Read the EDI goals for admissions to the Graduate Programs. As part of that initiative, we have changed our admissions procedures for the clinical psychology doctoral program. These changes apply to applications for the 2023-24 academic year. The two primary changes involve
- implementation of a BIPOC pool of applicants and
- revision of the scoring grid for admissions.
BIPOC Pool
On February 17, 2022, School Council passed a motion allowing for the creation of a BIPOC pool in both the French and English streams of our clinical psychology program (click here to see document). How will this work? Candidates for admission will have the option to self-declare BIPOC status when applying to the clinical psychology program. The School adopted the same definition of BIPOC as that used by Statistics Canada, which includes people from the following backgrounds: Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, South Asian, Chinese, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese and other racialized people. The self-declaration question, which asks whether the applicant considers themself BIPOC or not (i.e., a yes/no question) is optional. Applicants who leave the question blank will still be considered for admission. In summary, applicants who check yes to this question will be considered as part of the BIPOC pool and those who check no or who leave the question blank will be considered as part of the general admission process.
When the Admissions Committee meets to determine the offers to students for entry into our clinical psychology program, they will first determine the offers to be made to applicants who self-declared BIPOC status. Up to 67% of our initial offers in each language stream (English and French) will be filled by this pool of applicants. We chose to make offers to this percentage of candidates among our BIPOC pool to address the lack of representation in the field of clinical psychology and to address a history of systemic bias in admissions to clinical psychology programs across Canada. After the offers in the BIPOC pools in each clinical stream (French and English) are decided, the remaining offers for each language stream will be determined.
Admissions Scoring Grid
We have also revised our admissions scoring grid to reflect two goals: to make the scoring grid more equitable and to make the scoring grid more reflective of the skills/abilities important for our current clinical psychology doctoral program.