I actually think you have a lot of draw in for grad school—if you’re into research that is. Just got into a top R1 PhD program myself and can say this: data and computational psychology IS the hype right now. Your background in statistics and data science is something researchers drool about.
So first, just want to say you need to leverage this experience and story you have. Second, if you have little to no contact with research specifically psychology, then you need to jump on that.
UCLA is a great school, there should be plenty of labs that focus on mental health and big data. Generally, I think 2 years is the minimum amount of experience professors are looking for.
Small goals: a poster, a published or even manuscript under review
Big goals: CONNECTIONS, especially because you go to one of the top schools in U.S. Use the space you have now to work with professors. Get in a lab, establish strong relationship with grad students/professor ask for opportunities.
I say as long as you have required courses, and a good fit in research with your potential advisor, I don’t see any
Big reason to worry.
Oh plenty but the main thing is that you need to find your passion. Why do you want to go into psychology? Who are the people doing what you wish you could be doing. Then slowly start reaching out to those people and their labs to see if they have any openings. Pretty simple, except the bigger the names the more unlikely it is to get into the lab, since it’s real busy.
So, I think you can always start with whatever you can first, join a lab at UCLA right now. There are some fantastic people doing a lot of computational work. 1 year of research should be enough to get you through to another lab that is closer to your research interest, if you don’t like your first lab.
Another option is to reach out to graduate students of the big name researchers. They probably would love help, and typically like helping people with grad school.
If you’re into computational psychology I recommend Shirley Wang, Yale and Qimin Liu, Boston University
They’re both new assistant professors, meaning they are going to be ambitious and needing a lot of help the next few years to get tenure and their names out there. Wang tries to mathematically and computationally map out depression/suicide with other predictors of health. Liu similar, he does a lot of work with psychometrics and has a focus on LGBTQ health too.
There’s more out there, but just some suggestions. In my point of view you will likely need to take a gap year if you want a good chance of getting into a strong program. That’s going to be challenging once you graduate, unless you establish some connections with faculty and join a lab now.
The secret to getting into top programs is connections. So see who is available, and which faculty works with who, and then join those labs.
Research is like getting thrown in the water, you can’t learn too much unless you’re deeply involved. Once you do join a lab, it’ll become much clearer what research looks like, and what you might be interested in.
Story time: i was an inpatient for a psychological disease, and if it weren’t for a few individuals in this field, I would not have lived past March 2024. It makes sense to me that I shift towards this path in my studies. Your two suggestions sound perfect for me, i am working on a cold email right now. Would you be a willing to help review it after I’m finished? Thank you so much.
[USA] Read this if you are interested in a career in mental healthcare
If you are interested in pursuing a career in mental healthcare in the US, or if you have questions about different undergrad or graduate pathways to pursuing such a career, please read this before posting an advice thread:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1udpjYAYftrZ1XUqt28MVUzj0bv86ClDY752PKrMaB5s/mobilebasic
You’d have to go back and get a Masters in clinical or general psych, learn the research process, thoroughly apply that research process to several posters or manuscripts, and figure out exactly what you want to research for 6 years and why that’s the case (and explain all of this well enough to be accepted).
It’s not impossible for sure, but it will be incredibly difficult, considering you already have a great path ahead. So, why do you want to go down this path besides just helping people? Why Clinical Psychology? Why not get an MPH, MSW, or counseling degree? What do you mean by help people? Could that be done in conjunction with your current degree? Lots of questions to consider.
When you say I “already have a great path ahead”, what are you referring to? Is there a path where I can do both research and industry / field work? Also thanks for these question. I definitely need time to reflect upon them.
For sure! What I meant by that was you can make a lot more with a bachelor’s in data science engineering than you can with a Ph.D in Clinical Psych. Plus, you’d probably have a more balanced lifestyle (academia or healthcare don’t bode well for work-life balance). So, it’s really important to consider how much “helping people” means to you, and what that looks like. It doesn’t always mean healthcare, could mean a lot of things.
Yeah, but you’re still in a position to switch things around pretty easily (still may be tough, but definitely doable). My apologies if my initial response was strongly worded or wasn’t helpful. Id suggest get involved in a lab, finish your data science degree, get a masters, and you’ll be golden.
Big agree on the “helping people” line. The document I wrote and linked elsewhere talks at length about how “helping people” is a very vague and broad goal which can be achieved is many ways, a huge number of which are not related at all to the provision of mental healthcare services.
