I wanted to dedicate this first post to let you all know why I decided to go through the tortuous process of applying to Clinical Psychology PhD programs in hopes that it'll help you to think through the decision. A warning: it's not a straightforward process.
I always knew I wanted to do something with Psychology. My family, however, wanted me to become an MD. To reconcile both of our desires, I decided I would pursue pre-med in college and then Med School to become a psychiatrist so I could work directly with patients to improve mental health.
One semester in Chemistry quickly made me reconsider. Feeling frustrated at the amount of unnecessary busy work, I became exceedingly more stressed. I needed to make a decision on whether or not medical school was the best route to my career goal. I sat and decided to make a pros and cons list about med school and another pros and cons list about pursuing a clinical psychology PhD. When my list showed more pros (i.e. often fully funded, can do pretty much the same things, research opportunity…etc) for Clinical Psychology, I made my first decision. I quickly dropped all pre-med related courses and focused on my Clinical Psychology and Community Health double major.
Through the courses in these majors and my experiences at my university, I started narrowing down what research I was interested in. Taking classes like abnormal psychology increased my interests in psychopathology. But my classes in Community Health helped me learn that mental health can vary (in an unfair manner) by race and ethnicity. I realized that what I wanted to do with my life was to research racial and ethnic disparities in mental health and find ways to reduce the disparities between the groups.
As I mentioned, this was not an easy or straightforward process. We all go through these periods of doubt. But I think those periods are essential because that means you are actually putting a lot of thought into this decision. Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs will take up about 6–7 years of your life — you need to be sure you explored all your options and made an informed decision.
Some tips:
- Ask yourself why Clinical Psychology? Make sure you have an answer for this.
- Look at other similar careers: Counseling Psych, PsyD, Medical School, Social Work, and Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners.
- Ask yourself again — why Clinical Psychology and not any of the careers mentioned above?
Going through these questions and talking to others from different careers will help ensure that you covered all your bases and that you are absolutely sure you want to pursue this.