Requirements for All Applicants

The Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology program is a full-time, five-year, residential program that operates on a cohort model, and starts in fall only. The Psy.D. program considers individual and group interviews and the qualifications and qualities of the entire applicant pool when making final admissions decisions. Applications are reviewed holistically.

1. Application Deadline: December 15.
   • NOTE: All application materials, including the GRE, must be submitted by the deadline to be considered for an interview.
2. Interview, by invitation only: Interview Day in early February. Exact date to be determined.
3. Bachelor's Degree from a regionally accredited institution.
4. GPA 3.0 minimum.
5. GRE General Test.
   • Competitive quantitative score: 150. Competitive composite score (Verbal plus Quantitative): 300.
   • Test scores must be fewer than five years old.
   • For registration information and test-center locations, go to https://www.ets.org/gre. Wheaton College Institution Code: 1905.
   • There is a GRE At Home option.
6. Official transcripts from all colleges where a degree was earned or is currently being earned
   • Applicants will be required to provide official transcripts from each institution where they have received or will receive a degree prior to enrollment in Wheaton College Graduate School. Applicants who have earned more than 25% of their degree from institutions outside of their degree conferring school will be required to supply official transcripts for those credits in the event they are not explicitly listed on their original transcript with course names and grades. Graduate Admissions will reserve the right to request additional transcripts as may be needed to meet departmental requirements or demonstrate proof of program-specific prerequisites.
   • E-transcripts preferred. Must be addressed to nancy.crane@wheaton.edu.
   • Mail hard copies to Graduate Admissions, Attn: Nancy Crane, 501 College Ave., Wheaton, IL 60187.
7. Application Form. Includes affirmations of the Statement of Faith and Community Covenant.
8. Three Recommendations, which are online forms.
   • Academic. A professor from whom you have taken a class preferred. Alternatives: a college-level instructor from whom you have not taken a class or an acquaintance with a doctorate.
   • Pastoral. Can be a Christian leader other than a pastor.
   • Professional: Can be someone with whom you have had a supervisor-employee relationship, e.g., in a ministry, internship, or other non-paid context.
   • Letters accepted as supplements to the forms.
   • Recommendations from relatives not accepted.
   • For help choosing recommenders, preview the questions in the forms at the bottom of this page.
9. Two Essays.
   • Personal Statement.
   • Professional Statement.
10. Resumé (chronological) or Curriculum Vitae (CV).
11. Sample Research Paper.
    • Ten pages minimum. APA Style.
    • Sole authorship. Sample from a group project must be from a published article.
12. Application Fee. USD $50, non-refundable.

NOTE: Applicants may request in the application form to be considered for both the Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs. The faculty will determine which program is the better fit for the applicant, and if an interview invitation is extended, it will only be for the recommended program.

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. Students can apply before completing all six prerequisites, but all of the courses should be done before matriculation.

1. General Psychology
2. Abnormal Psychology
3. Personality Psychology
4. Research Methods in Psychology or Statistics for Psychology
5. Physiological Psychology
   • Can be taken remotely as a Wheaton summer tutorial.
6. One Course from the following:
   • Cognition
   • Developmental Psychology
   • Learning
   • Sensation/Perception
   • Social Psychology

Additional Requirements for International Students

International students, and permanent residents of the US whose native language is not English, are required to take either the TOEFL iBT Test,  IELTS Academic Test, or Duolingo English test with the minimal scores indicated below:

TOEFL iBT Test: 100 with at least 20 in each category

IELTS Academic Test: 7.0 with at least 6.5 in each category

Duolingo English Test: 120

Applicants who wish to waive their English proficiency test, please refer to the English proficiency page for details.

An International Transcript Verification Report is needed for students who completed degrees outside of the United States.

Please review Graduate International Admissions for full information.

Transfer Credit Policy

Students may be admitted to the Wheaton College Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology with prior graduate work. A maximum of thirty semester hours of transfer credit, which can include a maximum of fourteen elective hours, may be applied to the Psy.D. Program, including any credit that was applied to completed M.A. degrees in clinical psychology or theological studies.

• No transfer of credit will be granted for previous graduate-practicum or field-placement courses. All transfer-credit requests should be submitted by October 1 of each year.
• Where and how the transfer credit is to be specifically applied 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.
• 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.

Time-to-Completion. 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.