Major of Clinical Psychology

Hello, I am Clinical Psychologist Tuğba Yılmaz. I am working as a faculty member in the Psychology Department of İzmir Bakırçay University. Our Master’s program was established for the Clinical Psychology Division and opened as a Master's degree with thesis. Students were admitted for the first time in the Fall Semester of 2020-2021. 10 students have been admitted to our program and our student admissions will continue. Let's talk about who can come to our Master’s program: we accept Psychology Department graduates and Medical Faculty graduates. When the graduates of the Faculty of Medicine join our program, it may be necessary to take the scientific preparation course. The students who meet the requirements of our university can apply to the program. Those who enter the necessary exams and receive the highest scores are accepted to our Master’s program. Our program has been designed in accordance with international studies and the acknowledged clinical psychology education. We apply the Scientist Practitioner Model in our program. According to this model, our aim is to train clinical psychologists who will not only be able to conduct scientific studies but also implement them. In other words, these clinical psychologists will be able to carry out field work, follow the advisee, apply psychotherapy and evaluate them accordingly. That is why we give psychotherapy and pathology trainings. We also make students do psychotherapy applications. We supervise the psychotherapy application. In this sense, we provide individual and group supervision.
This is done to enrich the practitioner side of our students. There are also benefits of our program to enrich the scientist side. These consist of sharing our experiences with students and directing them towards research methods, statistics, designing, developing and implementing projects, obtaining ethical board permissions, obtaining application permissions, starting and finishing projects, and if necessary, receiving funds for projects. By doing this, we enrich the scientist side of the participants of our program. We aim to train scientists who are not only internationally knowledgeable, and able to follow foreign literature, but also able to follow national literature, and contribute to it.
We have a quota for international student admissions. However, we have not been able to use this quota yet, as we have only recently been able to admit students for the first time. We will also have international admissions. Apart from that, we are in the process of working on exchange programs so that our students can benefit from going abroad.
Our student admissions are done according to the regulations set by the Higher Education Institution and also based on the criteria set by the Izmir Bakırçay University Senate. What are these criteria? Actually, they are basically what all universities share. The Academic Postgraduate Education Exam (ALES) score must be at least 60 - 70 points. This can vary according to the decisions made by the senate. The academic grade point average (AGNO) is also looked at. People can apply to our Master’s program with their general weighted GPA of their undergraduate education. We do not have a language score requirement yet. For now, a language score is not required. We are planning to diversify the students of our Master’s program and also to open the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Program in the following term. We are in the process of fulfilling the requirements for this to happen. What can I say to those individuals who would like to be students of ours? First of all, I would recommend to study really hard during their undergraduate education. Remember that the academic GPA is very important. This score is vital to gain admission to our program. You should try to understand whether you are going to study the MA in Clinical Psychology as much as you can by doing your internship. Because Clinical Psychology is not a purely theoretical field it also has application areas too. Your time during your undergraduate degree is very valuable as it provides you with the opportunity to understand whether you are emotionally resilient enough or willing to carry out the practices. I recommend you to evaluate yourself well during this time. Apart from this, I can also see that there is a group that only thinks of Clinical Psychology as a field of application. There may be those who think that a clinical psychologist is a psychotherapist. This is not the case. Clinical psychologists are both a scientist and a practitioner. So, they can be psychotherapists. You should be aware of their scientist side too. You should also follow the Statistics, Research Methods courses offered at your university, the current literature, and the publications in the field of clinical psychology at a national level. It is also important to pay attention to what the field writings say and how they affect the practices. It is very important to take advantage of all this. These will both enrich your knowledge and put you in a more advantageous position when you begin your Master’s program.
I wish the best of luck to students who will join the Clinical Psychology Master's Program of Izmir Bakırçay University.