Help With Choosing Schools, How Competitive am I, General Advice

[reipls]

I am a recent graduate from Rutgers University - New Brunswick who majored in Cognitive Science (neuroscience track) and minored in philosophy. I'm looking to apply to Cognitive Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience/Behavioral Neuroscience Ph.D. programs this upcoming cycle. My overall GPA is a 3.52 (3.76 major GPA, idk if I should include this in my CV as well). I've been doing research at a lab at my undergraduate institution for about a year now, and will hopefully continue doing so full-time until August 2020. I can probably get two LORs from my lab, and another from a past professor. I unfortunately don’t have any publications; due to COVID-19 the one I was slated to be included in was pushed back. I took an official GRE diagnostic test and scored a 318 (160 in Verbal, 158 in Quant), and I'm shooting for a 320 (160 in both sections) by August, which I believe is quite possible. I may retake the GRE in November in order to bring it up to a 325, since I would like to offset my low-tier-ish GPA.

My current list of schools thus far is below. However, I do think I may switch out some of the more difficult to get into schools for some not-so-difficult ones. I don't really know how competitive UC Davis and UCI are in terms of their psych graduate programs, but I really want to get into those two schools the most.

My question(s): How competitive am I for these schools (I guess chance me haha)? What other mid-tier programs are there for cognitive psychology, if most on my list will be too difficult? What advice do you have for someone overwhelmed by the application process?

Rutgers Newark 

University of Maryland 

UCI

UMich

Boston University

NYU

University of Delaware

UC Davis

UCSD (maybe)

Thank you so much for your help, and I hope you're all staying safe!

Edited July 24, 2020 by reipls