Pursuing Graduate Studies in Psychology

Psychology can be a very fulfilling field to study. Unfortunately, the bar is getting higher and higher when it comes to careers in psychology. It's hard to get a decent job in a field of psychology without further schooling. You certainly can't be a practicing therapist usually unless you have a doctoral degree.

So if you are looking to enter the field of psychology you should first consider what your career goals are. You can stop at a bachelor's degree but it is unlikely that you will get very far except as a psychologist's assistant. If you want to be able to work as a staff psychologist for a corporation, you need at least a master's degree, which takes two additional years after your bachelors. And if you're set on working as a psychologist, you need to pursue another six years of schooling to attain a PhD or a PsyD. Doctoral students also often go on to teach and do research.

So you want to go to grad school. Now what? First, you have to get started laying the groundwork as an undergraduate. Obviously, you should maintain a strong GPA in all your psychology courses and you should take a variety of courses from every field in psychology from developmental to cognitive. But that isn't enough to get into graduate school.

Graduate school is heavily made up of research. As an undergraduate, you can get a lot of experience as a research assistant in a psychology lab. Depending on the field you plan to go into, you can apply to respective labs that fit your interests. If you are thinking about clinical psychology as a career path, you should try to get a research assistantship with a mental health care lab. You can even get more specific than that. If you want to work with problem kids, you should look for labs that specialize in that.

Aside from getting valuable experience as an assistant and getting a good feel for research, you are also making connections. Your supervising professor can be someone you can talk to about your career options and when it comes time for you to need recommendation letters, they are people who have gotten to know you and hopefully have a lot of good things to say.

Another option you have as an undergraduate student is to do an undergraduate thesis. This is usually optional, but will give your resume a great boost. It involves coming up with a research question and collecting data. Then defending it before you graduate. It is also a good idea to get experience outside the school like for example, volunteering at your local crisis center.

When applying to graduate school, you have to remember that you are applying to a specific program and it is a good idea to visit and talk to the professors there to get a good feel for the place. You should apply where the research being conducted truly interests you because you will spend a lot of time studying it.

Finally, it is good to keep in mind that more master's programs accept undergraduates students than do PhD programs. To increase your options, you should probably get your master's before you start applying for doctoral programs so you have better chances of getting in.

Of course, it always depends on what your career goals are. You should decide on those before you start planning the rest of your education.