When the ‘Fairy Dust’ Aligns: Sydney’s Journey into Clinical Psychology
1 day ago
9 min read
Meet Sydney
Our latest guest on the Inside Clinical blog series features Sydney Parkinson, a 4th year clinical psychology PhD student at McMaster University and member of the Anxiety Treatment and Research Clinic. Sydney completed her undergraduate degree at MacEwan University, where she developed a strong foundation in anxiety and worry research under the mentorship of Dr. Alex Penney. Throughout our conversation, Sydney shared how intentional self-reflection, strategic research involvement, and a clear vision for her future career helped her successfully navigate the highly competitive clinical psychology admissions process. Sydney offered an honest and refreshing perspective on the realities of pursuing clinical psychology and her story serves as an encouraging reminder that there is no single path to success.
Discovering a Passion for Clinical Psychology
Sydney’s interest in clinical psychology began at an early age. Growing up, she recalls teachers frequently referring to her as the “schoolyard counselor” because she naturally gravitated toward listening to friends and supporting people around her. By high school, psychology felt like the obvious direction for her.
“I actually knew I really wanted to pursue psychology and clinical from a young age. I always had teachers in grade school call me a 'schoolyard counselor', because I just really enjoyed sitting with my friends and talking to them about their lives.”
What ultimately drew Sydney toward clinical psychology specifically was the combination of research and practice. Throughout our conversation, Sydney shared that she has always loved variety and wanted a career where she could wear a lot of different hats rather than doing the same thing every day. Clinical psychology offered her this ideal balance. Combining the opportunity to conduct research, work with clients, teach and supervise all within one career.
“I think clinical I've always really loved because it combines research and practice. I like something that allows me to wear a lot of different hats. I don't like something that is too rinse and repeat, I guess you could say. I really like having a lot of different things that I can be involved with.”
Coming from a Smaller University
Sydney completed her undergraduate degree at MacEwan University, a small undergrad focused institution without graduate psychology programs. With this background, she emphasized that it is not essential to come from large research-intensive universities to receive admission into clinical psychology programs.
Sydney credited much of her growth to the mentorship she received from her honours supervisor, Dr. Alex Penney. Through this mentorship, Sydney was able to gain support and breadth of experience within the area.
“I was able to get a lot of really amazing experience with my honours supervisor, Dr. Alex Penney, who was just incredible at supporting me with various opportunities. He knew very early on I wanted to get into clinical and he was very dedicated to guiding me and helping me get there.He gave me different research opportunities, which gave me breadth of experience and encouraged me to take different courses in different areas to help me understand if I was interested in that area or not.”
Finding the Right Research Fit
When discussing her transition into graduate studies at McMaster University and the Anxiety Treatment and Research Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare (ATRC), Sydney explained that research fit was a strong factor in her success.
Most of Sydney’s undergraduate work focused broadly on anxiety and worry, her interests aligned naturally with the ATRC’s work in anxiety disorders and CBT. However, she also acknowledged that she entered graduate school without extensive clinical experience or treatment outcome research experience.
How Her Interests Evolved in Graduate School
Although Sydney entered graduate school with a strong foundation in generalized anxiety and worry research, her interests continued to evolve once she began clinical training and working with clients. Over time, she became increasingly interested in trauma, PTSD,OCD, and grief. She explained that this evolution reflects the scientist-practitioner model many clinical psychology programs are built around: clinical experiences shape research questions, and research informs clinical work in return.
Sydney also spoke openly about the pressure many undergraduates feel to make every opportunity “strategic” for graduate school applications. Once accepted into her program she finally felt safe and secure enough to pursue additional projects simply because they genuinely interested her.
“I think now being in a program, I have had the safety of being in a place where now I can also pursue doing things that pique my interest, which was very welcomed because it's tough always having to think about things fully strategically in your undergrad.”
Current Research
Sydney’s dissertation focuses broadly speaking on long-term outcomes following cognitive behavioural therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. One of her major projects examines whether clients maintain their treatment gains up to two years after completing CBT. CBT is already known to be effective for generalized anxiety disorder, however Sydney wanted to take this research one step further and explore whether individual improvement lasts over time in more naturalistic settings.
Sydney is also involved in projects examining the following:
Why some clients feel therapy did not help enough
Factors contributing to treatment dropout
Secondary long term treatment outcomes
Projects involving the DART program
Sydney shared that one of the biggest advantages she had when beginning her research and dissertation was doing so in an area where she already had a strong foundation. This allowed her to feel comfortable stepping directly into her dissertation work without needing to first build an entirely new knowledge base. Given how demanding and flexible dissertation work can be, Sydney felt that already having a foundational understanding of the literature, theories, and research methods within her area helped her maintain momentum and avoid feeling too overwhelmed.
“I actually found it a huge advantage to be able to start my dissertation on something that I was somewhat familiar with (i.e., generalized anxiety disorder) because it allowed me to kind of hit the ground running a little bit more instead of having to build the foundation in an area that was entirely new to me before beginning to build my PhD program of research.”
Apply Broadly, but Thoughtfully
Sydney recommended applying broadly geographically if possible, while still maintaining some consistency in research interests, particularly within individual applications. She explained that applying across many cities or provinces exposes you to different supervisors, opportunities and life experiences while also emphasizing that applying to supervisors across completely unrelated fields may unintentionally signal uncertainty about your research interests/direction.
“Some of the advice that I got early on was that if you list a potential supervisor in one area and a second supervisor, or potentially a third as well, in completely different areas, while it is entirely reasonable to be interested in multiple different areas, you also don’t want to inadvertently portray indirection or uncertainty in your area of interest.”
