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Doctoral Preparation Track

4/19/25

Dictation:

Greetings, greetings, greetings. Hello, I wanted to give a brief overview of the doctoral preparation track and invite you to reach out and give us your information if you have any interest in kind of following along as there are opportunities to get involved.

Purpose:

The purpose of this program is just to make it really transparent how to take advantage of the really strong research training that's available within our department. So because we are, we have three PhD programs and four master's programs all license eligible that really makes us a unique place to train. You're going to come into a setting where there's just, it's almost like grand central station so you'll kind of see in my next slide that that's the metaphor that I want to use for what it's like to train in our department.

Problem

The problem that we noticed probably about ten years ago was that if we don't give people some guidance as they kind of come into this system they may not necessarily know what to do and so what we saw happening was people would get about a year into their program and students would be getting feedback like hey you should think about getting your doctorate. You know professors are giving them positive feedback and they're showing signs of being really interested in the content area and you know starting to realize some of the different things that you can do in this profession not just clinical practice but also research and other types of leadership opportunities and so there's a type of expertise development that's available for people who get their PhD and people start to get invited into that and are interested in it. But after the fall of your second year if you were going to apply to a program that would happen almost immediately so it's kind of around December when all the applications are due and so people are kind of asking for research experience or other things with only like two months left and so there's a little bit of a timing problem. So that was kind of the reason why we decided to give a little bit more structure and let people know hey if you have any interest in this you should engage some of these structures. So that was kind of the problem.

Hosts

I want to give you a few introductions. So this structure is kind of something maintained by the happy lab. So happy lab is humility and positive psychology interventions. We do work in the area of positive psychology and wellness. So Paul Wu runs this program right now and he is currently a second year doctoral student in counseling psychology. He'll be a rising third year. Sally Lee is our lab manager and she'll be a rising fourth year and you kind of look at some of her interest and then Rory McDermott is a first year counseling psych student and so this is the group that right now primarily supports the doctoral preparation track.

Hopeful Stories

I thought I'd give you just a few hopeful stories just to kind of give you a sense of how this might work for you. And at some point we might see if we can get interviews with these folks and we can do some kind of Q&A and we might record it and put it on our YouTube channel. So Sebastian Love, I mentioned kind of a story of stepping stones. Short version is he wanted to do a PhD in neuroclinical and so it turns out you know he actually needed to get some additional experience with a lab but the doctoral preparation track was able to help him get a fellowship at Yale University that paid I think it was like $40,000 a year and it was almost like a farm system for their program and then he ended up taking a position at UC Berkeley so that's a pretty amazing story. So Wendy is the next person I wanted to kind of spotlight. She's almost done with the counseling psych program in our department. What she did was she aligned her work in the doctoral preparation track so that it gave her a huge head start on her doctoral degree so she had a pre-dissertation project that was the data was already collected and so she was able to finish her pre-dissertation within her first semester at Georgia State which gave her a great head start. She's about to go on internship at Vanderbilt University. I could give you a few other people who got involved in the program and ended up realizing you know what what I really want to do doesn't require me to get a PhD. For us that's equally a success story so you know part of what we want to do is help you consider all your options and if you decide that getting a doctor isn't really necessary that's a great outcome too. So we might try to get a few of our folks who kind of ended up getting that clarity.

Discerning the right fit

There's also just questions about what kind of program would you want to go to I kind of mentioned that so we've had students go into counselor education and practice programs, counseling psychology, we've had people go into clinical psychology. So there are a lot of options and it can be a little bit confusing because there are a lot of similarities and I kind of mentioned this to you know the master's students in the DPT. It's kind of like high school football if you talk to people there's a little bit of inherent bias in everyone's perspective because they people you know once you develop a professional identity and you have a commitment to an area then you kind of you know you're proud of your team and the training that you got and so part of what we want to do in our space is to give you a chance to connect with different people and kind of make sense of what you're hearing and also you know kind of try to make sense of the potential bias within that.

