First, a good GRE word:

Prolix (proh LIKS) adj long winded, verbose

*The prolix politician was a natural at filibustering; he could talk for hours without stopping.

*His prolixity was famous; he could talk for ten minutes before needing to take a breath and for hours before finishing a sentence.

(Synonymous with verbose)

(From Word Smart for the GRE, 2nd ed.)

Ah, yes, words. Have to admit, I really like words. Big words. That said, E. B. White, of The Elements of Style fame, always said that you should never use a twenty-dollar word when a dime-sized word will do. But that said, isn’t prolix kind of a bad ass word? Don’t you just want to… write it? Maybe that’s just me.

In any case, I said I would write about finding the right professor to work with. If you know that in applying to a program, you’re really applying to work with a professor, you are way out ahead of much of the applicant pool. An overwhelming majority of doctoral programs, clinical or not, are based on the mentorship model (p < .001). Although this statement might seem incredulous to many of you applying to programs out there, admissions panels are not fundamentally interested in applicants who have 4.0 GPAS and sky high GREs – they're interested in people who are capable of conducting scientific research and who have concrete goals in mind. They are looking for applicants who apply to their program not because of the program itself, but because there is a faculty member there with whom they want to work to advance their research and their interests.

There are a couple steps to this. Start by finding professors who share your interests. Do you want to study schizophrenia? Awesome. Who are the leading thinkers on the subject? Dive into the literature. If you have access to psycINFO or pubmed, these are great potential resources. Find publications that appeal to your interests. If you're interested in schizophrenia in Latin American populations, do a search: who's doing the research? As a note, its best to winnow your interests to as great a level of specificity as you can – but then again, don't be too specific. For instance, "schizophrenia" is a bit too general an interest – the literature on the subject is vast, and I'm willing to bet that most clinical psychology departments have at least one faculty member who deals with the subject. Then again, "late life Schizophrenia among elderly, rural-dwelling Rhode Islanders" is probably too specific – maybe, maybe, there's one paper on that out there. So try to strike a balance, and give yourself a margin of error – as my own mentor warns, your interests will evolve over time, so don't paint yourself into a corner.

So you've looked up professors who share your interests. Well, where are they? Search for them. Chances are the search results will give you your answer right away; but be wary, as psychology department websites are not always up to date. Read them and make sure the professor is really at the department as advertised.

Now email then. Yes, really. The professor you want to work with at Awesome State University might not be taking on new graduate students for the term you’re applying for. If you’re applying for the 8 to 12 programs that most students apply to, you don’t want to be throwing away money on an application that will be turned down before it even gets read. Most professors are friendly people; if you ask them, in a professional manner, if they are taking new graduate students during your admissions cycle, they’ll most likely respond in a friendly and, if you play your cards right, an encouraging way. Just tell them who you are, briefly what you’ve done, and ask your question; try to restrain your prolixity. Many will not respond – professors are busy people, and they just can’t attend to every email they get. If you don’t hear back, apply anyway – you never know.

That’s it for today. I hope somebody’s reading this!

-NP

Insider’s Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Finding the right Ph.D. programs to apply to is hard work. How far are you willing to move to pursue your degree? Do you need to stay in one area? What kind of lifestyle do you hope to enjoy in your precious free time? What kind of program are you looking for? All great questions. For those of us aspiring to gain admittance to applied psychology programs, the Insider’s Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology is a must have. This invaluable book lists universities alphabetically, providing the average GPAs and GREs for past admits, acceptance/rejection rates, composition of programs by gender and ethnicity, financial supports given to admitted students, and terse synopses of subjects researched by program professors. This information gives applicants a map of what’s out there and provides a rough sketch of what programs look like – its fantastic.

IMPORTANT: When looking through this book, make sure that programs you want to apply to have APA accreditation and are in good standing!!! Putting four to seven years of work into a degree that isn’t looked well upon by the APA is four to seven years that were not terribly well spent. A Ph.D. from a non-accredited program is kind of like a Sacajawea dollar coin: it’s still a dollar, but nobody wants it; if you want to work in academia, get your Ph.D. from an accredited school – period.

Perhaps the book’s most useful aspect is its ranking of each program’s emphasis regarding clinical practice versus clinical research: While most university websites will actually provide more detailed and up-to-date admissions statistics, no program will tell you outright whether they’re more interested in churning out clinical practitioners or clinical scientists. The book also provides a wealth of information in hard copy that can sit at arm’s length on a bookshelf: Again, university websites tell you a lot about their program, but navigating all those menus for all those very many schools is time consuming and frustrating; the Insider’s Guide can save you many hours by telling you which schools poorly match your interests without going on an internet safari in search of programs.

