Reddit reviews Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology: 2010/2011 Edition

personally, this book was incredibly helpful to me. they put out a new edition every year -- i would imagine they have similar books for different disciplines (can anyone verify?).

for the clinical/counseling book, each program rates themselves on:

(1) clinical/research orientation (to assist prospective applicants in determining fit)

(2) acceptance rates (i think # applied, # accepted, maybe # interviewed)

(3) average GPA & GRE of students getting into the program

(4) research areas in that program

and i'm sure many other details i'm forgetting.

ideally, they would get with the times and put this in electronic form. i spent a lot of time sifting through programs that were alphabetized and then creating my own spreadsheet/database.

Girl* ;)

Thanks so much for your responses by the way. After the initial "wtf I studied so hard for this," I've been going through the Insider's Guide, and have discovered that I have probably been looking at this grad school thing all wrong.

Previously, I (probably like most applicants) was thinking "oh let me look at US News and World Report and see who they say is #1." Needless to say, I've been bloody frantic about getting that 1400 GRE score. I've now been advised to look at the acceptance rates to APA/APPIC internships, because after devoting half a decade of my life to studying, I don't want to have a low chance of getting that internship.

Thanks again :) Any advice that can be firehosed through the internets would be appreciated haha.

A good place to start is with the Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology. It ranks the programs on a 1-7 scale with 1 being completely clinically focused and 7 being completely research focused. You'd probably be interested in sites that rank about a 4. BUT make sure you check the websites of programs that sound interesting, as the information in the Insider's Guide may not be updated.

That's interesting/disheartening. I own the Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology, and it ranks schools from 1 (exclusively clinically focused) to 7 (exclusively research focused). I've been looking at Ph.D programs that rank as a "4" (pretty much the lowest clinical programs go), and some of them do describe on their websites that they train in the "scientist/practitioner" model. Some of them are still pretty competitive, though. Do you know if there's the same sort of stigma at Ph.D programs that focus on more of a balance in clinical training and research than being more heavily research-focused?

This guided me through the whole process. I don't mean to sound like a shill for the book but it was really helpful to have all the stats laid out in front of me. You can probably find this in your library for free so give it a look!