How to choose schools
The very best way to choose a clinical psychology school is not to choose a school. Instead, choose an advisor. The vast majority of programs are mentorship-based, and will want you to be geared toward working with a particular professor from the get-go. Therefore, if you choose a school based primarily on other factors, you may end up choosing an advisor who is a bit of a stretch - not the best fit for your interests. And when someone is a great fit for your interests, chances are that you're a great fit for theirs and are much more likely to be accepted.
Decide what you're most interested in studying. Find a topic, or a few very related topics, that you could stand studying, day-in, day-out for... well, the rest of your life, basically. Then, search these topics on a psychology-related search engine for journal articles, such as PubMed or PsycInfo. If you don't have access to full-text articles on either of these sites, Google Scholar is a great choice as well. Find a plethora of articles related to the topic you'd like to study, and see which names keep showing up.
Then, with these names in hand, start googling them! Find out where these people work. This isn't always as straightforward as you might think. Sometimes people have switched schools and websites haven't been updated, so you'll eventually want to e-mail these people and find out. Also, often, you may find that the people you're most interested in are in psychiatry departments - and unless you feel like going to medical school (it costs more money and involves more blood & guts), you might want to steer clear of these. This is much more likely if your interests lie in severe mental illnesses.
After this process, you should have a list of schools, ready-made for you. Become very familiar with the psychology websites of these schools, as you'll be seeing them an awful lot over the coming months.
A good time to start choosing schools is in the spring or summer of the year you wish to apply.
