thestilltale

I need advice about how I should proceed in my grad school search. My target program was the Counseling Psychology program at the University of Florida. I graduated with my BA of Psych in 2015 with a 3.56 GPA. My GRE scores aren't great: 163 in Verbal, 143 Quant, and 4.5 Writing. My real problem though is that while I accrued a lot of practical experience, my undergrad program included very little emphasis in doing research and publishing. I couldn't even conceive of anything to put on a CV that would recommend me as a competent researcher (other than the mandatory research methods class). I certainly have never published anything. On top of that, I've been out of school for 3 years- I have plenty of supervisors in the mental health field who know me and my work ethic, but there's no earthly way my professors can give me a quality letter of recommendation. I'd be shocked if they remembered me at all. I've thought about going back to school as a non-degree seeking student to get that research experience and those letters, but I'm poor. That would be an immense investment for a course of action I am uncertain will really get the job done. I've called various offices at UF to get some advice, but nobody wants to talk to me. They all direct me to some other office and the process starts over. (Admissions doesn't handle graduate students, the departments do- call the program's advising office. The advising office doesn't know how to help me with that, but I should try career services. Career services only deals with currently enrolled students, directs me back to the department. ad infinitum.) I've thought about reaching out to individual professors, but I don't want to make a bad first impression by being the clueless girl that didn't do anything in undergrad to prepare herself for graduate school. Are all universities like this when it comes to helping prospective grad students? This cagey, unhelpful attitude is really making me re-think applying to UF at all. TL;DR: I'm a good-to average student who's got tons of practical experience, but without research experience or strong recommendation letters and I've been out of school for 3 years. What do I do to make myself a more appealing applicant? Thanks for any advice.