Working towards grad school apps after BA Psychology? (Canada)
I'm heading into my final year of Bachelor of Arts Psychology in Canada, with expected graduation date June 2023. I'm now exploring graduate program applications at Canadian universities for a Fall 2023 start date or later (deadline around December 2022). Quickly I'm realizing that there are various requirements in the way that I do not meet yet.
- Psychology graduate programs in Canada: Intensely competitive, and don't have research/counselling experience. I've seen the admission rates at many Canadian universities for Counselling Psychology are like 7-8 admitted to 200-400 applications. I've quickly realized that most Experimental Psychology fields require research experience, such as an undergraduate thesis, and a supervisor reference letter, which I do not have yet. In the spring of 2021 I contacted most of the psychology research labs at my university and only heard favourable responses from two research labs. I guess my transcript looks bad due to my first few flunked years with a different major, even if my Psychology grades have always been good. I do hear from fellow students that it is very tough to find undergraduate research experience, even more so post COVID with reduced or limited research capacity. I'm now following up with one of the labs to see if they'll take me for 2022/2023 academic year...
- For Counselling Psychology degrees, some universities do not require research experience, but require counselling relevant experience instead. I have pending applications for volunteer positions such as a Distress Line Listener, Client Helper, etc but have to build at least a year of experience from now... Some universities such as UBC and SFU in British Columbia actually suggest minimum 2-3 years or 400 hours of counselling relevant experience. I'm guessing that in regards to counselling experience, I can continue to build that experience even after graduating with a Bachelors. For example, University of Toronto will accept counselling experience that counts up to a year from starting date (September of following year), not application deadline. While some other universities require you that you already have every documentation and experience by application deadline. Seems like an excellent reference is one of the most important.
- Building a higher GPA for my final year: I am sitting at a 3.2/4.0 GPA since Fall 2019. That is either sitting at or below the minimum required admission range for many programs... (3.0 or 3.3) Even more discouraging when looking at the average admitted GPA for some unis that publish them, which tend to be around 3.6-3.7 out of 4.0. I still have this spring/summer and upcoming fall/winter to build a higher GPA for my final year. After ~2 years of online schooling, I had a somewhat tough transition to fully in-person in Fall 2021, going slightly below 3.0/4.0 GPA.
- Alternate grad programs that aren't Psychology, or branching out to the US: As a backup plan, I'm guessing I need to apply to other grad programs that aren't Psychology specific, but applicable with a Bachelors in Psychology. I've already heard that Occupational Therapy and Master of Public Health are some of the many options. I'm looking for more Canadian grad program options that aren't as intensely competitive as Psychology in Canada here... Preferably without required undergrad research experience. To keep my options open as an American born dual citizen, I'm wondering if I need to look at American grad school options as well. I can easily see that the US has way more universities and programs to apply to.
- Application myths that were quickly solved by searching r/GradSchool: After a quick search, I've found out that even 5 to 12 applications for grad school isn't too many. I would've thought it'd be a burden on the academic references to send a reference letter to each application, but guess not. I'm surprised because for my undergrad, I only applied to 2 local universities, and got accepted to both, while the one I enrolled at was last minute (month before September). Obviously undergraduate and graduate admissions are very different.
TL;DR: Need help on overcoming roadblocks in grad school application requirements, and need opinions on alternate programs that aren't Psychology but applicable with a Bachelors in Psychology.
Posted Mar 19, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC
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If you haven't read it yet, Mitch's Guide to Applying to Grad School in Clinical Psych has a good section on the different counselling/psych/social work options that might be helpful.
There's a lot more programs in the US but from what I've seen, tuition is way higher. I'm not a dual-citizen and didn't look into funding, so your mileage may vary.
A BA psych can be applicable to a lot of programs, so think about what interests you, what you want for your career, and go from there. I'm starting a masters in rural planning and development this fall - I have no background in planning, but in my application I talked about how my courses in psych statistics and research methods gave me a basic foundation for research in other areas, and related specific courses I'd taken (e.g., community psychology), as well as volunteer and personal experiences to the program expectation. Courses like social psychology can be helpful for business or marketing programs or basically anything with human interaction. It's all about the transferrable skills.
Thank you, that document was incredibly helpful in gaining further insight into the admissions process. Slightly different details for US and Canada although, I guess clinical psych programs are mostly doctorate in the US.
It's the same in Canada but they're mostly all "non-terminal" masters programs where you do MSc/PhD over six years.
For context, I'm in my last semester of a BA Honours Psychology with a 4.29 GPA and multiple years as a TA/RA and I still struggled to find a clinical psych lab I was interested in that was actually accepting students. Not to deter you at all, because if that is your thing, 100% go for it, but for me, in the end, my desire to do a clinical psych PhD wasn't enough to make it worth the stress of applying to a super competitive program, then probably get denied/have to accept a spot in a lab I wasn't really into/delay grad school for a year until options changed, etc.
I boiled down the things I thought I would get from do a clinical psych program (being able to do interesting research, help people, work with neurodiverse people, etc.) and found other (less stressful) careers where I could fulfill all those needs, then adjusted career plan and grad school applications accordingly.