how do you choose between doing ass ID or a PhD in clinical psychology learn the six key questions that you need to ask yourself today on navigating academia [Music] what's up everybody my name is dr. J Phoenix saying and I want to warmly welcome you to this episode of navigating academia your leading source for guidance on how to advance your career in academia as always I appreciate the love so please do take a moment right now to like this video subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and hit that Bell to be able to make sure that you get notifications every time we post new original content which is every Tuesday at 10 o'clock in the morning Eastern Time in the US now please do also share it on your social media feeds especially if you think your friends your colleagues and your students may enjoy it and also follow us on these social media accounts so let's jump right in I can't tell you the number of people who have contacted me via this channel which has been such a blessing I really do love hearing from you to be able to ask what I think abouts IDs and PhDs and which one is preferable now I wish that there was some across-the-board statement that I could make here but it really is one that deserves a proper discussion and a lot of nuance and so because of that I wanted to make you this video to be able to give you the six questions that I deeply believe you need to ask yourself that is going to help guide you in your own personal decision making as of which of these two degrees to be able to pursue so let's jump right in question one to ask yourself is do you want to spend most of your time as a clinician or as a researcher now trust me anybody who's going to go into either of these programs especially clinical PhDs they're going to say well I'm gonna do both yeah I'm gonna be a clinician but I'm also gonna do some research I'm gonna publish on the side people inside these say you know I'm really principally interested in clinical practice but you know I wouldn't be averse on the side to Publishing's and papers published in some books may be some treatment manuals maybe some you know psychological assessment instruments etc I can just tell you from experience that is so immensely rare that you should just assume that it's it's not going to happen especially when it comes to making this decision you really need to decide whether you want to spend the old well mning preponderance of your time as a clinician or as a researcher and there is nothing wrong with pursuing either of those I can tell you that I was the guy who was you know clinical work a hundred percent had no interest in being a research ended up getting it into a research program and became a researcher and have done very well for myself and very happy and I found different ways to be able to explore my clinical background including getting a doctorate in clinical psychology after my first doctorate from Oxford so it's one of these situations where it's not one size fits all but it is a good idea to really consider what you're looking for do you want to spend your time deeply ensconced in statistics and deeply ensconced and learning the nuances of writing peer-reviewed academic articles that is a whole world into itself and it is very time consuming and it has very little to do with clinical practice even though clinicians should still know about stats to be able to help them be better able to read the research literature right so this is really the the first question that I want you to ask yourself if you follow more on the research side strongly consider the clinical PhD if however you're really driven to be clinician especially a private practitioner you need to go this idea around the second question asks yourself is do you want to go to what would be considered by most people to be a quote unquote big-name University these almost always only offer phd's especially any programs that may have any notoriety within psychology those are clinical psychology programs as sorry clinical psychology PhD programs they aren't outside the programs and it's not that there's anything wrong with psy.d programs there's just a much newer degree and because of that a lot of the times you end up finding these these smaller privatized organizations these Institute's they're the ones who are actually you know these professional schools some call them they're the ones who are actually providing these side-b programs now there are a few that do for them once like Rutger and as of this filming in late 2009 teen Rutgers Pepperdine Hofstra a few big-name universities that do offer those side D degrees and I do strongly recommend going for those provided there are faculty members there who are kind of the right faculty members in your sub area forensic psychology child psychology whatever it is right so long as it has that subspecialty in the right faculty I would strongly recommend it especially if it's a bigger name University okay so if you want to go to a big name University know classically then you're going to really want to consider doing a clinical PhD the third question ask yourself is down the line on your personal life runway do you at any point want to be a professor at a big-name school at a big-name University these are usually going to be what we call our one University research one universities and this has to do with a lot of things especially has to do with grants and the way that you get a grant is through a very arduous process a grant development process you go to an organization like a National Institute of Mental Health I mean there's so many of these different grant funding organizations but you need one of them to be able to improve your work and give you funding and it's usually a competitive process that can be very cutthroat to likely getting it is very low it's very bureaucratic it's very strategic it's frankly a pain in the butt but you usually end up making more money by going to one of these places even though the money is soft money meaning that doesn't come from student tuition it comes from the grants themselves so you really eat what you kill which is really important to know but then you're going to be at the Harvard's like they're really big nough the UN sees the big name universities that's where you're going to end up finding yourself and if you want to be a professor one of those big name universities you better get used to that process and I would argue at this time at least that society programs will not prepare you for that in fact