from high school teacher to psychology grad student

[western_colorado]

I took the GRE today. That means I won't hear back for a while on the writing portion, but I scored 170 on the verbal and 154 on the math. I'm obviously happy with the verbal score, but I might go back and take another shot with the quantitative. Getting the test done with has me realizing that this is for real - I'm really making moves to change my career.

It's weird to think of myself as a nontraditional student, but I guess 28 makes me kind of an old guy. I've been a high school social studies teacher for a few years, and it's actually my job that got me interested in psychology (I'm actually certified to teach psych at the secondary level). I've had trouble narrowing it down, but I'm thinking I'm really interested in school psych. Sometimes I think about counseling psych as well, but I'm trying to stay focused on one thing.

In any case, my undergrad GPA was a very non-stellar 3.33. My only psych class was a freshman-level intro.

I'm thinking about applying to some programs for fall 2016, but I'm also thinking I might have to wait until the next year if my chances of getting into a program are good. Right now I'm looking at the Ed.S. programs at a few schools like University of Northern Colorado, Minot State, Utah State, and New Mexico State. I'm also thinking about going for some Ph.D. programs, but I don't know if that's realistic. I'd like to stay in the mountain west or midwest, but I'm open to just about anything.

My big question, I guess is this: What can I do to make myself a better candidate? My letters of reference are not great. I only have one professor from college that I'm still in any sort of contact with. My principal and department head can write letters, but they won't be related to my academics. My biggest weak spots seem to be my GPA and my total lack of research experience. I'm thinking that taking some prerequisites in the spring will help, but I'm not sure what else I should be doing.

Edited October 24, 2015 by western_colorado

[Chubberubber]

I think you pretty much said it- gain research experience. One possible way to do that is to reach out to researchers/ labs whos work you're interested in, ans just ask them if you could volunteer as a research asssistant. While it will task your schedule, it will be worth it. I don't know what your school's policy is, but perhaps you can even suggest to run studies in your school. Any lab would be extremely happy to have an easy access to its research population... 

[rising_star]

If you're interested in school psychology, research experience can be less important since you'll have classroom experience to draw on/from. You may want to take classes at a local university or community college to gain additional background in psychology. Given your interests, child psychology, abnormal psychology, and developmental psychology would all be relevant courses to take.