Hi everyone!
Here's a snapshot of my background/experience:
Age: 27
Male
Graduated from Top 25 (if rankings matter) uni with a BA in Psych in 2015 (3.4 overall, 3.4 major) – bad senior year due to lots of personal issues
Volunteer/Research (varied and short): one semester of RA work for a biological neuroscience lab on smoking cessation (screening participants over phone, in-person, data entry, helping with project coordination), one semester of RA experience for a media studies lab (unrelated), one semester of teaching middle school students (unrelated).
Work: Rehab tech (9 mo), Case Manager (9 mo), library assistant (1 year), Educational Consulting (2.5 years), Product/user experience specialist (my current job)
As you can see, I'm not the most consistent person, but I'm just kind of average on paper. I've grown quite a bit over the years, learned a lot about myself through my experiences and choices I made. When I graduated, I thought I was going for my MSW and focused much more on social services. For awhile, I put off school because I couldn't make up my mind, but I now realize that my interests actually lie in research and exploring the diverse role of a psychologists (assessments, teaching/education). I'm using this time to study for the GREs and get high scores hopefully.
I'm mostly worried about my drop in senior year. I actually did quite well in all my prior years, my GPA has always averaged 3.7 and I've even achieved two semesters of psych courses loaded and got 4.0s and a good research paper out of it. However, my senior year was tough. I struggled a lot. That's when I found out that I have bipolar. It was a relief understanding what I was experiencing, but it's unfortunate my grades were impacted (I got a C+ in Qualitative research methods but got A in quant and stats before). This was my only C on my transcript. That, along with Bs, brought my GPA down to 2.9ish area...Yikes! I know. I'm also concerned that I don't have much substantial research experience, but I'm hoping they can look past it.
Any advice or thoughts? Does anyone have experience getting into MA/MS programs as the stepping stone for PhD?
Thanks – hope everyone is okay.