Getting into a Ph.D program in school psychology

Graduate School
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I’m basically hoping someone on here can let me know if I have good chance at getting in to a doctoral school psych program. I have a 3.7 overall GPA, a 3.446 GPA in my major (I have 5 classes left to complete in my major, so I can get it up potentially), and I am minoring in education. The undergrad program I am currently in requires that I do research of my own in order to graduate, so I am guaranteed to have some research experience. I am also applying for a summer research internship on top of this. I am also taking a course in Psychometrics in which I will develop a measure of my own. I doubt grad schools will look at this, but just in case it helps, I am also a writing tutor, and I am involved on campus. I used to be a D1 athlete (but got injured), and I volunteer at a school for students with Autism. I have completed a student teaching internship as part of my education minor as well. Sorry this is not the most polished writing in the world… It’s 2am, and I kind of just got myself worked up thinking about grad school. Anyways, what are my chances of getting in, and what are
my chances of getting in to a high ranking program? I have not taken the GRE yet. Thoughts?

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@hopeful1018 - Welcome to the Forum! It is nearly impossible to give you a gauge on how competitive you will be for unnamed programs. it is worthwhile to note the strong points in your record and where you can improve over the coming months. Your GPA is good but for the most highly selective programs, you will be competing with students who have GPAs higher than yours. Without a GRE score yet, it is difficult to say more but in my opinion you will need to apply to programs with a range of selectivity.

The fact that you will be getting research experience in the summer is good but perhaps you should try to get some experience this term as well. You will likely be applying next December and getting research experience is not simply about the experience but also about getting personal letters of reference from your mentors. These letters are critical to the admissions process.

Any other activities that are not research or related to your profession are not terribly important for graduate admission.

What you need to do is to start now looking into what graduate programs you should apply to. You can certainly apply to one or two highly selective programs but you need to realize that the admission rates are very low and the competition is very stiff. Try to identify some programs that specialize in the kind of research you are interested in and might not be as selective and apply there to to maximize your chances to get into a program. Your research mentors and professors can help you decide.

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Are you a junior in college? are you planning on applying in the fall of 2019 to begin in the fall of 2020?

I’m in psychology, although not school psychology (I considered it but went with social instead). Like xraymancs said, it’s pretty much impossible to tell you how competitive you are for unnamed programs, since they’re all different, and also we’d generally need more information. But I can tell you a bit based on what you given here about pieces of your app:

  1. a 3.7 overall GPA is pretty good. A 3.45 in the major is…not as great. It’s not terrible, but it’s probably below average; generally you’d want your major GPA to be the same as or higher than your cumulative GPA. So yes, do try to get it up if you can. Five classes is like half the major, so you still have a lot of leeway. (What is your major? I’m assuming it’s psychology since you mentioned you’ll be taking a psychometrics class, but you didn’t specify in your post.)

  2. Generally, the “research of your own” that most undergrad programs would require - usually like a thesis or independent study - isn’t enough on it’s own to be competitive for these programs. Have you done any research before this, with a professor as a research assistant? The most competitive doctoral students will usually have at least ~2 years of research experience by the time they graduate (so they started doing research early in their junior year at the latest, if they apply right out of undergrad). If you’re already a junior, and you’re just doing a summer internship and whatever independent experience you’d get…that may not be enough to be competitive for a high-ranking program.

Are there professors at your university who do research with children and/or on educational issues that you could work with as an RA?

  1. You are correct in surmising that most doctoral programs won’t care about you being an athlete or being involved on campus. They will care about volunteering at the school for students with autism and the student teaching internship. They may appreciate the writing tutor experience.

  2. Do you know what you would like to do research on? Identifying a research area is the most important part of making your doctoral program list. As xraymancs says, you want to find professors who are doing research that’s kind of close, at least, to the kind of research that you’re doing - that’s what a “good fit” with the department means. Fit is more important than “rank” of the program. You are more competitive for a program if your research interests align with the interests of the department.