with that mentor during graduate school. This is
different from the undergraduate application expe-
rience, which can be discussed in terms of various
ranking systems of university reputations (e.g.,U.S.
News and World Report). Remember, rankings are
not generally considered to be very reliable for
Ph.D. psychology programs (at best, one might
use existing graduate ranking systems to identify
programs in the top quartile, second quartile, etc.,
but rankings more specific than that are somewhat
arbitrary). Ph.D. programs in clinical psychology
sometimes are located within universities with
excellent reputations for undergraduate training,
but sometimes not. Similarly, the best possible
mentor with whom to study a particular area of
research sometimes will be located at a graduate
program generally regarded to be of high quality,
but sometimes not. Thus, your application deci-
sions may reflect an interest in a program, a mentor,
or both. Your personal statement should reflect
these interests.
You can learn a lot about a potential advisor
through online searches. Here are some specific
things to look for while deciding whether to
apply to work with a psychology professor:
■ How many publications does he or she have? If
there are many, then it may be more likely that
you will have an opportunity to earn author-
ship on many publications during your time in
graduate school.
■ Are the publications in good journals? (You
can ask a graduate student or professor for help
in determining this.) Both quantity and quality
of publications will be important when people
evaluate your research productivity later in
your career.
■ Are the graduate students in this person’s lab
also authors on the publications?
■ Is this person an assistant, associate, or full
professor? People differ in their opinions about
whether it’s better to work with a young pro-
fessor or a tenured professor. Assistant profes-
sors need to produce high-quality research and
high-quality publications in order to get ten-
ure, which will likely have benefits for their
graduate students’productivity and CVs. On
the other hand, assistant professors are less likely
to have job stability and connections in the
field than tenured professors, and they may
have less energy to focus on their graduate
students’careers, compared to tenured profes-
sors who are no longer struggling to build their
own careers and reputations. However, yet
another factor to consider is that very senior
faculty members may not be as actively
involved in new research projects as professors
earlier in their careers.
When evaluating the quality of clinical psy-
chology Ph.D. programs, pay attention to the
program statistics posted on their Web sites. All
APA-accredited psychology doctoral programs
(i.e., clinical, counseling, and school psychology
only) are required to report statistics such as average
GRE scores and GPAs, acceptance rates, and aver-
age time it takes students to get through the
program. Be wary of programs that do not have a
high completion rate; it may be a bad sign if many
students are not finishing the program. Also, a less-
understood but very informative statistic is the
match rate—the percentage of students who were
placed in one of their top-choice internship sites
after completing their coursework and dissertation.
Most top-quality programs have average match
rates (across 5 years) of at least 75%.The General GRE
GRE scores are used as an important marker of
potential success in graduate school. As with GPA,
the higher the score, the better. The General exam
has recently changed in format and scoring. Conse-
quently, percentile scores are often evaluated more
closely than the standardized scores. The program
Web sites mentioned above include data regarding
the averages and ranges of GRE scores for admitted
students. Also, the APA offers a book with infor-
mation on every program, as well as data regarding
admission criteria, calledGraduate Study in Psychol-
ogy. You can find the latest edition through the
APA Web site: http://www.apa.org/pubs. In prac-
tice, we believe most all successful applicants576 APPENDIX