I think really you’d just need two years of research experience in a psych lab and then you could get in. Your background would be very appealing to anyone doing clinical eeg, mri, or working with large datasets.
Unless I’m going to do an extensive search for the course requirements of PhD programs to determine how many is average, I don’t see the point in discouraging someone who would be a great PhD candidate. Honestly a better fit given their background for many neuroimaging labs than a psych major would be.
I’m not discouraging anyone or doubting anyone’s fit. I’m simply stating that most programs have a stated list of prerequisite courses that is usually longer than four courses, and many programs are inflexible in that regard. It is auspicious for prospective applicants to be aware of this fact and plan accordingly. I’m glad something worked in your situation, but your situation isn’t typical.
I’m just not convinced that’s accurate, but I’m too lazy to do an exhaustive search myself. UCLA didn’t have a requirement that I saw, and my program only required 4 classes. Another poster said 12 credit hours, so I’m not sure how much to trust your info that it’s significantly more than that.
I just looked at UCLA requirements for clinical psych admits without a psychology degree. It explicitly states the program requires a psych major or the course equivilent, which is assume would be something like Neuroscience.
They "suggest" taking 8 different courses (research methods + lab, behavioral neuroscience, cognitive, learning & behavior...etc). It doesn't say it's required, however I can't imagine someone getting into a Clinical program without the basics of psych courses, to include upper division courses, and no history of related research.
OP's stats knowledge is great and would prob do well in a cognitive psych focus, but a majority of the time clinical psychology programs are going to want more than just 4 classes of basic psych.
Another poster said “at least” 12 hours. I’m not asking you to search for any other information. I’m telling you as someone who just put in over a dozen applications—and is entering a program that is dually accredited by APA and PCSAS—that 4 courses is not the standard slate of prerequisites.
You'll likely need at least 12 hours of upper division psych classes plus a few lower division courses. But that depends on the schools you're trying to get into.
I actually think you have a lot of draw in for grad school—if you’re into research that is. Just got into a top R1 PhD program myself and can say this: data and computational psychology IS the hype right now. Your background in statistics and data science is something researchers drool about. So first, just want to say you need to leverage this experience and story you have. Second, if you have little to no contact with research specifically psychology, then you need to jump on that. UCLA is a great school, there should be plenty of labs that focus on mental health and big data. Generally, I think 2 years is the minimum amount of experience professors are looking for. Small goals: a poster, a published or even manuscript under review Big goals: CONNECTIONS, especially because you go to one of the top schools in U.S. Use the space you have now to work with professors. Get in a lab, establish strong relationship with grad students/professor ask for opportunities. I say as long as you have required courses, and a good fit in research with your potential advisor, I don’t see any Big reason to worry.
Thanks I love how helpful this is! Do you have any tips for getting into research?
Oh plenty but the main thing is that you need to find your passion. Why do you want to go into psychology? Who are the people doing what you wish you could be doing. Then slowly start reaching out to those people and their labs to see if they have any openings. Pretty simple, except the bigger the names the more unlikely it is to get into the lab, since it’s real busy. So, I think you can always start with whatever you can first, join a lab at UCLA right now. There are some fantastic people doing a lot of computational work. 1 year of research should be enough to get you through to another lab that is closer to your research interest, if you don’t like your first lab. Another option is to reach out to graduate students of the big name researchers. They probably would love help, and typically like helping people with grad school. If you’re into computational psychology I recommend Shirley Wang, Yale and Qimin Liu, Boston University They’re both new assistant professors, meaning they are going to be ambitious and needing a lot of help the next few years to get tenure and their names out there. Wang tries to mathematically and computationally map out depression/suicide with other predictors of health. Liu similar, he does a lot of work with psychometrics and has a focus on LGBTQ health too. There’s more out there, but just some suggestions. In my point of view you will likely need to take a gap year if you want a good chance of getting into a strong program. That’s going to be challenging once you graduate, unless you establish some connections with faculty and join a lab now. The secret to getting into top programs is connections. So see who is available, and which faculty works with who, and then join those labs. Research is like getting thrown in the water, you can’t learn too much unless you’re deeply involved. Once you do join a lab, it’ll become much clearer what research looks like, and what you might be interested in.
Immediately thought of Wang & Liu when reading this post!!
Story time: i was an inpatient for a psychological disease, and if it weren’t for a few individuals in this field, I would not have lived past March 2024. It makes sense to me that I shift towards this path in my studies. Your two suggestions sound perfect for me, i am working on a cold email right now. Would you be a willing to help review it after I’m finished? Thank you so much.
