Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology Admission Requirements

Requirements for All Students

1. Application Deadline: December 15
2. Bachelor's Degree from regionally accredited institution.
3. GPA 3.0 minimum.
4. Prerequisites. Six courses. See list below.
5. GRE General Test.
6. Official Transcripts from every individual school that ever granted you college credit - even just one credit, and even if it appears as transfer credit on your bachelor's or master's transcripts.
   • E-transcripts preferred. Must be addressed to nancy.crane@wheaton.edu.
   • Mail hard copies to Nancy Crane, Graduate Admissions, 501 College Av., Wheaton, IL 60187.
7. Application Form.
8. Three Recommendations, which are online forms.
   • Academic.
   • Pastoral (or other Christian leader).
   • Professional.
     • Option if you do not have an employer: Someone with whom you have had a supervisor-employee relationship, e.g., in a ministry, internship, or missions-trip context.
   • Letters accepted as supplements to the online forms.
9. Two Essays. Essay questions are in application.
10. Resume (chronological) or Curriculum Vitae (CV).
11. Research Paper.
    • Ten pages minimum.
    • Follows APA Style.
    • Sole authorship; If a group project, indicate the part that you wrote.
12. Signed Statement of Faith, Community Covenant, and Statement of Veracity.
13. Personal Interview.
14. Application Processing Fee US $50, non-refundable.

Prerequisites

Six courses, three semester hours each. All prerequisites must be taken from a psychology department, not, e.g., an education or sociology department. The courses can have different names at other schools.

1. General Psychology
2. Abnormal Psychology
3. Personality Psychology
4. Research Methods in Psychology or Statistics for Psychology
5. Physiological Psychology
   • Can be taken as tutorial during summer before or after first year of PsyD program.
6. One Course from the following.
   • Cognition
   • Developmental Psychology
   • Learning
   • Sensation/Perception
   • Social Psychology

Additional Requirements for International Students

• GRE
• TOEFL or IELTS and the minimum scores indicated below 
  •  TOEFL iBT: 100 with at least 20 in each category
  •  IELTS: 7.0 
• Transcript evaluation report with each official or verified transcript.
• Please review  Graduate International Admissions for full information.

Transfer Credit Policy

Students may be admitted to the Wheaton College doctoral program in clinical psychology with prior graduate work. A maximum of 30 semester hours of transfer credit, which can include a maximum of 14 elective credits, may be applied to the Psy.D. Program - including any transfer credit applied to M.A. degrees in Clinical Psychology or Theological Studies.

The only exceptions to this policy are the terminal M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling or M.A in Marriage & Family Therapy from Wheaton College Graduate School, in which case 36 semester hours may be transferred.

Courses with grades lower than B cannot be transferred. Wheaton uses semester credit hours. A quarter hour from other institutions is equivalent to .67 of a semester hour.

Where and how the credit is to be specifically applied in transfer will need to be petitioned and negotiated after matriculation. The sole exception to this will be that transfer credits that may affect first semester course enrollment will be negotiated by correspondence with the chair of the Admissions and Academic Requirements Committee before or during orientation.

No transfer of credit will be granted for previous graduate-practicum or field-placement courses. Equivalencies for credit from the Wheaton M.A.s are cited on the "Approved Credit Transfers from Wheaton M.A." listing. All transfer of credit requests should be submitted by October 1 of each year.

Program data indicate that the vast majority of students entering the program with transfer credits complete the Wheaton College Psy.D. program in essentially the same time as students entering the program with a bachelor's degree only.