Hey! I've recently decided to switch career tracks and apply to clinical psych instead of medical school next year. Here's my story- would love to get any feedback because I'm a first time applicant and, as many of you know, this process is very daunting! Sorry it's a bit long...

I've always switched back and forth between medicine and clinical psychology, and my volunteer/professional experiences largely reflect this. As an undergrad, I completed a double major in psychology/behavioral neuro and molecular biology. I also graduated with plenty of research experience in developmental psychology, behavioral neuroscience and molecular biology (worked in more than one lab during a lot of semesters); I had 2 poster presentations (one of which won an award at my school's undergraduate symposium, and the other was nominated) and also wrote a thesis to graduate with distinction in developmental psychology. No publications though, and no direct clinical psychology experience

I had other clinical experiences that were relevant to psychology, like volunteering at a crisis line, tutoring through Psi Chi, involvement/leadership role in our undergrad neuro society and founding a campus organization around Alzheimer's Disease volunteering and fundraising, and more. My biology major gpa was trash (cumulative is around 3.03) but my psychology gpa is a 3.71

After graduating, I was leaning towards clinical psych because I can definitely see myself as a therapist (though my biggest passion is interacting with patients, my reason for pursuing clinical instead of counseling is because I'm very interested in neuropsychological assessment). In addition, on average my psychology/neuro classes were infinitely more interesting to me than my molecular biology classes.

However, as a postgraduate AmeriCorps member, I decided on medicine because I worked with a few inspiring doctors, was surrounded by other pre-meds and, perhaps most importantly, I worked closely with a few counseling psychologists and social workers (terminal masters degrees) who were unfortunately miserable with their choice of career and talked me out of it. (on a side note, have a helluva lot of respect for them, but I've still effectively ruled out counseling psychology/social work because of these experiences)

For a variety of reasons, I knew I was making the wrong choice but couldn't bear to admit it to myself. In hindsight, there were a lot of indicators as to how unhappy I was. I spent half of 2018 and 2019 miserably studying for the MCAT and got an average score- not bad, but nothing remarkable/competitive. Now, I'm in a masters program thats geared towards pre medical students. I had a mental breakdown in October, and took a leave of absence from my program to complete a partial hospitalization program. Here, I did a lot of trauma work (related to personal history) and reflected on my values (what I'd want a future career to look like), which led to me to this decision

I realized that I'm probably not cut out for a career in medicine- I'm not lazy by any means, but my spark has been missing for a long time, my heart just isn't in it anymore. I find a lot of value in helping people and thinking that being a doctor would be an incredibly rewarding privilege, but my interests are more specific than the topics that med school would cover. Moreover, I have some issues with the way our country's healthcare system requires doctors to spend their time- the vast majority of the doctors that I've shadowed, worked for or even talked to have mentioned that they don't get to spend nearly as much time with their patients as they would want, and for me, patient interaction is by far the most important aspect of any career I could hope to pursue. I'm also passionate about research, teaching and other activities within multidisciplinary topics that are more closely related to mental health and clinical psychology than they are to medicine (with the exceptions of neuroscience and psychiatry, tellingly).

It's super scary to even admit this but I think I've finally settled on my decision to apply to clinical psychology next year, and I feel like I've made this decision after considering all of the alternatives, not just bc medicine specifically isn't right for me. I will likely graduate this year long masters with a 3.0 average or something around that, but it feels like a weight has been lifted off my chest.

I've set up appointments with career/academic advisers, am looking for research assistant positions in clinical psych/neuropsych labs, and have started researching schools that I would be interested in applying to and clinical neuropsychologists that I can shadow. I plan to retake my GRE but my scores in 2016 were 162 and 157 in lit and quant, respectively

I was wondering if anyone had any feedback or advise for me into this process? In particular, I don't know whether I should be applying for masters programs first, and I'm a bit insecure about the strength of my candidacy, given my career change and grad school performance. Does anyone have any tips to strengthen my application? Should I wait a year?

Thank you so much :)