The “Hot Topic” of Emailing Professors
When asked whether students should email supervisors a year before applying or closer to deadlines, Sydney admitted this is one of the more debated topics in clinical psychology applications. Her personal recommendation was to email professors closer to application season, preferably around late August or early September for December deadlines. Her reasoning for this was that professors might not know yet whether they are accepting students a year in advance, faculty are often less available and more difficult to reach during the summer months and that outreach may be less likely to get lost in inboxes closer to the academic year. However, Sydney stressed the importance of reading program websites carefully prior to sending any emails. Some programs specifically discourage pre-application contact and state that they will not get back to you.
“I think my logic was around late August to early September everyone's getting back into the groove of school, work, et cetera. Combined with the fact that maybe there's a better understanding within that department of who is going to get students or a slot for students.”
“So always read the websites because it will help you tailor any outreach that you do so that you seem informed and have done your research instead of it looking like you hit copy and paste on the same email that you're sending to multiple people. It is reasonable to have a template, but always personalize it. Always check, double, triple check the template that you are sending is to the right person with the right name.”
Save Your Course Outlines
One surprisingly passionate recommendation Sydney gave was to keep every psychology course outline beginning in undergrad. She explained that students are required to demonstrate coursework across five specific core content domains, and therefore students in psychology graduate programs often need to determine whether they meet criteria. Having access to old syllabi and course descriptions becomes extremely helpful years later when verifying whether courses fulfill those requirements.
Research Experience vs Clinical Experience
When discussing whether research or clinical experience matters more when applying to graduate school, Sydney explained that the answer depends heavily on the program. At research-intensive programs such as McMaster, demonstrating strong research skills and commitment to research is essential. Since clinical psychology PhD programs still require students to complete all traditional PhD research responsibilities alongside clinical training, programs need to be confident that applicants can succeed in research environments.
“I think that demonstrating your research experience is really, really important because the reality of doing a PhD is you have to do all of the requirements of any other PhD plus the clinical training. The PhD part of your studies is research and so the program needs to be confident that they can get you through that.”
At the same time, she acknowledged that clinically related experiences remain valuable for demonstrating interpersonal skills and client-facing potential. Overall, both research and clinical experience (and potential) matter, but the weighting each institution, and/or potential supervisor, places on these respective areas may differ slightly.
The Weighted Matrix Strategy
One of the most unique strategies Sydney shared was her “weighted matrix” system for evaluating graduate schools. Sydney explained that when applying to graduate school, there are many many things to evaluate, often making it overwhelming for students to compare institutions/supervisors. To help her combat these overwhelming feelings of uncertainty she created a detailed excel spreadsheet listing every university she planned to apply to and ranked each school across categories such as:
Supervisor fit
Geographic location
Funding packages
Tuition costs
Lifestyle considerations
Each category received a weighted importance score based on her personal priorities. She emphasized that students wishing to use a similar method should identify and weight categories according to their personal values and circumstances. The spreadsheet then automatically ranked programs according to her values.
Sydney emphasized that students should not feel guilty for considering personal life factors when choosing graduate programs. Moving across the country, financial stress, family proximity, and quality of life are all legitimate factors that deserve consideration.
What Made Her Stand Out?
When reflecting on what helped her succeed as an applicant, Sydney pointed to several factors:
strong research fit with her supervisors,
genuine interpersonal connection during interviews,
and deep self-reflection about what she truly wanted from her future career.
Rather than simply saying she wanted to "get into clinical psychology,” she could clearly articulate:
why she wanted this path,
what kind of psychologist she hoped to become,
and how research and clinical work would fit into her long-term goals.
Taking the Extra Year
Sydney emphasized that it is completely okay to take additional time during undergraduate studies if you do not feel ready to apply to clinical psychology programs after four years. In her own journey, she intentionally completed her undergraduate degree over five years because she knew she needed more time to strengthen her GPA, gain additional research experience, and fully prepare for the demanding application process. Sydney highlighted that becoming a competitive applicant takes time, especially in a field as research-intensive as clinical psychology. She encouraged students not to compare themselves to others and instead focus on whether they personally feel prepared, reminding applicants that taking extra time can only benefit you.
“The reality is all of the things you need to do to be a competitive applicant take time. Research is very labour intensive and a very long haul. To be able to demonstrate experience across the research process and breadth of experiences, a lot of that just takes time to gain.”
Doubting Yourself is Normal
One of the most honest moments of the conversation came when she was asked whether she ever doubted her competitiveness. Her answer was an immediate yes. She explained that the self doubt never disappears, even now as she prepares to apply to residency. Question if she has done enough, if she has gained enough clinical hours, if possible residency sites are going to like her. Despite these feelings of uncertainty, looking back Sydney reflected on how humility can be really powerful and the importance of not putting yourself down.
What stood out most, however, was Sydney’s perspective that everything ultimately works out the way it is supposed to. Reflecting on interviews where she felt less connected to faculty members or moments where things did not unfold as she had hoped, and that this is okay. She acknowledged how difficult that mindset can be in the moment, especially when students have invested years of hard work into one goal, but emphasized that rejection does not diminish someone’s worth or potential.
“Reminding yourself it's okay that you're not gonna be the perfect fit for every supervisor. From a research perspective, you might not feel the best fit, or you might get into an interview with a potential supervisor or program, and decide that your styles don't gel. Undoubtedly this is difficult, but it is okay to not be everyone's cup of tea.”
Final Advice for Future Applicants
To close off the interview, Sydney offered a final message for students preparing to apply for clinical psychology programs:
“Be confident in what you have to offer. Be confident in the experiences that you've sought out, but be humble about the things that you still have to learn.”
