she was pretty sure she’d get into. She didn’t.
So now she needs to cast a wider net. And so while she’s networking other options, I promised I’d post to see if the Teeming Masses had an inside Dope on good or great graduate programs in the field.
Thanks! 
Just a nitpick: I assume you mean psychologist, not psychiatrist. Psychiatry is a medical specialty.
If she can’t do the research to find good programs on her own, she doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually finishing a graduate degree.
OP didn’t state the girl’s just thrown up her hands – sounds like he decided to fish for extra recommendations.
It’s a tough one, though – there’s a LOT of good psychology programs out there. It’s pretty easy to find lists ranking by various criteria, but it’s also important to look for a program where there’s work being done in fields the applicant is interested in.
Sheesh, where to start. Assess the package she’s pitching. What was the GPA? GRE? Recommendations? Relevant course work? Any extra curricular activities that might relate?
I hope she made some connections with her professors in Psych. Go back to them and see if you can’t get some recommendations. Make damn sure she knows what KIND of Psychology she would like to be practicing.
If the previous doesn’t gel, shoot for a Master’s degree to figure all that stuff out. Especially if the alma mater offers one. If not, get a recommendation or 10 from the previous profs.
It’s not hard to come out with a Psych degree and still not know what area you’re interested in, but to apply to 1 school without having a wink from someone on the faculty there shows poor preparation and poor judgement. Par for the course for the young, but she is going to have to make up that deficiency.
I’m not sure what logistical reasons would lead someone to apply to only one school.
Ph.D. programs tend to be very competitive. It’s not going to help you much if people recommend top schools and your friend’s daughter doesn’t qualify. Even if she does qualify, does she really want to be one of the students that doesn’t make the cut after the first year?
I’m guessing since you said “psychiatrist” , she’s interested in practicing clinical or counseling psychology. She might want to cast her net even wider and look at master’s programs in related fields such as social work or mental health counseling.
A psychiatrist is a medical doctor - they go to medical school, so if that’s what she wants to do, she’ll need to go the MCAT route.
If she meant psychologist, she’ll need to figure out what KIND of psychology she wants to practice - assessment, school, child, clinical? Then she can start to narrow her focus.
The American Psychological Association website has some decent resources about careers and schools.
The current national acceptance rate for a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology is 4%. My husband applied to 15 grad schools. He was an honors psychology student with a 3.9 GPA from the University of Michigan, three years of research experience with a national leader in aggression research, and two years of direct practice supervising children with behavioral disorders. He got into one graduate school. Very few people who apply will have the luxury of picking and choosing where they go - in fact, it’s considered pretty unusual for someone to be accepted into any psych Ph.D. program the first time they apply.
As for top programs, my personal gold standard is the University of Pennsylvania clinical psychology program, which basically spawned one of the most prolific and effective evidence-based interventions for mental health problems. The clinics at the University of Pennsylvania are outstanding. Professors such as the esteemed Martin Seligman and the founder of cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck, make up the standing faculty. Edna Foa’s extraordinary work with PTSD is also to be found at Penn. I can’t imagine a better program for the truly scientifically inquisitive. I would imagine getting in is next to impossible.
My husband wound up at the Ph.D. program at Rutgers, which is an already well-respected program that is growing in renown. It strikes me as very methodologically rigorous, though my husband’s experience with clinical supervision has been less than ideal, with the mentors taking a ‘‘hands-off’’ approach.
I think anyone considering a Ph.D. in psychology should feel that they could not possibly be satisfied doing anything else. It is painful, grueling, incredibly time-consuming, and will affect not only the student but everyone in the household. It will turn a perfectly level-headed, calm person into a neurotic mess on a fairly routine basis. The pressure to publish is on right from the start. Whereas most Ph.D. programs have classes, qualifying examinations, and dissertation, the psych program requires classes, qualifying examinations, lab hours, clinical hours, and dissertation. That is in addition to responsibilities as a T.A. or research fellow. My husband personally feels that he spends 75% of his time taking care of responsibilities that are irrelevant to his career, and 25% of his time doing the things that really matter to him. He is always stressed, and has been stressed for the last three years, and will probably be stressed for the next two. He breaks into heaving sobs about once a month (well, he did at first - it’s more like every three months now.)
This is really not a decision to be made lightly.
Definitely all depends on the field. One suggestion: she could find out where some current leaders in the field she’s interested in are teaching, and apply to those schools with the aim of getting one of them as her advisor.
This is great advice. Her application should actually specify who she would prefer as her adviser, and the rationale behind her choice. She should throw out two or three good options, and be well-versed in the research of each adviser when they meet. It’s important to keep in mind that when you apply to academic grad programs, you’re applying to an adviser more than the program itself. Before she does this, I suggest she reads Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Masters or Ph.D. It explains everything with no sugar coating.
MSW is actually not a bad alternative (and I’m not just saying that because I have an MSW.) If you find a good clinical MSW program, you can probably get supervision on par with a clinical psych program. Research indicates that MSWs are no more or less effective in clinical work than psychologists, and they tend to be preferred by employers over psychologists because they can be paid less. The programs are less selective but as a student in one of the top programs I found it to be quite rigorous academically. The quality of social work education varies, I’d wager, tremendously more than in psychology, so she would have to be very careful to pick a program grounded in science and critical thinking.
It’s not exactly a walk in the park, either - full time coursework, internship 24 hours a week on top of that (plan on spending about 60 hours/week on school stuff), and then after the two-year program you must be supervised for three years before you can receive that LCSW status. And it’s hard to find a job doing clinical work without that LCSW, because most insurance companies won’t pay otherwise.
The current best schools for social work AIUI are University of Michigan, Washington University, Columbia University, and University of Pennsylvania. My experience at Penn was awesome, but I was macro, not clinical. Let me know if you want me to hook your girl up with some of my clinical colleagues, many of which have found good clinical jobs right out of grad school.
If clinical psychology, she should look at this:
It was my bible when I was trying to get into a clinical psych program. Helped me with everything except being honest with myself about whether I really, really wanted that degree badly enough (and it turns out I didn’t, and I’m happily a web developer now, but hey! I learned sql in that lab, which is never wasted).
Best of luck to her. Agree absolutely that she’s not applying to a school so much as an advisor. And even though I had one of the really good ones, it didn’t work out for me.
psych prof for 12 years chiming in… everything olivesmarch4th said should be taken as gospel… clinical PhD programs are the most competitive programs in psychology, and a BS in psych is not worth much unless she came out with applied research experience, publications/presentations, excellent GRE scores, and a really good working relationship with 1-2 professors who can write on her behalf.
a terminal MS program might be a good option… success in grad school is a good predictor of success in grad school, so getting a MS can get her publications, experience, and the kind of working relationships needed to get a doctorate.
another great resource is this book from the APA.
Another avenue you might suggest is looking into Educational Psychology programs. When I was an undergrad getting my BA in Psych, I worked with a couple of Ed Psych grad students working on their EdD’s in counseling. They were pretty sharp and were generally at the top of their classes in the graduate Psych program.
When I applied to PhD programs in experimental, I applied to 5 schools. I got accepted by 2 and an offer from a 3rd contingent on committing to one professor’s specialty. I was pretty naive, but I did manage to nail down recommendations from 2 department chairs. Both the application process and the competition in that first year are brutal.
It’s also not unreasonable to take a break from school to think about what you really want to do. As other’s have said, you really need to figure out that this is what you want to do. Otherwise the weedout process and just plain loss of inertia will do you in.