Steps to become a Clinical Psychologist?

1) To answer your first question: the PhD doctoral track emphasizes both research and practice (e.g., working as a therapist), whereas a Psy.D mainly focuses on practice with a tad of research. Both allow you to conduct therapy and run a private practice, but a PhD is more advantageous should you ever wish to do research and teach. Also, many PhD programs cover tuition costs and give a modest stipend for living expenses. But most PsyD programs don't provide funding--you must pay your own tuition and cover your own living expenses.

2) What do you need to do to become a clinical psychologist?

First, let me clarify, you need to go to medical school to become a psychiatrist, not a clinical psychologist. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in treating mental disorders and prescribes medication. They are also trained to do therapy, but, most often, social workers and psychologists do the therapy part.

To become a clinical psychologist you must get a PhD or a PsyD in clinical psychology. Getting admitted to an accredited clinical psychology doctoral program is statistically more difficult than getting into medical school or law school. To do it, you'll need to get really good grades as an undergrad--majoring in psychology and some background in math, statistics, and the natural sciences will give you a slight advantage. You'll also need to score very high on your GRE--which is like the SAT. The average cumilative GPA for students admitted to doctoral psychology school is 3.8 and they generally score at the 80th percentile and above on the GRE.

You'll also need research experience (e.g., being a research assistant on a professor's study). Clinically related experience (an internship or volunteer experience at a facility) is helpful if you're looking at a PsyD or practicioner oriented PhD programs.

You'll need strong letters of recommendation from three professors--ideally from psychology ones. So you'll want to get to know at least one, but ideally three, professors better--the best way to do this is by being a research assistant for them. It's also helpful to complete a thesis.

Needless to say, you'll also need a strong personal statement outlining why you want to pursue a doctoral degree and what your career goals are.You'll also want to develop a specific research and/or practice interest and apply to school based off of that--a general statement of wishing to help people or study psychology does not demonstrate a strong interest the way saying "I hope to study the etiology of depression and it's commorbidity with anxiety disorders" or "I hope to study CBT for depression and want to apply these skills to practicing with adolescents" does.

Most likely, you will be at the top of your class if you're admitted to a clinical psychology school as it is very competititve. The average programs receive 200-300 applicants and admit like 12 or fewer people. The average program admits less than 10% of its applicants, who are all (or most of them) very qualified candidates.

Now should you want to be a psychiatrist, you'll need to go to medical school and you might do something like biology and psychology. And medical school will involve blood.

Getting a doctorate isn't necessary for clinical psychology. If you complete an undergrad degree in psychology, you only need certain training programs (a graduate degree, which takes 2-3 years). However, a Ph.D of Psy. D is an option. They take about 5 years to obtain after 4 years of undergrad.