Do I stand any chance of getting into a Psych PhD?

[kwalusiak10]

I didn't realize how much I actually love school until my senior year of college. Now I really want to go back to school and am very passionate about getting in.

Here are my credentials:

I have a 2.89 gpa... this is just the last two years of college, my first two years ( I transferred therefore resetting my GPA) I had a 3.6 and was consistently on the dean's list. Also, my major GPA (psychology) is higher than my overall gpa. Is this something I should convey in my application?

My degree was in psychology and Art

I graduated from Cornell College

I am 17

I will receive wonderful letters of recommendation ( I have my advisor, and my psychology professor... is there any other person I should pick?)

I am working on getting research experience

I took the GRE in September... it did not go very well, so I am taking it again at the end of October, what should the score I should aim for?

I know I am not the most ideal candidate but I still want to try. My interest is in Social Psychology, especially Prejudice and Stereotyping.

Also will my age work for or against me?

[spunky]

I didn't realize how much I actually love school until my senior year of college. Now I really want to go back to school and am very passionate about getting in.

Here are my credentials:

I have a 2.89 gpa... this is just the last two years of college, my first two years ( I transferred therefore resetting my GPA) I had a 3.6 and was consistently on the dean's list. Also, my major GPA (psychology) is higher than my overall gpa. Is this something I should convey in my application?

My degree was in psychology and Art

I graduated from Cornell College

I am 17

I will receive wonderful letters of recommendation ( I have my advisor, and my psychology professor... is there any other person I should pick?)

I am working on getting research experience

I took the GRE in September... it did not go very well, so I am taking it again at the end of October, what should the score I should aim for?

I know I am not the most ideal candidate but I still want to try. My interest is in Social Psychology, especially Prejudice and Stereotyping.

Also will my age work for or against me?

ok, my two cents here from someone who just went through the process (and survived! lolz):

a) your GPA is just *way* too low for gradschool in psych. you should be looking at somewhere around high 3's/low 4's (your first 2yrs are not gonna help. no admission comittee will pay attention to how you did on your intro-level courses, they only focus on the advanced ones).

you need at least 3 letters of recommendation, preferably from someone who knows how good you are when conducting research or a prof from whom you've taken a lot of courses. i never did reserach with my biopsych prof, but i took all of her courses (5 in total) so by the end of my undergrad degree she had a pretty good idea of who i was and whether or not i was graduate school material.

c) top 80% percentile is what most programs will ask from you (that's around the 600s for verbal and mid-700s for quantitative) but i'd say to always aim to be one the top 10, like on the charts lol.

d) research experience is *key* to get into graduate school. an honours in psych would be ideal...

dunno about the age though. so, assuming you did a standard 4-year degree, did you enroll when you were just 13? that *is* impressive

all in all you're definitely not in your best shape to apply for graduate school right now, especially if you're going for social psych/personality. those programs are VERY, VERY competitive (unless you choose to go to a crappy uni but that's not the point here, rite?) however, i think you age can work for you here. you've still got toooooooons of time to improve and i'm sure you'll do aweseome once you brush up on a few things here and there.

best of lucks!

[lewin]

I'm in a social PhD program, doing some prejudice stuff actually.

I agree with Spunky, your grades are probably just too low. Sometimes people have a low average in their first year or two, then increase their grades when they become motivated and focus their interests. This can be okay because at least it is an upward trajectory. Unfortunately, your transcript is the opposite: it shows difficulty handling more advanced courses. (FYI, grad schools will ask for a transcript from every school you attended, so it doesn't really "reset" by switching schools.)

Did you complete an honours thesis? This is a good way to demonstrate research acumen and it's almost impossible to get into graduate school without a thesis. More to the point, completing a thesis gives you a chance to see whether you like doing research. Social-personality programs are about 80% research, and it's impossible to say whether you'll like research (or be good at it) without getting your feet wet doing an honours thesis. Most people I know also did 1-3 years as a research assistant.

Did you take honours-level statistics and methods courses? Stats are important and grad schools especially want to see good grades here.

For the GRE, you should aim for the highest score possible. Ideally this would be the 80th percentile, but less isn't necessarily an application-killer. Keep in mind that schools receive all of your scores from the past five years, not just the most recent set or an average. So don't re-take the GRE's unless you are confident you'll get a better score. One bad set of scores suggests a bad day, two bad sets suggest a trend... (Also, American schools care about the GRE more than Canadian schools.)

May I ask: How in the world did you finish college at 17? Being young isn't a problem per se, but IS a problem to the extent that your grades suggest you weren't ready to handle university-level material. In fact, it might be an advantage if you can show steady improvement from now on. You could argue that your record at 17 isn't reflective of what you can accomplish now at 20.