Timeline

So in terms of a timeline the over the summer your job is to settle and just kind of explore and make connections. We kind of leave it open if you wanted to kind of join we will have a weekly lab meeting it will probably virtual over the summer if you wanted to join and connect and hear about this you could just email me or Sally and we would kind of loop you into that meeting. In the fall same thing so if you kind of know that you want to join the doctoral preparation track there's really no reason you couldn't start to join a research team and start to secure mentoring and you know if you reached out to us right away we could even let you enroll in the course and start getting course credit for the work that you're doing it's kind of like a directed reading so we would just kind of loop you into that structure. But the formal application is due in November and then the goal in the spring is to help you start to kind of plan how to align the work that you do while you're in the master's program and start to align that with your long term goals and what you might do in your doctoral program. So we'll help you think about a systematic literature review and potentially how to get started on that. We'll help you kind of work with the research team that you're working with and kind of think about joining other projects that other people are taking the lead on but also getting started with designing your own research project so we can give you support around that. Over the summer there's a rest so your research team may have some sort of meeting structure and you obviously can stay involved in that but in terms of the DPT that's just kind of a rest period. And then in the fall you'll be on practicum internship and so everyone's schedules get kind of different but what we end up doing kind of like a directed reading is we'll set up a structure where we'll have regular office hours and we're available to support you as you're kind of getting your application ready so we can kind of help you talk through all of the aspects of that process, give you feedback on cover letters, all that kind of stuff.

Application process, a little context

Let me say a few things about the application process so it's a very simple form, a little bit of information and then we have you turn in a zip file with your CV cover letter so you've kind of done stuff like that just to get into the program, the master's program that you're in.

Letter for support

For a letter of support that's not anything that needs to, you know, a research mentor would need to spend a ton of time on. We actually just created a form, I took a screenshot of it. What it's doing is it's forcing a conversation about them supporting you in some of the basic goals that we have for you in this program. So we, you obviously could do more than we ask for but what we try to do is give you some kind of minimal goals that would help you align with what's going to help you in the interview process and really what we're thinking towards is we're imagining in a day we think you already have what it takes to kind of get an offer of an interview. Our programs are very competitive but we're thinking about what are the kinds of things that are going to develop your maturity as a doctoral candidate, as someone who's applying to a program and so that when you have 30 minutes to an hour of an in-person interview and people are asking you, "Hey, what are you thinking about doing long term? Why did you choose our program? What are the kinds of projects that we might do together? How do you see your research fitting in with your clinical interest?" That you would be prepared to come across as a highly trustworthy and mature applicant. So that's what we're kind of asking a research faculty member to kind of commit to and so we want them to kind of pair you with at least one doc student and commit to helping you get on at least one paper or presentation at a national conference and we want them to help you start to think about what you might do in your research program. It's not crucial how far you get in that so some people are able to plan a study or find it a data set and get pretty far along. Other people, they're going a little bit slower and that's okay. We don't care as much about how far you get but that you have the support and structure you need with that process.

Start a literature review

The second thing we do is we have you pick what you might do for a systematic literature review. The main point of this, there's two main points. One is just to see what it's like to try to find a topic and one where there's enough of a body of literature that you could do a review. And so if you were a first year doctoral student, this might take a semester for you to kind of narrow in on what you really want to invest your time and energy on. So we want you to get to let you have a sense of what that would feel like. And then the second part is we want you to kind of get a sense of how to narrow the scope so we don't want you to do a review that's like 800 studies. Can you find a body of literature that you can review that would be somewhere in the range of 15 to 25 articles? Then you pull those PDFs and then put them into a table where you summarize the key information. So like author year, what measures were used in the study or if it's qualitative studies, what kind of design was used and what were the key themes. And then a column for the key findings. So the second purpose of this is it's a little bit of a commitment test. So we have four different master's programs. We would want to support as many people as are highly committed to kind of engaging these structures. But we don't want a lot of people who haven't kind of given it some serious thought and have kind of started to put some skin in the game. So this task, because it would take probably at least two to three hours to complete, it's a little bit of a commitment test of is this something that you really want to do. So it's also a chance for us to just start to support you. So we're actually happy to kind of set up office hours and to answer questions and just walk you through this process. So it's almost like this is one of the first things that you can do to really kind of where the rubber meets the road and start to get a sense of, "Oh, okay, would I want to consider doing a PhD? What would I potentially want to do that on?" And so we include that in the application process.

FAQ

So lastly, I've got an FAQ slide. There's a document that we created at one point that kind of has questions that students might have, also questions that faculty advisors might have. We'll have a few chances if you wanted to kind of come to an information session where you could ask these or other questions and kind of get contextualized information. So anyway, that's an overview. So if this sounds of interest, please fill out the form, give us your information, and we'll keep you in the loop. Thank you.

