Students can get a doctoral degree in clinical psychology at any institution accredited by the American Psychological Association, or APA. The APA does not rank or rate clinical psychology programs. Rather, doctoral programs apply for accreditation from the APA, which evaluates them on several criteria before either granting or denying accreditation. These criteria include the program's philosophy and curriculum, its resources, the cultural diversity of its student body and faculty, and student-faculty relations. The APA maintains an up-to-date list of accredited programs in clinical psychology on its website, with programs in nearly every state.
One way to find strong PhD programs in clinical psychology is to look at how program graduates performed on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology, which clinical psychologists must take before they can practice psychology. In 2006, the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards released the 17th edition of its ranking list "Psychology Licensing Exam Scores by Doctoral Program." The Social Psychology Network makes the statistical information in that report more accessible in its "Ranking of Clinical Psychology Doctoral Programs." Schools with top student scores on the EPPP included the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Rutgers University.
The National Research Council is a private, nonprofit entity that includes experts from faculty in a wide range of disciplines. It acts as an adviser to the government for policy decisions and also releases rankings of graduate programs in many fields. It last ranked clinical psychology doctoral programs using data from the 2005 to 2006 academic year, basing its assessments on factors such as faculty publications and grants, student completion rates, and funding and student body diversity. Highly ranked universities include Fordham University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Kent State University, Loyola University, Marquette University UC San Diego, Syracuse University and the University of Missouri.
"U.S. News & World Report" ranked clinical psychology doctoral programs in 2012. First on its list was the University of California at Los Angeles, followed by a four-way tie between University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin at Madison and Yale University. Rounding out the top 10 were Duke University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Kansas, the University of Minnesota and the University of Pennsylvania. Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Stony Brook University, and Northwestern University were among the 20 most highly ranked programs.