Finding a right school, however, is just a beginning; school “fitness” goes much beyond how well you’ve done on GREs and GPAs. Tomorrow I’ll write briefly about finding your match with a professor.

As a final note, the Insider’s Guide, as its full title suggests, only canvasses clinical and counseling programs; these programs are required by the APA to disseminate this information. Other programs, however, are not required to give out applicant statistic. So, unfortunately for those us applying to non-clinical programs, we won’t be able to look at the numbers and stress out over them – we’ll just have to apply and hope for the best.

Hello again. So as I said, going to try to post every day. I’m busy at the moment working on personal statements, so I’m just putting up a GRE word from my handy little book on the subject:

GRE word of the day:

PERIPATETIC (per i puh TET ik)
adj itinerant, traveling, nomadic

“Charlene was unwilling to give up the peripatetic life of a sailor for the security of a house with a white picket fence, so she rented an apartment in every port.”

“As a peripatetic salesman, Frank spent most of his time in his car.”

*Errant and itinerant are two synonyms for peripatetic.

From Word Smart for the GRE, 2nd edition.

Also, anybody who’s following this (I’m guessing that’s close to nobody at this point) should check out http://clinicalpsychgradapp.wordpress.com/; it’s great resource for those of us applying to graduate psychology program.

-NP

Welcome to the New Psychologist. Check out the “About the New Psychologist” tab on the left-hand menu to get the full scoop on this blog and a taste of who I am. This blog will in large part be about sharing my experience charting my path to a Ph.D. in social/clinical psychology. I will write about psychologists whom I like, share tips and bits of knowledge that I find relevant to getting ahead in academic psychology, talk about my experience traversing the oppressive landscape of graduate applications, put up good GRE words as I come across them, and explore other miscellanea. Feel free to email me (thenewpsych@gmail.com) if there’s something you’d like me to write about.

In many twelve step addictions programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, new members are encouraged to complete a “thirty in thirty” – in other words, to attend thirty meetings in thirty days, one meeting per day. If there were a twelve-step group for people who were addicted to not writing, I might be a good candidate for that group. Instead, I’m just going to have to pledge on the internet that I will complete my own “thirty in thirty,” and post here on my blog every day for the next thirty days. It could be ugly. I might stumble along the way. But gosh darnit, I wouldn’t fail for lack of effort.

…which brings me to my first post subject. How to Write a Lot by Paul Silvia is an essential for academics and those aspiring to be academics. If you want to have a successful career as a researcher, you need to write – a lot. If you’re a student, you need to write papers. If you’re applying to doctoral programs, you need to write personal statements – many of them. If you dream of somebody working as a research psychologist, you need to publish original research in peer-reviewed social science journals.

In short, academics need to write a lot. Unfortunately, writing is hard. Dr. Silvia’s breezy and light-hearted little book helps students and professors alike overcome the difficulties of agraphia (GRE word?) and get more words on paper more often. What’s the trick? Making a writing schedule. Write regularly. Don’t “find” time to write, allot time to write. Make writing a priority in your life. Dr. Silvia’s little book could have just as easily been titled Make a Writing Schedule. He explores the specious (GRE word) barriers that struggling academic writers use to excuse their lack of typographic productivity and in umpteen different ways drums into the reader that at the end of the day, writing happens when you sit in front of your keyboard and put words in your document. I found his section on writing prioritization especially helpful: Dr. Silvia acknowledges that students and professors have different writing priorities and provides each general guidelines by which to prioritize their writing.

This book is simple, easily readable over a weekend (if not a day), and provides students and professors alike common sense advice on how to think about academic writing and how to get more of it done. My only warning about How to Write a Lot is that the reader should not mistake Dr. Silvia’s dry wit for outright cynicism. For instance, Dr. Silvia’s claim that “Writing is frustrating, complicated, and un-fun” (p. 4) probably overstates his true feelings about writing, generally; if he really found writing to be that odious, he probably wouldn’t be a research psychologist. Granted, writing academic journal articles is likely not fun for most people most of the time, but one shouldn’t rule out the possibility that writing… might actually be fun sometimes! While much of the book is light-hearted, Dr. Silvia might be a bit more cautious about overstating his personal biases. As long as readers take Dr. Silvia’s dry wit with a grain of salt, though, there is a lot that can be gathered from this book.

In that spirit, I will be writing more tomorrow!

-NP