BC Bradford - Getting the Accepted Call: How to Maximize Your Admissions Chances at Top Psychology PhD Programs

Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela

T

his book was written to teach students how to improve their chances of admission into a competitive PhD program in psychology.

It is not intended for masters-level programs or for non-psychology doctoral fields, though many of the basic principles will be the same. Everything here will apply to both research and counseling/clinical psychology applicants, with the exception being that clinical and counseling applicants have one more aspect of their grad school preparation process, which is addressed in the Clinical and Counseling chapter.

Lets get started!

I

m not going to patronize you. Im assuming you already know that a PhD in psychology is not a path to fame and fortune (99% of the time Im looking at you, Dr. Phil).

This isnt medical school. The top ten percent of clinical and counseling psychologists make $114,000 or higher. The median salary is $69,000, which is also the median for psychology professors, though the upper ten percent of professors make $126,000 or higher. These are good salaries, but youre not buying yachts on that kind of money.

In other words, if your goal is to maximize your future income, Ill go ahead and warn you that psychology is not an efficient path to achieve this (possible, yes; probable, no).

However, if you enjoy research and would like to apply psychology in either research or in practice, this may be an excellent field for you. You can make a very real difference in peoples lives, either one-on-one or by influencing the best practices in your fields on a broader level.

If youre confident a psychology PhD is what you want, lets move on to the fun stuff!

Y

ou probably want to know who is trying to give you advice on grad school applications in the first place. I am a previous psychology graduate student applicant who was accepted into several of the nations top PhD programs in my field during my first application season.

I received ten acceptances out of the 12 programs I applied for (the other two were one waitlist that never resulted in an offer and one rejection). Perhaps most importantly, I was accepted into the #1 program in my field.

Im not an admissions counselor, nor am I affiliated with any admissions committee. I cant guarantee youll get in anywhere. There are countless stories of extremely well-qualified applicants who have been rejected by dozens of schools.

I have, however, worked hard to ensure that reading and implementing the suggestions in this book will dramatically increase your chance of admission into a top program. Over the past several years, I have learned everything possible from the best sources of information available on psychology graduate admissions, from school admissions representatives to professors who have been on review committees to students who have succeeded in being admitted to prestigious psychology doctorate-level programs.

I have also added my own experience in what worked best for me in preparing for graduate school and planning out my own applications.

I can make no guarantees, but I genuinely believe that this book will help you get into the best psychology graduate program possible based on the strengths of your application.

Lets get started on this goal by first discussing how you can become the exact type of applicant a programs admissions committee wants to see.

CHAPTER ONE

A

dmissions committees (also known as adcoms) are made up of intelligent and rational people.

The departments professors will typically be making the admissions decisions, and if the program admits students to work with specific professors instead of the department, one professor alone might have the power to decide which of the prospects to whom he or she offers admission.

Regardless of who exactly is making the final decision, the reality is that departments have limited spaces and funding to offer applicants.

Their obvious goal is to:

• Admit the best applicants to the program

However, this objective is balanced with their desire to:

• Admit applicants who will choose to attend the program
• Admit applicants who are a good fit, academically and personality-wise, for the program
• Admit applicants who will complete the program
• Admit applicants who will reflect well on the university in their future endeavors

These needs necessitate a gamble on the departments part in some instances. For example, if they admit their #1 choice who is somewhat unlikely to attend their program and declines the offer at the last minute, the school may miss out on its #2 choice, who would love to attend but had accepted an offer elsewhere by the time the program was able to offer him or her a spot.

Should the department extend their first offer to #1 or #2? Different departments will make different decisions.

In this complicated context, just know that your job is to present yourself in the best possible light as a hard-working and motivated student with a strong research and academic background deeply and personally interested in the institution.

Applying to grad school is different from applying to undergrad, and different still from applying for a job.

To have your best chances at admission, you need to make sure that you spend most of your time demonstrating your strengths in the areas that are most important to adcoms.

Fortunately, their priorities are fairly straightforward. In addition to you being a likeable person, psychology doctoral programs want to know that you will be, first and foremost, a good researcher, then also a good student, and finally (and only at some universities) a good instructor.

Very little else matters.

The following factors may have mattered when you were applying to college or to a job. They do not matter (or matter so little it would be a waste of precious space in your personal statement or time during your interview) when applying to grad school.

• Leadership experience
• Non-research related volunteer experience
• Non-research related work experience
• Study abroad experience

There are exceptions to every rule, but unless you can make an exceptional argument for why any item above relates significantly to the image you are crafting in your application, leave it out.

Youre not applying to an MBA program and youre not applying for a degree in social work. Youre applying for a program that will train you to be a researcher.

Let me be clear: I dont want to downplay the importance of the following factors. You never know what will make the difference among receiving first-choice offers, being waitlisted, and being rejected outright. However, some factors undeniably matter more than others, and while these two are great things to have, they probably wont play a role in whether you get an offer:

• Grades in non-psychology, cognitive or neuroscience, and math or statistics classes, with the caveat that your overall GPA should ideally be a 3.5 or higher (and a 3.0 at minimum), depending on the competitiveness of the programs to which you are applying