I am only familiar with one facility who is actually you know very active in that world right now in a successful fashion does that mean that you can do it of course it doesn't right you can break the mold night that would be a wonderful thing my job though is to be able to give you the evidence-based as it exists right now and that's where we are the next question asks yourself is do you want to work with some of the quote unquote big names in psychology virtually always these big name people are at our one universities maybe are too but really mostly at our one universities the big name people in the field these are like the Erin Beck's and the Phil Zimbardo zs-- and the albert bandura's and these sorts of guys the legends the O G's in the field they're at our one universities and clinical PhD programs especially if you wanted them as one of your supervisors that's what you would want to be now in some cases there are some citing programs that are linked up either a big-name universities like Pepperdine that we talked about or they're linked up with actual clinical PhD programs such that you can kind of have almost cross-pollination of the same faculty that could be is something that you may want to look into but generally speaking right across the board across all nine right now at the time this fellows 96 American Psychological Association accredited sigh V programs across the overwhelming preponderance of them they are not at big-name universities and that's very important to know you may want to take a look at faculty maybe somebody's adjunct in who's a big-name that semester at a university but generally speaking if you have to make that nice little cross-section determination you want to go with the clinical psych PhD if that's something that's important to you the next question asks yourself is do you want to win awards from associations academic awards are really the coin into the realm or one of the coins of the realm in terms of moving up in academia to self branding to making yourself a real asset to other individuals and to essentially just you know putting yourself on the map what can I say right and a lot of associations they provide an early career professional award a Lifetime Achievement Award and travel grants everything in between micro grants in some cases everything in between which is a pretty sweet deal and so essentially the thing to mention here is that if you do want to win an award from an association I have to be perfectly honest with you I have never heard of a side date winning that award winning like a large scale award unless it was an award that specifically had to do with clinical practice because most of these degrees are related to research or policy etc does it mean it can't happen of course not am I sure that there are many examples that you could bring to me that would be the contrary probably but in the aggregate for my anecdotal experience I have not seen that and hence my personal recommendation would be to pursue a clinical psychology PhD if academic awards is something that's very important to you now do you get me money with the academic awards rarely maybe you'll get a nice plaque or something like that and maybe that means something to you and there's nothing wrong with them meaning a lot to you right people have different professional goals but if that is one of your professional goals something to keep in mind and finally is do you care about the perception of your doctorate by your colleagues obviously especially if you're a practitioner you should really only care about what your patients think right that's the law of the land but if you really care about what your colleagues think and you got a whole bunch of PhD colleagues it's likely that they're going to look down on the side deep that's just the state right now end of 2019 hopefully in a few years who won't be the case anymore but right now regardless of what anybody tells you it's true and so because of that if you really care about that you should know about it but keep in mind that even if you're a clinical psychology PhD you're gonna have MD psychiatrists looking down on you as well this is a very hierarchical field unnecessarily the psychiatrist looked down the psychologist the PhD psychologist look down the side the just generally look down to the side these societies probably also looked down to folks like counselors and social workers and then delete that or folks like behavioral coaches and these sorts of guys so it's one of these things it's very unnecessarily hierarchical at the end of the day you really shouldn't care but we're human beings and we care if that's something that really means a lot to you sure you should take that into consideration okay now both times you're gonna be called doctor to some people that's very important I can tell you personally barely anybody will call you doctor in fact it'll make you a little uncomfortable a while people for after a while people calling you doctor and such because you realize that everybody's doctors just a very generic person but if that's something that's important to you at least for the society and the PhD you're getting bad status and both so those are my recommendations for you of questions to ask yourself before taking the plunge all right everybody thank you so much for stopping by if you have any recommendations for future episodes of navigating academia we'd obviously love to hear from you in the comments below frankly any comment you leave just a little a good job anything like that really helps the algorithm as it does if you like and share the video so please do help us out we'd really appreciate it in addition to that if you're interested in one on one career mentoring with me specifically to be able to walk through help you make this really big life determination let's hop on the phone and chat about a strategy that we can use together to be able to get you into the right place and then maximize the likelihood to get you the opportunity to actually go to your dream school and you can do that via the website below all right everybody's signing off for today thank you so much again for stopping by and remember to get out there take chances and be your best self thank you so much for stopping by everyone it's a pleasure to have you here as always if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to see more in this series on navigating academia please click on one of these links over here to be able to view more original content I hope to see you there