what do you have to do to become a psychologist?

Answer 1

First, you have 4 years of undergraduate college. After graduation, you should probably get some real experience before heading onto grad school. It will prepare you in more ways than one. While you are working, begin researching graduate schools. Look at everything from the program, to costs, to the internship placement rate. Then apply to a program, call for questions and go on an interview.
When you are accepted, your first year will consist of only classes. Many schools suggest that you only focus on education and not work part-time (although I worked full-time and it was a nightmare). You will take the basic courses your first year. Before you head to your second year, consider getting your masters. Some grad schools allow you to get a terminal master's degree. Do it. Some clinical internships will only consider you if you have a master's. The second year, you will have a lighter load of classes, but will take your first practicum. This is basically a 9 month internship doing either therapy or testing. Third year, you will take a second practicum and begin studying for your comprehensive exam and writing a dissertation proposal. In the spring/summer of your third year, you will take your comprehensive exam (or comps) to assess and apply everything you learned in the past 3 years. If you pass, during your fourth year, you will start looking for clinical internships. This is a nationwide search and highly competitive. 400 students will not have an internship this year. Basically, you will apply to about 15 sites, get interviews at about 6 or 7 and then have to find the money to fly all over the country to go on interviews. You interview from November to February. End of February, on a Friday, you find out if you got an internship. You won't know where until the following Monday. If you did not place, that Monday, appic and the training directors list all the internship sites that have extra slots and you have mere minutes to prepare your application and e-mail it to the training directors (it goes very quickly). This year, over 700 students did not match and only 300 slots remained. You then have to wait and wait and wait to see if any training directors call you for an interview (hopefully, you will never get to this point).
If you get an internship, you then have to prepare for moving (if necessary). Your fifth year, you will be at an internship for 12 months, 40 hours a week, while also completing your dissertation. After you complete this internship AND your dissertation, you will graduate with a PsyD or PhD. You then have 2 choices: you can try to find a place that will let you work as an unlicensed psychologist while providing supervision or you can get a postdoc. After practicing for awhile under a licensed psychologist, you can then apply to take your licensure exam (the EPPP). The number of hours of experience required depends on your state. If you pass your EPPP, you are then technically a clinical psychologist.

Answer 2

You need to have an undergrad psychology degree - what is recommended is that you do the honours and write your honours thesis (this increases your chance to get into grad school) when you do get accepted into grad school, you have to work toward you PhD which could take from 3- 10 years depending on how long you take to complete your thesis. You have to also do supervised internship hours and complete the requirements within the program you choose. When all that is over you have additional exams to complete in order to ensure your competency and be approved by the APA.

It is a long process, but that is the gist of it.

Answer 3

go to school