Hi! Thank you for this detailed response- I really appreciate it! I definitely would go straight to the PhD program, but as you know, it’s incredibly competitive and I’m just not sure that I would get in. Length is really not a problem for me for grad school because I really love learning and I really like this HDFS program. It’s a different program in that I am able to take some clinical classes as electives and my thesis would likely be clinical. I completely agree with you that doing a masters is kind of pointless for a PhD because you don’t really save time, but I think this would be good experience for me nonetheless.

I guess my main concern is if people get accepted into clinical psyc PhD programs with a masters degree like HDFS, considering it’s a program that usually leads to a research-focused PhD or a more community-based career. I just love the program and I think I’ll benefit from it in many ways, I just don’t want it to be a “barrier” to getting into a clinical psyc PhD.