College Planning

Graduate School
1

<p>Hey, I recently got accepted into Bowdoin College (early decision) and I was wondering what courses I should plan on taking in college for grad school.</p>

<p>I'm 99.99% sure that I want to major in psychology and eventually get my PhD in that field. I'm not sure what area of psychology that I want to specialize in, but I'm leaning either toward social or cognitive psychology. I also want to minor or at least take courses in philosophy if that's relevent (specifically interested in the philosophy of language).</p>

<p>Generally, what courses should I be taking if I want to get into a top tier graduate program like Stanford or Princeton. I know that I should be doing research and taking mostly psych courses, but I am wondering about courses like Math, Chemistry and Biology. Anyway I have two main questions,</p>

<p>1) My calc teacher said I should take calc 3 in college (I'm in BC calc right now, but its not my best subject). The psych major requires me to take a data analysis/statistics course, so I plan on taking that. However, should I take calc 3?</p>

<p>2) Bowdoin offers a Neuroscience major. In order to get that I need to take Chem 101 and Organic Chem, along with a couple of bio courses. I'm not worried about the bio courses, but i've heard horror stories about organic chem. Do you think that its worth taking a couple of chemistry, maybe even physics, courses? I don't know if I'm spreading myself out too much.</p>

<p>thanks a lot for your help</p>

2

<p>Oy. I think you need to sllloowwwww down. Really concentrate on getting settled in in your freshman year before you can start worrying about life beyond that first year. I'd hate to see you get all stressed over something that you might NOT even wind up doing 3 years later.</p>

<p>Also, Psych PhD programs are incredibly difficult to get in, especially Clinical. Usually people bolster their applications with several years of psych experience after college through counseling or research. I would just talk about all of this with your new advisor in the fall.</p>