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Purpose of DPT

The goal of the CPS Doctoral Prep Track (DPT) is to provide clear direction to and support for students interested in applying to a doctoral program while they are in a GSU’s masters or Ed.S. program in the Counseling and Psychological Services Department.
If you are interested in applying to the program, please complete the following form.

CPS Doctoral Preparation Track

Welcome! The CPS Doctoral Preparation Track is a two-course sequence that spans from the Spring of your first year to the Fall of your second year.

Goals

The goal of the CPS Doctoral Prep Track (DPT) is to provide clear direction to and support for students interested in applying to a doctoral program while they are in a GSU’s masters or Ed.S. program in the Counseling and Psychological Services Department.

If you are interested in applying to the program, please complete the following form.

Applications

We will host a meet-and-greet workshop during September of the students’ first academic year.
We will have office hours posted by departmental email to assist people who want support with the application process.
Applications are due November 20th, 2023.

Experiences

Where have students in the program gone on to study?

Since launching this program in 2019, we have already had 10 students apply and matriculate into the following programs:

University of Florida, Counselor Education and Practice
Lehigh University, Counseling Psychology
Seton Hall University, Counseling Psychology
University of Georgia, Counselor Education and Practice
Georgia State University, Counselor Education and Practice
Florida State University, Counseling Psychology
University of Western Michigan, Counseling Psychology
Yale University, pre-doctoral preparation fellowship
Berkeley University

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Hosted by HAPPI lab Leadership Seminar

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Paul Woo

Hee Chan (Paul) Woo is a Counseling Psychology Ph.D. student at Georgia State University. He graduated with a double major B.A. in Economics and Psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He previously worked for the local municipality in Madison while finishing a hybrid Master’s of Theological Studies at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis. He was also part-time with campus ministries and the local church for college students on campus. His research interests lie in the intersection between psychology/counseling, spirituality/religion and multiculturalism. He hopes to continue the work of bridging communities of faith and advocating for mental health services especially within marginalized populations. Outside of school, he enjoys spending time outdoors, playing sports, and being with friends and family.

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Sally Lee

Ye Jin (Sally) Lee is a Counseling Psychology Ph.D. student at Georgia State University. She graduated with a B.A. in Psychology at Baylor University prior to the Ph.D. program at GSU. Sally is an international student from South Korea who grew up across four countries (Korea, US, Canada, Kenya). Her research interests lie in the area of positive psychology (e.g., gratitude and humility) and the psychology of religion/spirituality. She is also interested in the acculturation experiences of international students and immigrant populations. She hopes to work with Asian families and college student populations as part of her career after graduation. Outside of school, she loves traveling, journaling, and doing puzzles.

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Rory McDermott

Rory is a Counseling Psychology Ph.D. student at Georgia State University. He was born and raised in central Iowa and got his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Communication Studies at Iowa State University (Go Cyclones!). Rory’s research interests center around positive psychology, experiences of marginalization and oppression, and communicating across differences. Specifically, he is interested in the strengths and barriers to building multicultural connections, and how to utilize methods of communication to promote health and well-being. Clinically, Rory is moving into the counseling field and has interest in existential topics and navigating life stages of transitions (e.g., college & young adulthood, chronic health conditions, geriatric health and mental health). Outside of school, Rory is an avid runner and enjoys writing, watching sports (especially running, cycling, and basketball), and exploring his new home in Atlanta.A

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Hopeful Stories

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Examples

Since launching this program in 2019, we have already had over 10 students apply and matriculate into the following programs:
University of Florida, Counselor Education and Practice
Lehigh University, Counseling Psychology
Seton Hall University, Counseling Psychology
University of Georgia, Counselor Education and Practice
Georgia State University, Counselor Education and Practice
Florida State University, Counseling Psychology
University of Western Michigan, Counseling Psychology
Yale University, pre-doctoral preparation fellowship
Berkeley University

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Stepping Stone

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Head Start

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Timeline

Summer-your job is to explore and connect

Step 1: Complete a form to indicate your interest in more information: The first step is to let us know that you are interested in hearing more. We will send several emails throughout the summer and fall semesters, so completing this form ensures that you will get that information. The form also includes a spot for questions, and we have answers to FAQ here.
Step 2: Begin Exploring Potential Mentoring from a Faculty Member in the Department
Contact several faculty members and see if there is sufficient interest in supporting your professional goals in the program. The list of faculty is located here. Here is some specific information about faculty who have recently mentored students in the DPT.

