Counseling Psychology Qualifying Process

General

Qualifying process completion enables students to 1) file for doctoral candidacy, and 2) begin to make arrangements for the dissertation proposal meeting, which thereby affects eligibility for internship. Counseling Psychology students are encouraged to plan ahead and to consult with their advisers in deciding the timing to the qualifying process. For example, a student who submits and passes the qualifying process and the necessary coursework during the 6th semester (spring of the 3rd year) will advance to candidacy that summer, or the following academic session/semester. Summer faculty schedules can hinder necessary approval steps. Therefore, a tight timeline leaves little time to have a dissertation proposal meeting occur before October 1st of that year, which is a program requirement for applying to internship.

Assignment of Adviser

Students should contact their faculty adviser no later than their 4th semester to begin the process. The CP program expects that a student’s program adviser will also be the student's qualifying process adviser. If for any reason a student wants a different qualifying process adviser, they should begin by notifying their program adviser. Students will then need to petition the CP faculty to be allowed a different adviser, whether this is another CP faculty member or a faculty member outside the program. Prior to petitioning the CP faculty, the student should have contacted the potential adviser and solicited their agreement to chair the qualifying process pending CP faculty approval. 

Document

The qualifying document is viewed as a trial run for the dissertation and will be evaluated as such. The “feasibility” of the study will be a factor in evaluating the document – i.e., the study should represent a contribution to the literature, be something that is practical to accomplish (i.e., a type of project that could reasonably be accomplished in a dissertation), and be well-designed.

The student must submit for examination a document comparable to a scholarly work in the field. The options are:

1. A document that includes an integrative review of the literature and a proposal for a study that addresses an important issue arising from the review of literature (““Traditional Qualifying Process Format”, below); or
2. An article describing a research study on which the student is the first author and which is written under the supervision of a UT-Austin Educational Psychology faculty member. The manuscript is expected to be submitted to a respectable journal.

Process for Students not Passing on Their First Try

Students who are not on probation will be given another opportunity to go through the qualifying process (either one semester or one year later). For students on probation, the CP faculty will consider whether another opportunity to go through the process, or termination (with an option to earn a Master's degree), or termination (with no option for a Master's degree) is the most appropriate recommendation to make to the GSC.

HDCLS Qualifying Process

Assignment of Adviser

No later than their 4th semester, students must contact the faculty member they want as their adviser. If that person agrees, the student must then report the choice to the HDCLS Chair by completing and turning in the "Verification of Selection of Qualifying Process Adviser" form (signed by the student and the proposed adviser). The qualifying process adviser will be approved by HDCLS faculty. Choosing an outside area/program qualifying process adviser is an option with the approval of the HDCLS Chair and the intended outside area/program adviser.  

Document

The student must submit for examination a high quality document that demonstrates the student’s understanding of the field, and their ability to integrate theories to generate a researchable question or set of questions, design a feasible study to answer those questions, and write in a clear, concise manner of publishable quality. The document can take one of two forms: (a) the traditional format (see ““Traditional Qualifying Process Format”, below), consisting of an integrative review of the literature to serve as rationale for a study and a detailed description of how one would undertake the study (note that quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and meta-analysis are all possible methodologies for the proposed study); (b) a completed study that adds to the integrative review of the literature and description of study methods an actual report of findings and final discussion. Because HDCLS also requires students to submit a pre-doctoral project that is in line with the second option (that is, a completed project with findings analyzed and discussed) before being advanced to candidacy, it is possible for students to fulfill both requirements, submitting as their QP document the same thing the student would submit as the pre-doc project, at the same time.

QM Qualifying Process

Assignment of Adviser

Students should discuss qualifying process adviser selection with the QM Chair as early as their 4th semester and no later than the end of their 5th semester. The qualifying process adviser is to be assigned by QM faculty. QM qualifying process students will submit to the QM Chair a ranked list of their top three QM faculty member choices for qualifying process adviser by the last class day of the semester before they begin the qualifying process. QM faculty will meet every semester to assign qualifying process advisers. Decisions will be based on student’s ranked list of preferred advisers, match of faculty’s expertise with the student’s interests, and faculty advising workload. Adviser assignments will be given to students before the start of the semester in which they are beginning the qualifying process.

Document

The student must submit for examination a document comparable to a scholarly work in the field. The research proposed in a QM student’s qualifying document should contribute to an existing line of inquiry in the field of quantitative methods. Assessment of the document will include consideration of the feasibility of the proposed study (see the “Traditional Qualifying Process Format”, below).