Congratulations! You’ve just received an acceptance to pursue a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology. With miniscule acceptance rates typically ranging from 1 to 7%, you definitely deserve some kudos for getting into such a competitive program.

After the initial rush of excitement wears off, there may be some worries as a bit of imposter syndrome sets in. You might wondering: “How do I best prepare myself for grad school?”.

Hopefully, this post gives a few insights on supporting you during this part of your journey.

1. You are already ready

This sounds like an odd place to start. However, I think it’s important to affirm that if you got admitted, you are already more than capable to take on the trials and tribulations of graduate school (even if your anxiety says otherwise).

The admission committee is not dumb; if you received an acceptance, then they see that you have what it takes to succeed in graduate school! I encourage you to keep that in mind.

2. Think about values and goals

I once heard that graduate school is like a gas – it will take up as much space you give it. There will always be more demands and opportunities and saying ‘no’ is going to be a difficult boundary to set.

One strategy that makes it easier for you to develop the conscience to more readily say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for certain opportunities is to identify your own values and goals. What made you decide to move into graduate school? Was it to be a great clinician, a strong researcher, a mix of both, or something else?

For me, I wanted to take part in the cool stuff that graduate students get to do: travelling and going to conferences, teaching and mentoring, and join committees to support other graduate students. Therefore, I placed less emphasis on making sure I got A+ in all my courses (like I tried in undergrad) and spent extra time getting to follow these extracurriculars.

The key takeaway here is to figure out what you’d like to get out of graduate school. Success will look different for each student, so find your path and follow it.  

3. Read up on assessment and treatments

Being an expert in assessments and treatments before starting graduate school is certainly not a requirement. The program will drill you on how to conduct assessment and their specific treatment modality.

However, it doesn’t hurt to have some familiarity with assessment and treatments. For assessments, any old assessment book will do. Having access to the DSM-5 (the bible of mental health disorders – at least in the West) might be helpful.

For treatments, the specific book might depend on what type of treatment your school uses. For example, some programs take a more cognitive behavioural approach whereas others might focus on humanistic or psychodynamic therapies. CBT tends to be pretty common, and a basic book such as Judith Beck’s “Basics and Beyond” is a great place to start.

If you’re just wanting to learn how to be a good therapist, I would recommend Louis Cozolino’s “Making of a Therapist” or Irvin Yalom’s “The Gift of Therapy.”

4. Think about some ideas for your Master’s / Dissertation Project

I want to preface this section by saying that there is absolutely no need to be reading 10 research articles a day or to know your project inside out before even starting the program.

For me, graduate school would have been much easier if I had a sense of what I wanted to study and a few ideas that could feasibly done within a Master’s thesis or PhD dissertation. If you have some time, I would encourage you to read up on the literature (leisurely and enjoyably at a café) and think about a few possible research questions.

My favourite time to do work is when I have absolutely no pressure to do anything at a specific time. And doing some light reading before school starts is one of those times.

5. Consider logistics of graduate school

If you’re moving, there may be some things to think about in terms of finance and travel logistics. If you are in a MA/PhD program then you should have some amount of funding (though I’ll be the first to say we are pretty poor here in graduate school). Here’s a post on ways to increase your salary in graduate school if interested.

6. Familiarize yourself with the statistics

It certainly doesn’t hurt to have some familiarity with statistics. I would invite you to take an introductory statistics book and remind yourself of some of the basics: data entry and cleaning, t-tests and ANOVAs, correlations and regressions. Having these basics down will make it easier for you to write up your projects down the line. Moreover, they will put you in a comfortable position to analyze pre-existing data in labs for conferences or journals.

7. Enjoy your time before graduate school!

Celebrate! You just got some wonderful news. No need to worry so much and be neurotic about it – as much as graduate students like to do that. You’ll be fine. For now, take a nice stroll, enjoy time with friends, and go take a nice trip.

After my acceptance, I continued to work a little bit to make some money. However, I also just spend a lot of time with my partner, friends, and family; went on a bunch of little adventures; and just overall had a lovely time. It was awesome (and still is).

Best wishes,

P

Image by Albert Vincent Wu: https://unsplash.com/photos/woman-in-black-coat-standing-on-road-during-daytime-L2nMR8YRCNI