To pursue a career in psychology, some of your planning should begin fairly early in your undergraduate studies (e.g., in your second year, or once you have declared psychology as your major). Here are some pointers:
- Identify the area or areas in Psychology that most interests you
- Get to know your professors
- Obtain practical research experience
- For those interested in clinical career: Check to see if there are any opportunities to pursue experiences in a clinical setting
Identify the area or areas in psychology that most interest you
The study of behaviour is so vast that the field of psychology is divided into separate subspecialties. For example, our department has separate programs in clinical, social, cognitive, cognitive neuroscience, developmental, and industrial/organizational psychology (See Programs for more detail). Undergraduate programs typically require you to sample from different areas to fulfill your coursework requirements. Use this opportunity to understand not only the breadth of psychology, but also to narrow in on the area that holds the most interest for you and fits your unique skills or talents.
Get to know your professor
Graduate school applications generally request three reference letters, and often require that at least one of these be from a professor or other faculty member who will know your academic ability and work ethic. Students often make the mistake of soliciting letters from professors with whom they have had a class that they have done well in, but they don't really know the professor. Although such professors can comment on your grade performance relative to other members of the class, they cannot give more information that will help your application. Granted, it is sometimes quite difficult to get to know your professor if you are in large lecture classes. However, you may want to approach the professor during his or her office hours to understand the topic better or pursue volunteer or research assistantship opportunities in his or her lab. Small, specialized courses are also good opportunities to get to know your professors better and for them to get to know you and your skill sets better. These letter writers are often some of the more helpful to your cause.
Contrary to popular belief, most of your professors are not evil, unapproachable trolls. However, they are quite busy. So, here are a few tips before going to their office hours, requesting a meeting, or emailing them.
- Do your homework. Make sure you have done the reading or sought out more information on the topic you will approach the professor for. Their office hours are not there to reiterate the lecture or the text that you did not read. Rather, they can clarify or help you come to a deeper understanding of the material.
- Have a purpose. When you schedule a meeting, attend office hours, or send an email, outline the purpose or set of tasks you would like to attend to with the professor. He or she may not be able to accommodate all of your needs in one meeting, but outlining some of what you need will help the two of you best determine how to accomplish it.
- Be specific. General questions like "Can you tell me more about your research?" will likely get you a very general response that will not be helpful (e.g., "I study motivation and emotion."). Asking about new projects that may be underway or any unpublished work is fair game, but it is important to have some sense about the work that the professor has done. Search his or her website, look up and read publications (empirical and/or invited chapters). This will help to frame your questions.
Remember, face to face meetings (even though quite anxiety provoking for some people) help the professor get to know you a bit better. Email can yield mixed results. You may get quite detailed information or you may get very little, due to differences in faculty styles of communication or the current workload of the professor. Remember, the fall term is particularly hectic for most professors because not only do teaching and research activities kick into full gear, but many students are contacting them regarding graduate school. Be patient for their replies.
Obtain practical research experience
One of the main things that professors look for in potential graduate students is whether students have had experience as a research assistant or, even better, have conducted their own research project (especially an honours thesis). Although breadth of experience can be important for finding the research that most interests you, depth of experience is probably most important for graduate school. Students often make the mistake of trying to accumulate a long list of different research experiences without really developing an in-depth understanding of what they are doing in any one project. Many labs require that you stay on for more than one term, and if you do, the level of responsibility or types of tasks you can take on will change, giving you a broader base of research knowledge and skill sets.
Get involved in the lab you are working in. Working in a lab gives you a unique opportunity to see research in action. Although you will obtain skills through this work (e.g., entering data, organizational tasks, running complex experimental protocols), you will also have a chance to really understand the theory and methods that dictate the area you are studying. If your lab mentor does not offer you readings upfront, seek them out and understand what you are doing. Simply having the experience on paper will not mean as much to a prospective graduate advisor as will knowing that you took interest in and understood your research activity. Once you have been involved in a lab you may also want to ask if there are opportunities to author or assist in writing a paper about the project with which you are involved. Publications, although not necessary for you to get into graduate school, can be an addition to your application that helps you stand out from the rest of the crowd.
If your program offers the opportunity to do an honours thesis (or similar independent research project), don't pass it up! The capacity to do your own independent research is an essential part of graduate school. Thus, completing an honours thesis is one of the very best ways to prepare for graduate school in psychology.
For those interested in a clinical career: Check to see if there are any opportunities to pursue experiences in a clinical setting
Clinical experience is not absolutely necessary for you to be admitted to a graduate program in clinical or counselling psychology. However, for those students who think they might want to pursue a career in counselling or clinical psychology, it will be useful to understand what happens in these settings. Although these experiences are hard to come by, teaching hospitals, community outreach programs, and university clinical programs may have investigators conducting projects that can utilize students. While your duties will not involve clinical activity (e.g., counselling clients), you may be intimately involved in the project and gain a greater understanding of what it means to work with clients in a clinical setting.