<p>I'm a senior psychology major and for my last semester, I have a choice to make.</p>
<p>I need 2 more classes for my major in order to graduate, but I signed up for 4 classes plus an internship class. 2 of the classes are required, 2 are not (I'm just interested in them), but they're all psychology classes.</p>
<p>Unfortunately my internship now clashes with those 2 classes that are not required.</p>
<p>So, I can either do the internship and drop those 2 classes, or take all 4 classes and no internship.</p>
<p>I feel like the pros of an internship are obviously the experience, plus I could get a great LOR from the professor running the internship class - it's a one day per week class, plus field experience in a mental health setting.</p>
<p>However, I did pretty poorly in my last semester and the one before it, so my GPA has dropped from a 3.5 to a 3.3 cumulative. I feel like taking the extra classes and doing well might help boost my GPA even a tiny bit more.</p>
<p>So if I were to go to graduate school for either a clinical track in social work, or perhaps some sort of counseling psychology course, what's the better choice to make? Internship or classes, which would graduate schools prefer to see?</p>
<p>the extra classes won’t be a guaranteed grade-boost, right? i mean, who knows, it might even hurt your gpa. on the other hand, my own internship experience at a children’s behavioral clinic has been invaluable…;)</p>
<p>You also have to look at the rigor of the classes in question. If they’re grad level classes and you get A’s, then maybe, but from what I know research experience is always considered more than grades. I would only pick the classes if your GPA without them would be at most under 3.0 (assuming A’s in your mandatory classes). If your GPA is so low that grad programs won’t even consider you, then research won’t really help.</p>
<p>I would go with the internship. I had a friend, a psychology major, who had a decent GPA and went with a ton of psychology classes but no internships to his name. He applied to five graduate schools…and got accepted to none of them.</p>
<p>Plus, the internships will help you specialize in your field of psychology - if only to see what type of things you don’t want to do.</p>
<p>Without a doubt an internship is waaaay more valuable than classes, if you’re thinking about grad school. Experience (especially research) carries so much more weight. But normally, you want to do internships/undergrad research in your final 2 years, not just your last quarter or semester before graduating.</p>
<p>Good luck</p>