Hi everyone,

First time poster, long time reader.

I should finish my PhD in psychology this year, and am planning to apply for the masters of psychology (Clinical) next year at a few Queensland unis.

My question is, has anyone doing the clinical masters had any luck applying for recognition of prior learning for a thesis they previously did? I have heard that some have, but so far UQ are the only ones that said they have done it and will consider it for me as well; the other smaller unis I've spoken to said they won't do it.

If anyone has had any luck, can you please tell me about your experience: was it difficult to do? how clinically oriented was your previous thesis?...

Thanks for your time :-)

Anyone?

Yeah, it doesn’t appear to be a red hot topic does it haha

New posts need approval first, so it will only appear on the forum a few days after you posted it, so people will miss it unless they do like I do and scroll back through the forum and look for posts with no responses :)

Hi there, I've read your post but because it really is in a different area to mine, I haven't felt it appropriate to respond. However, given the lack of other responses, I hope you don't mind if I do-even if it isn't directly in your area.

I would think it would be pretty unlikely to get much credit for a research thesis in psych for a clinical Masters as they are fairly different qualifications and the clinical Masters (in Australia at least) is explicitly used to qualify a practitioner. I would think perhaps the only credit you might get is for specific research units or if the clinical included a research project, that might be part of the clinical masters suite of professional units/courses. I think this would be true of U Syd, ANU, Melb, UWA, Monash and most of the big 8. I'm surprised that UQ is different and I could be wrong.

I've just about finalised my own PhD in Education and have been told that I can use some of my qualifications at Masters level to gain advanced credit (of around a year) for a 2 year Masters in Counselling at Monash, but this is not a psychology qualification, this would be an additional qualification as a counsellor working within school and educational areas. And the advanced credit would be based on work experience and my previous Masters, not so much the PhD.

Psychology is a really fascinating and worthwhile discipline and, within Australia at least, clinical qualifications are rigorous and not terribly flexible with regard to entry points (possibly a good thing though, even if a bit disappointing at times). Good luck with it all. Hope some further responses or other information comes to light.

oops something weird happened, sorry. Please see my other responses in your quote.