PhD Psychology... do I have a chance?

[turtle_shell]

I'm currently a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Middle East, teaching English. Being here has made me pique my interest in graduate school. I haven't yet narrowed down my interests but I'm thinking about something in the field of social psych, cultural psych or educational psych. I'm very interested in cross-cultural issues in psychology and would like contribute to this research field.

I graduated 4 years ago, my undergrad GPA was 3.72 and I majored in psychology and political science. I haven't taken the GRE yet but my practice scores are around 1300 combined for verbal and quantitative and I'm continuing to study for it here. My transcript and extra-curricular activities can reflect an interest in social or ed psych as well as cross-cultural activities.

What I'm worried about is my weak background in math and research. I have a year of statistics and the intro course to research methods but that's about it. I worked as a 'research' assistant for a psychiatrist with his research projects but it was mostly just data entry and conducting clinical interviews. As sort of a bonus, he gave me course credit for research in the bio dept for one quarter although i worked him for a year. But I don't have anything like an undergrad thesis or even upper div statistics or advanced research methods. During undergrad I had planned into going into clinical psych rather than research psychology so I never made research a focus in my studies.

I have a lot of 'real-world' multi-cultural experience from studying abroad, working with delinquent youth through AmeriCorps and now being in the Peace Corps but is any of that valuable in the research world?

I finish my service summer 2010 and will probably start applying for grad school after that when I narrow down my interests (and get a better perspective on what the economy is like), but do you have any advice? Am I out of my league for a PhD program in psych? Should I consider pursuing a MA first? Any RPCVs out there that feel that their Peace Corps experience might be slightly useless in some graduate studies? :?

[socialpsych]

Of course you have a chance. I think the issues for you will be 1) getting strong academic LORs and 2) conveying in your research statement that you really understand the field of psychology, what people research, what is valued.

To address the second point, if you are in touch with any grad students or profs in the fields you want to go into, I would definitely show them as many drafts of your SOP as they are willing to read. People in the field are just expecting to see a certain kind of thing, and you just have to get it right--and people who are already in the field can let you know whether what you have written sounds right or not.

Also, a strong GRE quant score may address the stats concern. As far as I know, a lot of people from my school get in to PhD programs with only one year of stats, so that need not be a problem.

[llcooln6]

No chance,, you insecure person, No chance.

[dherres]

No chance,, you insecure person, No chance.

Wow, I hope that's meant in jest... really, was that necessary? :roll:

[llcooln6]

it doesnt matter what we say here, it is silly to ask if you have a chance,No one knows,In reallity I am sure you are fine

[liszt85]

it doesnt matter what we say here, it is silly to ask if you have a chance,No one knows,In reallity I am sure you are fine

All the guy asked was what he should do in order to be a competitive applicant to a Psychology graduate program. I know that the topic title is a misleading one but its evident from the body of the post that he did not mean to ask if he had a chance after having applied to a program.

[psycholinguist]

Also, a strong GRE quant score may address the stats concern. As far as I know, a lot of people from my school get in to PhD programs with only one year of stats, so that need not be a problem.

I have no background in statistics at all, aside from the very basics (i.e. I can calculate d' and kind of know what t-tests are). Doesn't seem to have scared anyone away so far. I don't know whether my Q-score (730, which is pretty good though not nearly as high in terms of percentiles as my other scores) had anything to do with it. Either way, though, I've been met with more enthusiasm by psychology grad-programs than by linguistics ones. So I'd go for it!

(The other thing I should mention is that some programs require psych grad-students to take stats, which could afford you [ahem, and me] a chance to catch up.)