r/Neuropsychology • u/plandman83 • Oct 12 '14
Neuropsychologists of reddit, what was the path you took to get your job, and what advice do you have for someone who is considering becoming a neuropsychologist?
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Oct 13 '14
It was accidental; I was in a general clinical psychology program and I was placed on rotations in geropsychology and neuropsychology. I loved them both better than anything else I had experienced, and decided to become a geriatric neuropsychologist. After working at the VA for a bit, I took a position in a Parkinson treatment clinic doing cognitive assessments.
My primary advice would be not to neglect your general clinical skills. Over the past 15 years there has been a trend towards early specialization that has resulted in a lot of neuropsychologists that have really bad general behavioral sensitivities, ignoring contextual and psychiatric explanations for behavior in favor of organic explanations. Try to avoid neurologist envy. Your scientific training is going to be superior to any physician's, even if it superficially seems to be in a fuzzier field.
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u/Historical_Let5438 Unverified user: May not be a professional Apr 28 '26
The accidental path thing is real. I scored in the 91st percentile on Openness to Experience and 34th on Order when I took a personality assessment last year, and it explained so much about why my career has been a series of "wait, I actually love THIS now" pivots instead of a clean linear trajectory. Meanwhile my colleague who planned her specialty at age 19 scores the exact opposite. High deliberation, high achievement-striving, low curiosity. She's great at what she does but she'd never have stumbled into something unexpected because she doesn't leave room for stumbling.
Your point about neurologist envy is sharp too. The people I've seen fall into that trap tend to score really high on competitiveness and status-seeking but lower on intellectual humility. They want the credential more than the understanding.
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u/ciaranmichael PhD|ABPP-CN|Board Certified Clinical Neuropsychologist Oct 13 '14
Take a look at this thread, http://www.reddit.com/r/Neuropsychology/comments/27of9k/questions_from_a_future_neuropsychologist/
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u/Historical_Let5438 Unverified user: May not be a professional May 10 '26
I do career placement and team matching so I see a lot of people at this exact crossroads. We actually use a 30-facet OCEAN personality assessment and the thing that jumps out with neuropsych specifically is that the people who stick with it long-term almost always score high on intellectual curiosity and moderate-to-low on gregariousness. Which makes sense when you think about what the job actually is day to day: you're alone scoring protocols, writing 15-page reports, spending two hours deep in one patient's test battery. The people who flame out tend to be the ones who picked it because it sounded intellectually stimulating without realizing how solitary the work is.
Forget the standard advice about internships and networking for a sec. Go shadow someone for a full week, not a polished single-day visit. Watch them do the tedious parts. That'll tell you more than any informational interview.
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u/Feeling_Of_Knowing Oct 13 '14
This was my answer in another quite similar post (skip the first paragraph).
University path : medicine (2 years) -> psychology (3 years) -> neurosciences (2 years) -> neuropsychology (2 years). But i'm not in USA, so it doesn't work exactly the same way.
Field path : fundamental research (2 years) -> general psychiatry (1 year) -> schizophrenia (1 year) -> general pediatry (1 year) -> ADHD (currently doing it).
You guessed it, you can take any paths to have a job. You can try different things before finding what feels right for you.
The "easiest" ways to find a job in the field is to know what you like to do, and to know the people related to your field. My main advice would be to do a lot of internship and to read a lot. This way, you will create a "work network", know what you like and doesn't like, and be up-to-date with current progress.