u/Goodfella245

Just want to know if there’s anyone that has any experiences that may be comforting. Given that this cycle or any cycle for that matter has a lot of uncertainty, I would like to know if persistence does ultimately pay off. I have been in the research game for several years now (2 years part time, 2 years full time), but of course there are people out there with much more. I aim to put my best foot forward this application season in hopes to finally land at least one offer. I was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences where you had no interview offers or little to no success and had a better outcome the following year. Also, any wisdom and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry the question sounds a bit confusing, I rushed to post it. I meant to say if one can add a presentation that was presented at a lab meeting to their own CV and if so, would that go under conferences or professional presentations. Thank you in advance to anyone that answers this question! Just want to be sure that I’m not padding my CV with nonsense lol.

Hi everyone, I am currently going to be applying to my third cycle of clinical psychology, PhD programs. To be quite frank, I am exhausted from the process and just want to be admitted into a program considering my age as well and my career goals of pursuing research and clinical practice. That being said, I’ve hit a sort of a growth spurt so this year so far in terms of research productivity. Below are some of my credentials.:

. A two year masters degree in psychology where I graduated with honors and completed a year long masters thesis.
. Two years of volunteering in a child maltreatment lab where I worked on a manuscript that was under review.
. Six months of working in a lab that is more aligned with my research interests.
. One year of working in a lab that is pretty adjacent to my research interests where I am trying to create another 1st author pub.
. Four months so far of collaborating with another lab that is directly aligned with my research interests.
. A year long independent research project.
. A research course that was a semester long.

(so technically at the time of application, I will have two years of part-time research experience from my masters and two years of full-time research experience across 2 labs)

. Five or six conferences where I am first author on a poster ( one major regional that is niche specific and one national level)
. 6-7 publications in various stages, I mentioned one of them is a co-author and the other one is a first author. (4 are in prep, one “under review”, and one soon to be submitted, 1 is in the works that is more directly related to my niche interests)
. Three professional talks
. Four academic awards from undergrad and one research grant award.

All that to say is that I am very nervous as I prepare my materials for this upcoming cycle, I anticipate having some strong to decent letters of recommendation from people that I’ve worked close with but I’m not sure how strong my chances are considering that the field that just gets more competitive every year. From what I’ve been told over the years is that research fit is most important and to focus on the personal statement and diversity statements? Can anyone please advise on what my chances are looking like and how to go about crafting an exceptional personal statement? Any advice would be greatly appreciated since this has been very stressful!