Fall-get your application ready (we’ll talk more about that)

Step 3: Join a HAPPI lab meeting throughout the Summer or Fall Semester: My lab has an open meeting at noon on Monday at noon. Email me if you are interested in joining and we can answer questions you may have about joining the DPT structures.
Step 4: Submit Application: The application is submitted through the following form and is due November 25, 2025. The application consists of the following parts, including a CV, cover letter, letter of support form, and completion of the first few steps of a systematic literature review (see materials here).

Spring

Helping you plan how to invest your time during masters training and acculturate to a lab

Summer-rest

You may stay engaged with team cadence, but we take a break from DPT course.

Fall-support applying for a program

In the fall, given that people are on practicum/internship, we adopt a more flexible structure to support your goals.

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How to Apply

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“Letter of Rec”

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Create a Summary Table

Aim for around 15 articles
Column for author, year, measures, key findings

**We have office hours available to support you in completing this part of the application

Note: We included some notes below on this guide. You are just seeing how far you can get on the first four steps. This is literally what you will do one day for Chapter 1, if you decide to enter a doctoral program.

Dr. Hook’s Guide to Completing a Literature Review

The goal of a literature review is to organize all the literature on a specific topic. Often this can be a really nice publication. Writing a literature review is also a good way to introduce yourself to a new area that you would like to begin doing some research. Also, writing a literature review is the first step to your thesis or dissertation project.

Step 1: Pick a topic

This first step can take some time. There are a few things that you need to think about.

Make sure no one has published a recent literature review on your topic. If someone has published a recent literature review on the same topic, it is a waste of time to redo his or her work. You need to brainstorm a different angle or somewhat different topic. I can help you with this.
Make sure your literature review is at the correct level of specificity. Too broad, and there will be too many articles to review. Too specific, and there won’t be enough. The desired level of specificity also depends on how much time/energy you have to put into this project. I recently did a literature review with about 50 studies. It was a good paper, but I had the time to do that. If this literature review is part of your thesis or dissertation project, you will probably want to have a more narrow level of specificity so that your project is more manageable. A good rule of thumb is somewhere between 20-30 studies. There are exceptions to this rule. If your topic is interesting and you think a review is necessary, you can get away with fewer studies. You can definitely do a review with more studies; it just will take a lot of time and effort.
Getting to the correct level of specificity is a process. It involves doing a series of preliminary searches. First, you set a wide search parameter, and see how many studies meet those criteria. Then, you think about different ways to narrow, so that the number of studies is manageable. The important thing is that you want to set criteria in a way that makes theoretical sense. You want to do a comprehensive literature review, which means getting all the articles on a specific topic. (You will never find all the articles, but you will carefully record the steps of your search so that someone could replicate your search.) I will help you with this process of getting to the correct level of specificity.

Note: This is the most important process we want to initiate in the application. Sometimes it takes a little time to start to narrow on an area in which your interests overlap with a body of literature that is a manageable start. For example, a search on cultural humility might yield hundreds of studies.

Step 2: Decide what type of literature review to conduct

There are two main types of literature reviews—narrative reviews and meta-analyses. In a narrative review, the author reviews the findings from the included studies, and makes conclusions based on those findings. A meta-analysis is similar, except that in a meta-analysis, the author does some analyses that statistically combine the results of the included studies. Studies with larger sample sizes get more weight, and you can come up with an overall effect size. Meta-analyses are better, but also take more work. Also, sometimes meta-analyses are difficult to do if the included studies are not comparable. If you are doing a literature review as part of your thesis or dissertation, you will probably do a narrative review to start (and use that in the thesis or dissertation proposal). Later, if you decide that a meta-analysis will be helpful for publication, you can make that change.

Note: For now, you can assume you are doing a narrative review.

Step 3: Conduct the literature search

Now that you have determined our topic and inclusion criteria in Step 1, you are ready to do the literature search. There are several steps.

Search multiple databases for articles using specified key words. Generally (this may change somewhat depending on your topic), I like to use psychinfo, proquest (for theses and dissertations) and pubmed.
Review the reference sections from the identified articles to get other articles you may have missed.
Get file-drawer studies. It is good to do some work to identify articles that we may have missed, as well as studies that may not have been published. This involves sending an email to all the first authors of the identified articles. I usually send the list of articles I do have, and ask if there are any others that I have missed (or for studies that author has conducted which have not been published). Another way to seek filedrawer studies is to send an announcement on relevant listservs.
Keep track of how you do the search. Keep track of the date you do the search, what databases you use, and what key words you use. This information will go in the method section of your review.

