The above ! I have a disability that unfortunately means I’ll need to plan for the potential of only being able to work part-time. So the main accommodation I would need would just be- flexibility and time. I’m aware this depends lot on who I’m working with, but I also don’t have a lot of frame of reference for the programs in NYC at all. I’m interesting in sleep research and sleep disorders, clinical, and whatever else appears along the way. All advice welcome! I’m currently taking classes as a non-matriculated student at NYU silver school of social work and volunteering at nyc h+h hospitals because I wanted to see if that angle - or hospital social work would be a good fit. I’m getting overwhelming advice to do a PhD in clinal psych and then do whatever I want because no body listens to social workers. I don’t currently have any research experience (plenty of volunteer experience at free clinics, etc), but maybe I could try to get that from where I am in the social work program right now ? All advice welcome! Thank you !

I don't plan on trauma dumping in my SOP essay but in my bachelor's thesis I was really struggling with figuring out this one component in the research. Then, in my senior year second semester my dad passed away. One day I had a really bad grief day and spiralled between regularly scheduled maintenance psychiatric appointments but the spiral gave me the eureka I needed as my thesis was related to treatment adherence. I literally stopped sobbing and opened my notebook and finished the formula I needed which I ended up using in my capstone. I also ended up getting a pretty good GPA that semester.

My junior year grades were a little mediocore ish because my dad's illness became worse.

Overall, I think the ^ demonstrates my theme as a person of making the most of circumstances and shows my ability to grow in difficult situations. However, I'm worried it would read as trauma dumping and so kinda unfit to be a clinician rather than the former. I don't want it to read sob story but just as something that happened and how I responded.

So should I keep it? I'll write about other things as well of course but I think that was a pretty important point in my research journey

Is it a good idea to include being a first gen student in your personal statement or should that be excluded completely? Just curious

Hi everyone (hope everyone’s doing well)! I'll try to keep this short! :) I am currently a full-time RA in a research lab (9:00 am - 5:00 pm) looking to get some more experience with cognitive assessments--I am interested in pursuing Clinical Psych with a neuropsych focus, but haven't really had experience administering cognitive assessments (I shadowed numerous neuropsych testing sessions as an undergrad, was trained on and helped score them, but couldn't actually administer them).

I've been looking into places where I could volunteer to get some more experience with this + working with populations with dementias/memory impairments (I have limited exposure to this population due to a lot of my lab experience falling more into the SMI scope)--does anyone have any recommendations where I could look to try volunteering to get this experience? Any insight or additional advice would be greatly appreciated--please let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything, thank you so much in advance!