IsThisThingOn

Hi all, First post here!. I tried to read over the guidelines and looked at couple posts but excuse me if this is not appropriate. I am an international (white) student and graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction in 2010. My GPA was around 3.55. Since graduating, I have been working in tech companies in the San Francisco, Bay Area as a software engineer I'm currently 28 years old (went to international prep schools which set me a couple years back). I am very interested in going back to grad school, doing a PhD in Cognitive Science. My desired focus is information processing and possibly retrieval. However, my biggest question / problem is that I have virtually no research experience in the area, this is something I missed out in college. I also wonder some of the Cs in my transcript are in the area I want to study. (No explanation other then personal irresponsibility). The age issue is also a problem; the earliest I can apply is next year which would put at 30 years old when I happen to start. In that sense, I am open to any suggestions, comments, concerns you guys have. Specifically, I'd appreciate some next step recommendations (how to get research experience?), school recommendations (the rankings are useful but I want to be realistic), and any other general feedback. Thanks a lot everyone, I'll be looking forward to all your answers.