Note: For our purposes, it is okay to just use PsycInfo. Keep track of the exact terms that you ender and your process of narrowing the studies to around 10-25 articles. If you end up sticking with this topic for your dissertation, you may end up reviewing 30+ articles, but for this exercise, we strongly encourage you to find a way to limit the scope.

Step 4: Make a chart

As I read the articles I have found, I usually summarize the articles in a chart. I include a bunch of information (some of this will vary based on your topic):

Authors, Year, Journal
Published (yes/no)
Research design (e.g., experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, etc.), Randomized to condition (yes/no)
Participant information (sample size, gender, age, sexual orientation, type of sample—college students, community, inpatient, etc.)
Measures used
Effect size
Summary of main findings

Note: Steps 3 and 4 are the main evidence that you’ve done some preliminary work. You will write up your search method from Step 3. In addition, use an excel sheet with at least four columns:

Article (list first author’s last name and year of publication).
Sample information (e.g., 899 undergraduates).
Measure used to assess the primary construct you are interested in.
Other outcome measures.
Primary findings (for now, it’s okay to just try to put the main findings from the abstract into your own words).

A final word of encouragement—just give this your best shot, but we aren’t looking for perfection. We just want to see how you can manage to do with a task like this, which includes some ambiguity and may require asking for help and support and dealing with some perfectionistic strivings.

Step 5: Start writing

You will organize your literature review as you would an empirical article, with sections for the introduction, method, results, and discussion. I usually start with the method and results sections, then write the introduction, and finally write the discussion.

Introduction: Your introduction will look somewhat different from an introduction to an empirical article. For an empirical article, a big part of the introduction is the literature review. But for a literature review, the whole paper is focused on the literature review. So the introduction is a bit different (and usually is shorter). The introduction is organized like funnel. The story begins with broader themes and then logically narrows in on the purpose of the review.

Start by introducing the topic of interest and defining the main variables that you will study.
Explain and discuss why this topic is important. Why is this question timely? Why is a review of the literature necessary at this time?
Discuss theory that supports your hypotheses. For example, if your meta-analysis is focused on the relationship between sex addiction and depression, discuss theories that might explain this link. You aren’t reviewing the studies here (e.g., the average correlation across studies was .30, 15 of 20 studies found a positive correlation between sex addiction and depression, etc.). Reviewing the empirical literature happens in the results section. Here you are discussing theory (e.g., describe theoretical model that links depression to acting-out behavior in order to improve one’s mood).
Also here is the place to discuss theory that supports your moderator hypotheses. Again, you aren’t reviewing the actual studies here, but rather discussing the theory for why this hypothesis might be true.
If there have been previous reviews of the literature on your topic, it is a good idea to discuss these reviews, and also discuss how your paper will be new, different, and add something unique to the literature.
End the introduction with a paragraph describing your present review, including your main hypotheses.

Method

Inclusion Criteria: Write a paragraph describing the decision rules you used for including or excluding studies. What had to be true about an article for you to include it in the review? This should have been decided before you conducted your literature search in Step 3, so this should be easy to write.
Literature Search: Write a paragraph or two describing your literature search. Again, this is just basically describing what you did in Step 3 (e.g., what date did you conduct your search, which databases, what keywords, did you review the reference sections, did you inquire about file-drawer studies, etc.).
Effect Size: This is relevant for meta-analyses. What was the effect size that you used in your study? Cohen’s d? The correlation r? Those are the two main ones.
Missing Data: Again, this is mostly relevant for meta-analyses. What did you do if not all the studies had sufficient information to calculate the effect size?
Outcome of Search: There is some flexibility in organization here, and some people put this in the beginning of the results section. Sometimes I include a paragraph here stating how many articles were found in the search.
Coding: Again, this is mostly relevant for meta-analyses. What information did you write down from each study? This is basically what the important columns were from your chart.
Data Analysis: Again, this is mostly relevant for meta-analyses. You need to write a paragraph describing how the meta-analysis was conducted (I can help you with this). If you are conducting a narrative review of the literature, sometimes it is helpful to include a paragraph here describing why you chose not to conduct a meta-analysis).