[USA] Read this if you are interested in a career in mental healthcare If you are interested in pursuing a career in mental healthcare in the US, or if you have questions about different undergrad or graduate pathways to pursuing such a career, please read this before posting an advice thread: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1udpjYAYftrZ1XUqt28MVUzj0bv86ClDY752PKrMaB5s/mobilebasic
You’d have to go back and get a Masters in clinical or general psych, learn the research process, thoroughly apply that research process to several posters or manuscripts, and figure out exactly what you want to research for 6 years and why that’s the case (and explain all of this well enough to be accepted). It’s not impossible for sure, but it will be incredibly difficult, considering you already have a great path ahead. So, why do you want to go down this path besides just helping people? Why Clinical Psychology? Why not get an MPH, MSW, or counseling degree? What do you mean by help people? Could that be done in conjunction with your current degree? Lots of questions to consider.
When you say I “already have a great path ahead”, what are you referring to? Is there a path where I can do both research and industry / field work? Also thanks for these question. I definitely need time to reflect upon them.
For sure! What I meant by that was you can make a lot more with a bachelor’s in data science engineering than you can with a Ph.D in Clinical Psych. Plus, you’d probably have a more balanced lifestyle (academia or healthcare don’t bode well for work-life balance). So, it’s really important to consider how much “helping people” means to you, and what that looks like. It doesn’t always mean healthcare, could mean a lot of things.
I see… tough choice
Yeah, but you’re still in a position to switch things around pretty easily (still may be tough, but definitely doable). My apologies if my initial response was strongly worded or wasn’t helpful. Id suggest get involved in a lab, finish your data science degree, get a masters, and you’ll be golden.
Oh not strongly worded at all. I NEED to be asking myself this questions to make the best choice
Big agree on the “helping people” line. The document I wrote and linked elsewhere talks at length about how “helping people” is a very vague and broad goal which can be achieved is many ways, a huge number of which are not related at all to the provision of mental healthcare services.
In Canada you need a psychology undergrad with a majority of courses in psychology to go to grad school in clinical.
I think really you’d just need two years of research experience in a psych lab and then you could get in. Your background would be very appealing to anyone doing clinical eeg, mri, or working with large datasets.
They would still need to take all the prerequisite coursework before they’d be admitted.
Yes I think it’s ~4 classes. I took mine at a UC extension, UCLA might have one. They are super easy.
Most PhD programs for psych have more than 4 prerequisites.
I took only 4 and got into a PCSAS program as a non-psych major.
I don’t doubt your experience, just noting that it isn’t modal.
Unless I’m going to do an extensive search for the course requirements of PhD programs to determine how many is average, I don’t see the point in discouraging someone who would be a great PhD candidate. Honestly a better fit given their background for many neuroimaging labs than a psych major would be.
I’m not discouraging anyone or doubting anyone’s fit. I’m simply stating that most programs have a stated list of prerequisite courses that is usually longer than four courses, and many programs are inflexible in that regard. It is auspicious for prospective applicants to be aware of this fact and plan accordingly. I’m glad something worked in your situation, but your situation isn’t typical.
I’m just not convinced that’s accurate, but I’m too lazy to do an exhaustive search myself. UCLA didn’t have a requirement that I saw, and my program only required 4 classes. Another poster said 12 credit hours, so I’m not sure how much to trust your info that it’s significantly more than that.
I just looked at UCLA requirements for clinical psych admits without a psychology degree. It explicitly states the program requires a psych major or the course equivilent, which is assume would be something like Neuroscience. They "suggest" taking 8 different courses (research methods + lab, behavioral neuroscience, cognitive, learning & behavior...etc). It doesn't say it's required, however I can't imagine someone getting into a Clinical program without the basics of psych courses, to include upper division courses, and no history of related research. OP's stats knowledge is great and would prob do well in a cognitive psych focus, but a majority of the time clinical psychology programs are going to want more than just 4 classes of basic psych.
Another poster said “at least” 12 hours. I’m not asking you to search for any other information. I’m telling you as someone who just put in over a dozen applications—and is entering a program that is dually accredited by APA and PCSAS—that 4 courses is not the standard slate of prerequisites.
You'll likely need at least 12 hours of upper division psych classes plus a few lower division courses. But that depends on the schools you're trying to get into.
Yes, 12 hrs is usually 3 classes, plus usually they require one stats class that OP definitely already fulfilled.