<p>I'm a high school student about to end her freshman year. I've been looking at colleges and I've really set my eye on Stanford. I live out-of state. I'm trying to plan ahead and to hopefully be accepted for their undergrad psychology program. I didn't have an impressive freshman year. My best guess is i'll have a 3.1-3.2 GPA maybe by the end of this year. I know they look for well rounded applicants. I've moved a lot because of my dad's job. I've had the opportunity of living in London, England, Boston and the midwest where I live now. I'm of hispanic and italian/french descent. I've lived in South America as well. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have this experience. I'm bilingual and i'm going to into my 6th year of taking french (taken it since 5th grade) and i plan to take AP at some point. I played in my school's freshman lacrosse team and i play outside of school too. I'm thinking of putting it aside next year and trying out for the swim and track team (since i love running) Sorry, this is a little long winded but my main question is what should i do during the 3 years i have left to get into Stanford ? I think i set myself aside from other applicants and i plan to get my grades up and take AP classes. I have no idea of what clubs to join either. What other schools are good for psychology ?? Thanks !</p>
<p>I wouldn’t select a university specifically for one major, especially not as a high school freshman. Your interests are likely to change significantly between now and your senior year, and will probably change even more when you are in college. Most colleges and universities have psychology majors, and thumbing through the course catalog should give you an idea of the kinds of classes that are offered. (I will say, though, that larger universities and stronger departments sometimes offer a wider variety of classes within psychology. I was an undergrad psych major at a small LAC, and we only had the basics. There were a few interesting classes offered by professors who did research in particular fields, but they were offered infrequently. There wasn’t even a Health Psychology class until after I left.)</p>
<p>Join clubs that interest you. Don’t just join just to put something on your application. If you have passion for something, that will shine through. The other thing is that psychology is a very diverse field and incorporates a lot of different other fields depending on what you want to study. So just follow your interests.</p>
<p>Continue taking French. Take the most rigorous classes you can. If your school has them, take AP Psychology and AP Statistics. (Statistics is very important in psychology.)</p>
<p>Other schools with strong psychology departments (on the graduate level, but that should have some correlation with the undergrad level) are Michigan, Wisconsin-Madison, Minnesota, UNC, Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, UIUC, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Washington, Duke, Wash U, and Texas-Austin. Carnegie Mellon and MIT also have good psychology programs, but they are better known for cognitive psychology and (in the case of MIT) engineering psychology/human factors engineering. Again, I think it’s important to look in the course catalog ahead of time. My university is in the top 20 psychology programs, too, but our undergrad offerings are mainly in cognition and neuroscience because that’s what our professors do. I think a student with strong social psych or applied psychology interests would be unhappy in this department (the only reason I am not unhappy, as a graduate student, is because I am a dual student with public health).</p>
<p>But I want to re-emphasize that you can get a good, solid, broad education in psychology nearly anywhere. You don’t have to go to a school with a good psychology grad program (although it will help if you want to do research).</p>
<p>And this is a case where the best-reputed programs in my field are not necessarily at Ivies. While there are some Ivies in the top 25, I think the best-known and best-reputed programs are at state schools aside from Stanford and Harvard - Wisconsin, Michigan, UCLA, and Berkeley especially.</p>
<p>Excellent advice from juillet!</p>
<p>It’s great that you’re looking ahead and planning. As long as you do that AND do the things you enjoy, you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>While it’s good to show a well balanced academic and EC life, selective colleges are not necessarily looking for a ‘well rounded’ applicant. They often look for candidates showing strong commitment and accomplishments in an interest. For instance, you could shadow a psychologist, take AP Psych, volunteer at a clinic, etc.</p>
<p>Please take a look at the Hispanic Students forum, under College Admissions, Specialty topics. The Resource thread is a good place to start, it has lots of information on summer programs, scholarships, past Results and fly-ins to diversity weekends.</p>