Results

Description of studies: I start the results section with a paragraph (or two or three) describing the studies as a whole.

Participants: How many total participants across all studies? Gender? Race/Ethnicity? Sexual orientation (if applicable)? Religion (if applicable)? Type of setting (e.g., college student, adult, community, inpatient)?
Research Design: What types of research designs were used (e.g., correlational, experimental, quasi-experimental)? If experimental designs were used, what kinds of control or comparison conditions were used?
Measures: What types of measures were used to assess the constructs of interest?
Treatments: If this is a review of treatment studies, what types of treatments were used?

Overall effect size: Overall, what is the conclusion on the primary question of interest? If you are conducting a meta-analysis, here is where you would put the overall statistics.
Publication bias: This is mostly relevant for meta-analyses. You can run analyses to measure the extent of publication bias (i.e., do published studies have higher effect sizes than unpublished studies, is it likely that there are other unpublished studies ‘out there’ that you didn’t find).
Moderators: Are there variables that might influence the primary question of interest? For example, is the relationship between sex addiction and depression greater for men than women? Do drug treatments have higher effect sizes than talk therapies for treating depression? Etc.

Discussion

First have a paragraph or two summarizing the main findings of your review.
Discuss what the findings mean. Why are the findings important?
Discuss limitations to the present review (e.g., types of participants, small sample sizes, poor research designs, poor measures, etc.).
Discuss areas for future research.
If applicable, discuss implications for counseling.
Conclusion paragraph

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FAQ

Doctoral Preparation Track: Overview and Frequently Asked Questions

**updated 4/19/25

Greetings,

We want to make available an opportunity to participate in the Doctoral Preparation Track for the CACREP master’s programs. The following document gives some details of the program, and we also have a youtube channel with some additional information.

What is the purpose of the program?

This program seeks to provide clear and structured opportunities for all students to engage in a process that will help them prepare for the process of applying to a doctoral program. Our department is an excellent place to train, but it helps if you can secure formal mentoring structures to support your goals.

What experiences do I need in order to be competitive for a doctoral program? �

The fact that you are enrolled in one of CPS’s graduate programs means that you already have many of the academic credentials to be considered for a doctoral program. To realize that potential will require wise investment of your time and energy. Doctoral program admissions committees are looking to see evidence that you are developing your own line of research, including:

Signs that you have gotten involved in writing papers and presenting at conferences
Evidence that you have already invested time and energy developing expertise
A cover letter that shows a mature set of professional interests that align with the faculty member’s (whom you are applying to work with) areas of expertise
Corroboration from mentoring that you are a hard-worker and a good team player.

Three Research Goals

In addition to joining a team and securing mentoring, the program includes three goals that ought to put you in good position to be ready for in-person interviews for a doctoral program. We developed three goals designed to provide you with a flexible structure for seeking mentoring within the department. The three goals are as follows:

Learn to conduct a literature search (around 15 empirical articles) and create a summary table of findings (due with application).
Design a study and collect data (Spring 2026)
Submit one paper as a co-author to a journal (and professional conference; due by December 2026).

These goals are designed to promote a flexible and collaborative relationship with your mentor. You agree to join a team and contribute to the work of your mentors, and they agree to support you in developing a new project, as well as ensuring that you get to contribute to one or more publications.

Furthermore, the work you do to develop your own project ought to give you a major head start if you decide to complete your doctorate degree. As an example, the three doctoral programs in CPS require three projects to graduate, including a literature review and two empirical papers (your predissertation and Chapter 2 of the dissertation). So, you would have a head start on two of the three projects you would eventually need to graduate. So, by the end of this program, you should have a very good sense of what it would take to complete your doctorate. This experience will help you make a good decision about next steps in your career, and you will be surrounded by other people who can help navigate that process. In summary, students entering the doctoral preparation track will work on these three goals between January of 2026 and December of 2026.

How will I achieve these three goals?

The main strategy to help you achieve these three goals is to set in place relationships that have the purpose of providing you with support, accountability, and encouragement. Just like it is harder to work out alone, it is also very hard (if not impossible) to do strong research alone: Research happens in teams (and is much more fun that way!). So, your involvement will involve three weekly meetings that will help you make incremental steps towards developing your own research program:

Weekly one-hour seminar meeting

The purpose of this meeting is to provide accountability and encouragement through a team environment.

