Chrismarie,
I am not sure why she would be "too young" to apply to clinical Ph.D.
programs. I began my clinical Ph.D. training in 1990 at the age of 22,
and was never told that my age was a problem. If your student does
decide to take a year off, what she does probably depends on what type
of program she wants to apply to. Very often the top-ranked clinical
programs are highly ranked because of the research they are doing. In
this case, a year doing research would help her. However, if she is
most interested in psychotherapy, then she would probably not be
applying to a top-ranked institution. In this case, the research
experience would probably be helpful, but clinical experience would not
hurt, either. Even the more psychotherapy-oriented places seem to give
research experience more value than clinical experience.
If your student wants to apply to graduate school this year, though, I
would say to give it a try! I know that when I applied in 1989 there
were generally 150-300 applicants for programs with 3-8 admissions a
year, though, so she should have a large list of schools to apply to (I
would recommend at least 15).
-Luke Dalfiume
Eureka College
Eureka, IL
