Clinical Psychology Program - Information on Admissions

As you prepare your personal statement, which is a departmental application requirement, we ask that you follow the guidelines below that have been tailored to our clinical psychology admissions process.

Important Note: The personal statement instructions on Quest are standard department-wide. You will be asked to include information on your goals for graduate study, career goals, and to provide a list of scholarships and other recognitions. In addition to these areas, you must also provide the information listed below, specifically required for application to the clinical area.

Personal Statement Requirements

Please describe your reasons for wishing to pursue graduate studies in clinical psychology at the University of Waterloo in particular, your goals for graduate study/career goals, your relevant experiences and qualities, as well as your primary research interests. See below for more detailed instructions.

Length: 

2,000 word maximum

(about two pages, single-spaced)

Content: 

• Goals and Reasons for Pursuing Clinical Psychology: Please describe your personal goals for graduate study and your future career, the reasons you wish to pursue graduate studies in clinical psychology, and the reasons you are interested in attending the University of Waterloo.
• Experiences, qualities, and accomplishments: Please describe research, academic, professional, extracurricular, and/or personal experiences and accomplishments that make you interested in, well-suited for, and prepared for a graduate degree in clinical psychology at the University of Waterloo. Please be sure to describe the nature of your past research experiences, and also any leadership, community service, and/or clinically-relevant experience (e.g., crisis line). If relevant, you should also list any awards, honours, and distinctions you have received, and any knowledge translation activities/outputs you have been involved with (e.g., publications, presentations, blogs).
• Research interests: We encourage you to highlight your interest in one or more clinical psychology faculty members (first checking they are accepting a student; see below), and ideally a second or third if possible. You may comment on what appeals to you about each faculty member’s research and how you might like to build on this work. Please be sure to only list faculty listed below as a primary supervisor and not adjunct or faculty from other departments or areas. Only the faculty listed below are taking students in our program for the upcoming year. 
• Lived experience and diversity (optional): We invite you to describe the unique perspectives you may bring to our program and the field through your lived experience. You may also describe your vision for how research and practice in clinical psychology can become more inclusive, just, and equitable.
• Scholarships, prizes, honours, or other recognitions: Please include a list of scholarships, prizes, honours, or other recognitions you have earned. Provide the title(s) of any publication(s), major paper(s), or thesis of which you are an author or co-author (if published, give citation). This can be in addition to the awards and knowledge translation activities requested above. Please feel free to include these all in one comprehensive list. 

Our admissions process operates in a rolling manner. You could be contacted as soon as early January about an interview, or as late as April. Unless you receive a letter that your application has been denied, you can assume that your application is still under consideration. Although we hope to be in touch with top applicants in January, various factors make it such that some outstanding applicants may hear from us until later in the winter.