Students email a weekly update on their progress the prior week, goals and next steps, and any agenda items.
The first half of the meeting will focus on agenda items sent in by the group. These items may include professional development issues (e.g., talking about different types of programs, discussing the application process, or getting feedback on ideas for next steps on one’s project).
The second half of the meeting will involve semi-formal presentations by seminar participants or invited speakers from the department or community. Students will present their project, at whatever stage it is at, and get feedback from the instructor and peers.

Weekly one-hour meeting with a doctoral student mentor

The purpose of this meeting is to get step-by-step support in how to complete your three goals (i.e., a literature search, designing a study, and analyzing data).

This is a collaborative relationship. You will support the doctoral students' existing projects. The doctoral student has agreed to help get you at least one publication and professional presentation within your time in the program. You will work with him or her on their project in exchange for co-authorship. The plan for this project will be proposed in your application materials to the program.
In addition, the doctoral student will help provide step-by-step support in how to complete your three goals (i.e., a literature search, designing a study, and analyzing data).

Weekly meeting with the doctoral student’s research mentor.

The purpose of this meeting is to integrate you into a research team.

Most faculty meet with their doctoral students on a weekly basis. You will sit in on at least part of the faculty member’s individual meeting with your mentor or the lab’s team meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to help you become integrated into the team, which will give you a better sense of what it might be like to join a doctoral program.

Application

If you would like to apply to the program, please submit an application by November25, 2026

The application consists of the following parts:

Cover letter
Letter of support from the faculty member who has agreed to mentor you towards achieving your three goals (and any other goals you decide to set for yourself).
Completing the first goal (summary table and method section of a systematic literature review).
CV (please do not worry about this for evaluative reasons. We will use this to get a sense of your general experience. If you have not done anything since you applied to MHC, you may simply submit the CV you submitted in your GSU application).

FAQ for Applicants to the Program

Does the program work?

We have conducted pilot versions of the seminar for several years. We have decided to offer the opportunity more formally to a group of around 10 students per year. Here are examples of students who have successfully completed the program and what they are doing now:

Elise Choe (faculty member in the department)
Vanessa Placeres (faculty member at San Diego State)
Sarah Gazaway (intern at Clemson University)
Wendy Hsu (intern at Vanderbilt University)
Sebastian Love(doctoral student at UC Berkeley)

What are the selection criteria?

The purpose of the Doctoral Preparation Track Seminar is to provide mentorship to students who have a strong commitment to preparing for a doctoral program and are potentially interested in pursuing an academic career. Therefore, being able to articulate a vision and goal of applying to doctoral programs, as well as your research interests, is desired. Although not a requirement, having previous research experience and a demonstrated ability to manage multiple roles (i.e. student, research assistant) is also desired.

What is a systematic literature review?

We have some training resources that describe how to do the initial steps of a literature review posted here. We only want you to do the first few steps, including picking a potential topic, conducting a search on PsycInfo, narrowing your search to around 15 empirical articles, and creating a table that summarizes the sample, measures, procedure, and key findings of these articles. You may seek support from doctoral students or faculty on how to take these initial steps. We also have some training videos that illustrate how to conduct searches in psych info or google scholar (with a program called Publish or Perish). We also have a guide below with some additional notes on what we are looking for on this part of the application.

What is the most difficult step in the process?

The literature might sound a little daunting, but frankly, this is a bit of a commitment test. We are less worried about quality and more interested in effort. This will require an initial investment of time, not to mention the emotional energy to try to narrow on an area of interest. However, we have setup structures that work. The most challenging part is going to be securing mentoring. Once you join a group and have a mentor who commits to investing in your success, you will have the balance of challenge and support that will help you make steady progress. But this part could be tricky, especially within the context of COVID, where you may not have had as many chances to get to know professors and doctoral students outside of zoom calls. During the Q&A session, we will offer some suggestions on how to navigate this part of the process.

Is it possible to prepare for a doctoral program without joining this structure?

Of course! There are two main advantages to this program. One advantage has already happened. Everyone has easier access to information about the actions that will put people in a better position to apply to a doctoral program. The second is additional support. Sometimes joining a team of primarily doctoral students can feel a little intimidating. Some teams include members that are at various levels, including undergraduates. Often these teams have some projects that require everyone on the team. The DPT group provides a group of other masters students with similar long-term goals. Often strong friendships form, which provides greater motivation. Because parts of the process are uncertain, which can be scary, it often helps to go through the journey with others.

