8. Applicant stats

Getting accepted into a clinical psych PhD program is freaking hard. I’ve yet to learn of another type of program with a lower acceptance rate. In my two years of reviewing apps, I’ve received applications from a pool of extraordinarily talented and qualified candidates. There are far more talented applicants than I can interview or admit, so I have to make tough cuts. (And FWIW, I really feel for those applying. This process is seriously so competitive and hard.) I do not have hard and fast cutoffs for anything, but I’m providing the stats below to help you evaluate your competitiveness.

If you fall short on some of these details but you’ve had other experiences that have substantially prepared you for a research-intensive degree, please describe in your statement of purpose what these experiences are and how they expanded your research skillset and readiness.

Number of applications received for one available slot

• 2024 cycle: 84 –> acceptance rate = 1.19%
• 2025 cycle: 130 –> acceptance rate = 0.77%

Interest areas

• 30-50% of applicants are specifically interested in eating disorders
• 30-50% are specifically interested in suicide
• 15%ish of applicants are interested in LGBTQ+ mental health. However, remember that I am not an LGBTQ+ expert. I am VERY interested in taking students interested in suicide or eating disorders within LGBTQ+ populations. But if you’re ONLY interested in LGBTQ+ health broadly defined, my expertise will not match your training needs. -The remaining proportion of applicants don’t mention any specific research interests. People without specific research interests will rarely advance to advanced stages of application review.

Full-time research experience. Most competitive applicants have had 2-3+ years of full-time research experience. Occasionally I have interviewed people wihout full-time research experience (i.e., still in undergrad). When I’ve interviewed candidates coming directly from undergrad, they had experiences that demonstrated truly exceptional and extraordinary tenacity and adaptability.

First-author publications. Most competitive applicants have at least one first-author manuscript in the final stages of preparation or already in the publication process. Several of the candidates I’ve invited to interview have 2+ first-author manuscripts either published or in the works. Remember that I don’t care about publications per se, but they are thus far the most common metric to determine someone’s preparation for a PhD in a research-intensive environment.

Grants. Between half to two-thirds of my most competitive applicants have written a grant of some sort with them as PI (e.g., NSF GRFP).

Real-world clinical experience. Many competitive candidates have already had > 1 year of exposure to clinical or clinical-esque work, such as administering clinical interviews, working as a behavioral tech at a clinic, or volunteering at a crisis line, for example.

Master’s degrees. I feel entirely neutral about whether someone is in a master’s program vs. not. Maybe 25ish percent of my most competitive applicants were in a master’s program or had earned a master’s at the time of applying to my lab. Of the master’s-enrolled applicants, all had obtained substantial research experience before their master’s AND during their master’s.