One of the panelists found out about an Alzheimer's study going on at Johns Hopkins University and, because she was in the right place at the right time, she was able to get a job doing grunt work interviewing patients. It paid off because she discovered that she wanted to continue in health and psychology. The other advantage of taking time off between college and graduate school is that it provides an opportunity for you to assess if you really have the commitment for a rigorous graduate program. The application process for clinical psychology programs is intensely competitive. One of the clinical psychology programs described by a panelist receives roughly 400 applications a year, interviews about 60 students, admits 12 students into the graduate program and ends up with about 8 new students.
Panelists also recommend being extremely organized during the application process.
Create a filing system for your materials on the different programs. Always keep copies of everything. Get your applications out early, by mid-December. Panelists all agreed that the GRE scores are extremely important for admission to Clinical Psychology programs. Research oriented Ph.D. programs preferred the highest scores with minimums of about 600 for the quantitative, verbal and analytical scores.