Why do I seek a faculty mentor and a doctoral mentor?

Great question! We’ve found that most people need different things. Faculty mentors have years of experience mentoring students in developing research programs. Experts help multiply your efforts so that you aren’t just spinning your wheels. Also, your faculty mentor likely has professional connections, so they can begin to involve you in that network. Your faculty mentor is also probably in the best position to help you get on at least one publication.

Have a doctoral mentor can help with navigating the practical aspects of the process and give you a different perspective. You will have lots of questions, and your doctoral mentor can help. Sometimes they will know the answer. Often, they can help you figure out next steps. When this works well, a nice partnership forms. You can help them with one of their projects. They can help you develop one of your projects. Research is a team sport, and it’s certainly more fun to do this kind of work when you also enjoy your relationships with others who share similar values and areas of curiosity.

FAQ for Faculty Mentor

What am I committing to?

Good question. We tried to keep the goals of the course to something that would naturally occur if someone volunteered for your research team. Thus, students do not have any required “master’s thesis.” There are three main requests:

We ask you to include the student in your team’s meeting structure, including a group meeting (if applicable) and at least part (e.g., 15-30 minutes) of your meeting with a doctoral student (ideal-but we have had some students just meet with the faculty member without a doctoral mentor).
We ask you to help the student take steps towards designing a study and collecting data.
We ask that you attempt to include the student on one publication or presentation as a minimal goal for enhancing their CV over the course of the next year.

What do I need to do in order to help the student apply?

The student will bring you a form that can be used for a letter of support. The form documents initial ideas on the three baseline goals for the program, as well as expectations regarding involvement with your team (e.g., meeting structure, anything else).

What should I do if I get a lot of emails asking me to be a faculty advisor?

If you are willing, we suggest offering office hours for anyone interested. In the future, we are planning a more formal meet-and-greet that might streamline the process, but for now, we are left to old fashioned methods. We apologize in advance for any increase in email traffic.

FAQ for Doctoral Level Mentors

What is required of the doctoral mentors?

The main requirement is a one-year commitment to provide weekly structure and support to your mentee—particularly in the fall and spring semesters, although it is optional to meet in the summer in order to maintain progress. You will need to get permission from your research mentor to engage in this commitment, because it involves a commitment of your time, as well as part of your meeting with your research mentor.

There are two primary advantages of engaging in this role. First, if you are planning on becoming a faculty member, mentoring research is a unique skill. This commitment will allow you to begin to develop your style while you are in graduate school, as opposed to trying to learn while you are making the transition into a tenure track position. Second, the program provides a way of locating partners for your research that are committed to preparing for a doctoral program. Indeed, oftentimes, students want research experience, but it is difficult to evaluate their level of commitment. They may be curious about what it’s like to do research, but have much less interest in working hard. Therefore, we have designed this program to require some upfront costs that ought to provide a steadier signal of commitment to a training process. Also, we have a formal course structure, which although pass/fail, provides additional structure to support commitments made for that semester.

What structures are available to support doctoral mentors?

We tend to have one or two meetings with doctoral mentors per semester to check-in on how things are going and to share ideas. We will be judicious with your time, but also want to provide a few avenues for you to connect with other doctoral students serving in a similar role.

What do I do if I am looking for a potential doctoral student to serve as my mentor?

Email our team: Giscard Petion, Sarah Gazaway, Iman Said, Regina Finan, Don Davis

How should I decide whether this is a good fit?

We do have a few pointers from prior experience. When you meet with potential mentees, evaluate fit, both in terms of interest and personality and working style. Here are some good questions to consider:

Is the student sufficiently interested in something that can be linked with your work?
Is there room to look at something at the intersection of your interests and theirs?
Does the student appear to have qualities that align with your working style?
Do you think you will communicate well with the student?
Does the student have a strong work ethic?
Is the student responsible and accountable for commitments?

In addition, before you get too far into the relationship, seek mentoring from your research advisor on their mentoring style and how to structure the relationship. For example, you may learn some helpful pointers on how to navigate conversations about designing projects that have sufficient overlap with one’s own interests.

What is our long-term vision?

We hope to eventually explore creative ways to provide funding to support master’s students’ work within the program. Currently, it would cost 5k to provide students a half-time GRA, but this would have additional value, because the university would offer tuition remission. Currently, departmental resources are scarce for funding master’s students, so it will take creativity and hard work to achieve this goal over the next few years.