I Want a PhD in Clinical Psychology: Now What? The Ins and Outs of Applying to Graduate School

Ali B. Klein, B.A. is a second year graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, working with Dr. Norah Feeny. Before beginning graduate school, Ali worked as a research assistant at the VA Boston Healthcare System, National Center for PTSD under the supervision of Dr. Brian Marx on a large-scale study aimed at developing a longitudinal registry of 1,649 Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans. She currently works on a study aimed at prospectively identifying risk factors for PTSD in an emergency room setting and on an RCT examining the efficacy of a group intervention for Somali refugees lead by individuals in the Somali community. She is primarily interested in optimizing and personalizing interventions for PTSD as well as disseminating and implementing such treatments to benefit a greater number of individuals. 

Michelle J. Bovin, PhD, is staff psychologist at the Behavioral Science Division of the National Center for PTSD, and an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. Michelle received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Temple University in 2011, and completed a NIMH-funded T32 postdoctoral fellowship in 2013. Her interests include PTSD assessment and access to care. She is currently the PI of a VA HSR&D-funded project which will determine the optimal cutoff score for a PTSD diagnosis using the newly updated PTSD screen. She is also the assessment training and reliability coordinator for CSP 591, a 17-site study comparing the effectiveness of prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) among veterans. In addition, she is working with collaborators at the VA Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (CHOIR) and Texas A&M University to test a novel methodology for using healthcare encounters to predict suicide outcomes.