Lack of outside research?

[jyinap]

I attended a small liberal arts university that isn't known for research / not known for reputation. I wasn't able to get outside research experiences due to familial circumstances but it would not come across well in a personal academic statement so I'm kinda forced to leave it out.

 

However, by the end of undergrad, I've accomplished two years of lab work at our Uni's cognition lab working on ~5 different protocols with a paper authorship contribution to three of them, completed a senior thesis that was presented at our local undergrad conference, and completed an honors thesis that I've submitted to a large undergraduate conference and am planning on submitting for journal publication next semester (probably undergrad journal). 

 

However the issue I'm having is that all of this experience is from my own University, and worse yet all from one professor (only one that is research-focused).

 

I have held multiple jobs throughout Undergrad, honors program, Latin honors, Japanese/Spanish fluent; so outside of Psych I'm a decent student. I've taken all the "standard" psych classes and tutored the Uni's psychological statistics course for 2 years.  GRE scores are also fairly high.

 

Basically, what is the overall strength of my application and how hurt am I by the fact that it's all home-University based?

[gradchaser]

You are fine! Many schools actually view regularly switching labs negatively, as it may show that you are flighty and not reliable. It sounds like you have received really great training through the professor that you have worked with, and I wouldn't be worried. It's very impressive that you have 3 authorships already, and doing a senior thesis is something admissions committees look for. In the end, the process is a numbers game, but I think you have a great chance!

[lewin]

One of my supervisors really dislikes it when people work in a bunch of labs. She thinks that undergrads increasingly pursue a strategy of "work in as many labs a possible, get as many lines on m CV as possible" instead of gaining long term, deep experience with one lab, which she views as a better strategy because it'll produce stronger letters. And look what it did for you--publications and presentations galore! Those things typically only result from staying in a single lab long term. So I think you're fine, if not better off.

[when]

Just wanted to echo the previous posts. Sounds like a strong app to me. Good luck!