This article offers a brief review of the necessary steps involved in becoming a professional psychologist in the United States of America. We describe the training and general models upon which doctoral degree programs are based and describe doctoral programs that are typical of those accredited by the American Psychological Association. These models include the scientist practitioner and practitioner models. We also describe a new professional model, the clinical-scientist, which has been promoted as a response to a presumed lack of scientific rigor in many doctoral programs and supported not by the American Psychological Association, but the Association of Clinical Psychological Science. Some examples of universities and their forms of admission are discussed as well.