Latinx Grad Journey Blog

Deciding to apply to Clinical Psychology PhD programs

Hello y’all,

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.

While this seemed great (knowing what you’re interested is always great), it made me reconsider Clinical Psychology and think about whether or not I would rather follow my research interests into the field of Public Health or stick with Clinical Psychology. The decision between those two never was made because I figure I can continue to pursue the Clinical Psychology PhD program and still use the ideas from Public Health. This “decision” was made in my senior year of college.

My first day at my research assistant position, I questioned that decision and began reconsidering both my decision to abandon Med School and Public Health. I started thinking that I could save myself a lot of trouble (going through the crazy process of applications) by pursuing one of these other degrees. To make my decision, I spoke to people who did the research I was interested in and who were also in different fields. I found that my passions truly did align with Clinical Psychology.

Through a Clinical Psychology education, I would be able to do the research I was interested in (looking at severe mental illness and racial/ethnic disparities) and be trained to see patients. It was the best of both worlds! I can produce research and put it into practice at the same time.

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 school, and Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners. You can often treat patients with these degrees and skip the rigorous research training as well as cut off a couple of years of studying.
• Ask yourself again…why Clinical Psychology and not any of the careers mentioned above?

Going through these 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. Once you do this, you can then start thinking about programs and what you need to do to make yourself a great candidate for schools. I will be covering these topics as well so if you KNOW you want to go to Clinical Psychology grad programs stayed tuned for the next blog post!

Con cariño,

Latinx Grad Journey