Speaker 1: So yes, you read that title correctly. I got into a PhD program in clinical psychology straight from undergrad without getting a master's first. I'm going to be getting into how I did that right after this intro, so stick around. Welcome to Grad Life Grind. If you're new to this channel, thank you for checking it out. And if you're already a subscriber, thanks for being back again. My name is Arielle and I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology. And in this channel, I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a PhD student. So this video was highly requested on my Instagram stories. I'm on Instagram at Grad Life Grind, so if you're not already following, please do. On my stories, I always ask my followers what topic I should cover next on YouTube, and this one was one of the winners. So a lot of people are really surprised when they hear that I was able to go from undergrad straight to my PhD. And I want to clarify something. So as I stated in my intro, I'm a clinical psychology PhD student. So in other fields, you do need to get a master's before you get a PhD. I can only speak for the field of clinical psychology because that's what I'm involved in. So in clinical psych, you don't need the master's. So if you're trying to get a PhD in another area, you should look into whether going straight from undergrad is an option for you. And if you want a career in psychology, then you can rest assured that you don't need to obtain a master's. But PhD programs in clinical psychology are notoriously competitive. So how was I able to make that jump? The short answer is that I did everything that I could in undergrad to make up for the fact that I wasn't going to get a master's. So that meant that I designed my undergrad career around the goal of getting a PhD in clinical psychology. And not everyone knows that they want to get a PhD while they're in undergrad. Sometimes that's something that you decide later on in your career. So I completely understand that if you're someone who is already out of undergrad and you're just now figuring out that you want to get a PhD, then you can check out my videos related to the application process. But I knew pretty early on what I wanted to do, and so I knew that I was going to have to be as competitive on paper as students who did get a master's. So I started thinking about the experiences that I would get as a master's student, and I tried to figure out how to get those experiences as an undergrad. And I just want to say that I initially had the intention of getting a master's as well, because like most other people, I thought that that was just the next step. Undergrad, then master's, then PhD. And I went into my undergrad institution expecting to actually get into a BAMA program where I could get my master's and my bachelor's in five years instead of a four-year undergrad and then a two-year master's. So I thought I was going to save time. I picked the undergrad institution that I picked because they had this BAMA program. And then once I got started as an undergrad, I found out that I could just skip the master's altogether and go for the PhD right after I graduated. And a professor told me this, and she said, if you are a strong applicant from undergrad, go ahead and apply. And I said, how am I supposed to be a strong applicant? And she said, if you have good grades, if you're a good student, like you're in the honors program, if you get research experience, if you can get the experiences that will make you competitive, then you're fine without the master's. And I was like, oh, so let me start figuring that out. So as I mentioned, one of the things was having really good grades. I had a pretty high GPA in undergrad and I worked pretty hard to maintain it so that I could show that on my applications. The other thing was getting research experience. I did a separate video about my undergraduate research experience as an RA or research assistant at a lab that studied CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis. So I got involved in research right after my first year of college, and then I stayed at that program for the next two years. And that enabled me to get first-hand research experience. It allowed me to make connections that would later serve me for recommendation letters. And I also did an undergraduate honors thesis, which is pretty similar to doing a master's thesis, but not as intense. So I knew that master's students were going to be getting research experience because they have to do a master's thesis. I knew that they were going to be getting clinical experience, and I didn't know how I was going to make up for that. And I knew that I was going to have to be a pretty good student, have good GPA and good GRE scores and so forth. So I focused on what I could control. So aside from trying to maintain a good grade point average, I also was involved in research. I volunteered for everything that I could, anyone that they needed someone for. I was like, yes, I'll do it. And that translated into me being very, very, very busy while I was an undergrad. But I felt like that's what I needed to do in order to be competitive. So I learned how to do qualitative analysis. I learned about quantitative analysis. I did my own thesis, and I got a lot of guidance from my research mentor at the program where I was volunteering. And that was all really helpful in making sure that I was competitive when I did apply. So I think the research component was one of the primary factors that helped get me into graduate school because I think that if you're coming in with a master's degree, it's expected that you would have some type of research experience or clinical experience because you have another degree. Now having research experience, especially the experience of doing your own thesis coming from undergrad, I feel like is slightly more impressive because it's not something that's already expected of you as an undergrad. You're expected to go to your classes and get your degree. And that's about it. But I did above and beyond that. And I think that's what made me kind of comparable to other master's applicants. And of course, I'm not the admissions committee to the program that you are applying to. And I'm not on the admissions committee for the program I applied to. So I don't know exactly what got me in or what made me look good. These are my general reflections of what I think helped me be competitive and what I heard from other mentors and other students when I was preparing to apply what they told me was going to make me competitive or set me apart. So I knew that master's students were getting clinical experience or the experience to work with clients for therapy. And that's something that's really hard to get as an undergrad because you're not licensed. And in undergrad, when you're getting a psychology degree in undergrad, you're not really learning how to work with clients. You're just learning the basic concepts of psychology. So one of the ways that I was able to kind of bridge the gap and show that I was able to work with other people was using my research experience and really highlighting on my application and on my essays that even though I was volunteering in a research lab, we were doing clinical research. So a lot of the things that I was able to do as a research assistant, including doing assessments and working directly with participants, kind of counts as clinical work because the participants that we had were people who had experienced psychosis, they had diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and that is a clinical population. So I was able to draw upon my research experience to kind of show that I've had some slight exposure to clinical work. And if you are a student who is trying to apply to PhD programs straight from undergrad, so if you're someone who's trying to go straight from undergrad to the PhD in clinical psych and you have research experience, you can figure out how to make that research experience highlight some of the interpersonal skills that you need to do well in clinical work. So what's important to clinical psych PhD programs is that you have experiences but also that you're teachable or that you have interpersonal skills or people skills as we call them. So that's something that you can get really anywhere. So if you've had exposure to a clinical population like I did, that's one way to show that you have clinical skills or clinical exposure. Another way is through leadership opportunities. So one of the things I did in undergrad was I founded and then helped run, along with other students, a student organization about women's empowerment, and that experience is something that I also wrote about in my essays because even though I wasn't working as a therapist with these people, I was making connections with students, I was serving as a liaison between the institution and the students, and those are experiences that highlight people skills, and I think that's also important to programs. So I was able to make myself a competitive applicant by doing everything that I could to measure up to master students. That included getting good grades, doing research, getting as much clinical exposure as I could, getting leadership experience, all those things I think contributed to why I was able to do that. And I also think that if you're an undergrad who is trying to pursue a PhD and skip the master's, I think that in itself shows something about you. I think that shows that you're determined or that you know what you want because a lot of people do the master's to either get the experience that they need to be competitive as a PhD applicant or they're doing the master's because they're not sure if they want to go all the way, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because a PhD is a huge step, but if you know what you want from undergrad, you know that you want to commit five to seven years of your life for a PhD, I think that that says something about you and about your commitment to the field, and I think that's something that looks great on your applications. So that's how I did it. That's how I went from undergrad straight to the PhD. It was a lot of stress and sleepless nights, and I just want to show that it can be done. I'm totally not the only person that has done this, so I know lots of other people who applied straight from undergrad. I have friends that also came straight from undergrad, so it's not something that is impossible or insurmountable. You can do it too if you put the time in and you get the experiences that you need to be competitive. I hope that this shed light on something that isn't really talked about that much in the clinical psych field and is super important because it can save you a lot of time and money to skip over the master's if you're able to. So if you like this video, please hit the like button, hit the subscribe button if you haven't already, and you can also, like I said earlier, head over to Instagram and follow me at gradlifegrind or check out my website gradlifegrind.com. Thanks for watching.