<p>Hi, so I'm a rising senior and thinking about grad schools, but I'm worried for a few reasons. I go to Carleton College, which I know has a good reputations with grad schools, but my GPA is far from great, at 2.91. I am a philosophy major, but want to go to grad school in psychology. In the three psych courses + labs I've taken I have around a 3.71 GPA. However if you include cognitive science in that (which I got a C in), it drops to a 3.35, but I'm thinking about retaking that course.</p>
<p>Reasons my GPA is low:
-Got a D in Russian my sophomore year
-C's in bio and English my freshman year, cog sci sophomore year, and 1 in a philosophy course my junior year
-Took a gap year before college
-Didn't care too much about my grades early in college</p>
<p>Pluses:
-Have taken a wide variety of difficult courses and done pretty well in most of them.<br>
-Have only taken 3 classes pass/fail (s/cr/nc here), and passed of course, and only took them as such because those classes required it</p>
<p>I really want to go into counseling psychology, and would prefer to get on a Ph.D. rather than a Psy.D. track. Do you think I have a chance if I am able to raise my GPA next year, and do well on my GRE's?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>By the way, none of those psych courses are intro since I got a 5 on the Psych AP test. the psych courses I’ve taken are:</p>
<p>210 - Psych of learning - A
…Elective Lab - A
232 - Intro to Cognitive Processes - C
…Lab - B-
256 - Social Behavior - A
…Elective Lab - A-
384 - Psych of Prejudice - B+</p>
<p>The GPA shouldn’t be your only concern. You would need to take abnormal psychology and probably the psych GRE subject test (and do well) for a PhD in counseling psych.</p>
<p>Also do you have any research experience in psychology? That is super important as well as high GRE scores, outstanding LOR’s, and a clear, focused, well written statement of purpose.</p>
<p>I looked at my transcript today and realized that I have done well in all of the classes that were more people focused, such as anthropology, psychology, and ethics philosophy, but poorly in the classes that were more logical thinking/math oriented such as cog sci, bio, epistemology, and other impersonal philosophy courses.</p>
<p>Will doing well in the courses that are relevant to psychology help me get into a good psych Ph.D. program? Will going to Carleton help? Will good universities look at my full transcript before looking at my GPA and tossing out my application? </p>
<p>Also, I will hopefully get into a research program this year, but what type of research should I look for for counseling psych… should I just take the first thing that comes along, or should I try to find something specific?</p>
<p>I don’t know about going into a PhD in that area at all, but I’m up late too so I’ll comment. These are def the kind of questions you should be discussing with your professors, you should have a lead or two already on who your LOR writers will be and for direct admission to Phd, that’s usually someone you did research with since that is so very important to have. At least in my daughter’s field they actually mark DWIC (did well in class) if that is what the recco is about and it doesn’t carry much weight. Try to do some research this summer, you are late to the game.</p>
<p>Too bad you didn’t do the Russian s/nc (my daugher did but got the nc, still the skills she got were helpful when travelling to a former USSR state.) The s/nc from a school like Brown or Carleton won’t be a big deal to grad schools. Those grads have very high acceptance rates to grad schools, as you should know.</p>
<p>Different schools have stricter or not policies about minimum gpa cutoffs, you’ll have to look school by school. Your profs that know you should be able to suggest some that you have a chance at.</p>
<p>Sounds like you are going to want to ace your GRE. For the math/logic part, Khan Academy has free test prep videos up now, iirc. It’s a great resource.</p>