GRADUATE SCHOOL ADMISSIONS CRITERIA

(This article is an edited version of a paper presented by Karen Ford at the 1994 American Psychological Society convention and reprinted in the Fall, 1994 edition of the Psi Chi Newsletter.)

I would like to discuss the relative importance of some graduate admissions criteria, specifically, undergraduate coursework, research experience, clinical experience, GRE scores, and undergraduate GPA.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSEWORK

Most graduate programs in psychology require or prefer the equivalent of a major or minor in psychology. Furthermore, the faculty in these programs prefer that the student receives a broad background in the principles of psychology and is exposed to a broad range of content areas. They tend to prefer that students wait until graduate school to "specialize" in clinical or counseling or developmental, etc.

Courses outside the psychology major in math and science are also desirable. Even for most clinical psychology programs, graduate selection committees are biased toward scientific and mathematical courses. In accordance with this bias is the fact that the majority of graduate programs in clinical, counseling, and experimental require or recommend the statistics course. Experimental and clinical graduate programs also tend to regard the experimental psychology course and a psychology laboratory course as very important.

Experimental graduate programs tend to rank statistics, experimental, and learning as the most important undergraduate courses. Clinical and counseling graduate programs tend to rank statistics, abnormal, experimental, personality, developmental, testing, and learning, in that order, as most important. Educational graduate programs rank statistics, developmental, testing, experimental, abnormal, and personality, in that order, as most important. If you already know the graduate programs to which you are interested in applying, you can check the admission requirements of those specific programs in APA's most recent Graduate Study in Psychology and Associated Fields.

The ideal undergraduate program in psychology should require statistics, courses in introductory and experimental psychology, and at least one or two laboratory courses. However, undergraduate coursework is not the primary basis for decisions about admittance to graduate school; letters of recommendation, GPA, GRE scores, and research experience are probably more important than undergraduate coursework.

Graduate programs in counseling tend to put more importance on GPA based on the last two years of undergraduate work than overall GPA. Counseling programs also tend to value previous graduate work as a plus. This is not so for experimental and clinical programs. Selection committees for these graduate programs look at overall GPA and usually prefer students without any previous graduate training.

Most clinical and experimental graduate programs regard research experience as very important, whereas counseling programs place more importance on clinical experience. Undergraduates who have presented a paper at a convention or published a journal article stand out among the many applicants to graduate programs. However, it is common for graduate school applicants to list clinical fieldwork or practicum experience, so inclusions of that type will not necessarily help you stand out as an applicant. It is generally expected for applicants to clinical or counseling programs to have clinically related experience.

Most clinical and experimental graduate programs regard the quantitative and verbal sections of the GRE as very important. The analytical psychology subtests are generally viewed as less important than the other two. Counseling programs tend to regard the GRE scores as moderately, rather than very, important.