Clinical psychology is a young science. Despite immense growth over 100+ years, human suffering from mental health conditions remains extensive, and core scientific issues in our field continue to be the subject of ongoing debate. Clinical practice depends on the growth of our research base for elucidating etiology, systematic improvements in provision of mental health care, improvements in public health, and credibility with clients and the larger public. Clinical psychology training programs must afford students opportunities to specialize and develop expertise in their chosen research domain. Such opportunities will help students develop into independent scientists, clinicians, and/or administrators who produce knowledge and may translate it to improve clinical care. To meet this aim, we propose that clinical psychology training standards accommodate increased scientific and research training by reducing generalist requirements and increasing curricular flexibility for students. These changes are not necessarily proposed for all clinical psychology training programs, but for those that are keen to train students to develop and apply scientific knowledge to understand, assess, and ameliorate mental illness. Our proposed changes would allow accredited clinical psychology programs additional latitude to train their students in clinical research; make high-quality mental health care available to more people at lower cost; allow clinical psychologists more opportunities to work at the level of the clinic, system, policy, or laboratory; and thereby accelerate scientific discovery and translation to understand and reduce mental health burdens in our society.