Looking for Psychology Grad Schools (MA and PhD)

Hello everyone!

I am about to enter my 4th year of my psychology BA at SDSU. I plan on taking the GRE in the upcoming months. I currently have a 3.9 GPA. My plan is to eventually get a PhD so that I can become and educational testing psychologist (psychometrician) to help kids get accommodations in school.

Apply to grad schools will be difficult for me because my dad was planning on helping me but he unexpectedly passed away in March. So now I have to figure everything out for myself. Here is what I have planned for applications so far-

SDSU- Psych MA
UCSD- Psych MA

UC Merced- Psych PhD
UC Riverside- Psych PhD

I am doing MA for the more competitive schools and PhD for the less competitive schools. I am happy with my choices so far but am concerned that grad school apps will be too competitive and I will get denied from all four. Does anyone have any recommendations for other schools that I can apply for? Here are some of the important things-

-General Psych for MA or Clinical Psych for PhD
-Low tuition around $10,000 or lower per year (my dad was the breadwinner in the family)
-Preferably near San Diego so I can visit home every once in a while (SoCal/ West Arizona) I am willing to consider further school as long as they are low tuition (around $10,000 per year)

I am just a little overwhelmed having to do this search by myself now.

P.S. I would add CSU San Marcos to the MA list but I am not sure if the grad school acceptance is similar to how they do undergrad (if you apply to both CSUSM and SDSU then you would be accepted to CSUSM since it is the less competitive school and you would be denied from SDSU).

Try posting your question on thegradcafe.com. The forum (target audience) is better suited for your question.

Arizona State has a strong program worth checking out.

PhD programs are extremely competitive, and require research ECs. So look to MA programs were you can get some research experience.

Suggest making an appointment with your Dept Chair and/or advisor and asking them for advice & suggestions.

@randomkid98, we need more information to help you with your question.

  1. Do you have any research experience? The most competitive applicants to PhD programs have research experience - usually assisting a professor in their labs for 1-2 years (junior year on).

  2. What are your research interests? There are lots of educational measurement and psychometrics programs. You need to choose based on what your research interests are.

My advice to you? While location can be somewhat important, you shouldn’t choose a PhD program primarily because of location. You should choose based on your research interests. What questions do you have about education and educational measurement that you would like to answer? Why do you want to be an educational testing psychologist?

Neither UC-Merced nor UC-Riverside has an educational psychology concentration. Why would you want to go to either of those? (They don’t have clinical psychology PhD subfields, either. But a clinical psychology PhD isn’t an especially good choice if you want to go into psychometrics - clinical psychology is about either learning to be a therapist/clinician or performing research on abnormal psychology/psychological disorders. Educational psychology; measurement, evaluation and statistics; or quantitative psychology would be better choices.)

This U.S. News list (https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-education-schools/education-psychology-rankings) is a better place to start to look at educational psychology programs (U.S. News isn’t everything, but it’s a start). Within California, Stanford, UCLA, and Berkeley would be better choices for what you want- but again, you shouldn’t limit yourself to California.

However, I really think you should look at educational measurement/measurement, testing, and evaluation PhD programs. Programs of that type can be found at Penn State University, Teachers College of Columbia University, UMass-Amherst, and University of Washington.

Most good PhD programs give full funding to their doctoral students, so you don’t have to worry about the tuition there. At MA programs, you would.

Since you are going into your fourth year, I strongly recommend that you talk to your psychology professors at your undergrad - they can help you learn more about graduate school and how to apply, so you can select a program that’s a good fit for your goals.