Two bachelor's degrees at 19, minimal research experience. How should I structure my SOP?
I will be graduating in May 2017 with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology with a Math minor from a non-research SUNY school. I am applying to Masters/Doctorate programs in Social/Personal and Cognitive Psychology.
- Overall GPA: 3.82 (can reach 3.84 by graduation)
- Psychology GPA: 3.97
- Comp Sci GPA: 3.53 (can reach 3.66 by graduation)
I graduated High School at 15 and came to the U.S. for my BS in Comp Sci at 16. During my third semester, I picked up BA in Psych as a dual degree. Since then, I have taken 20+ credits every semester with the maximum of 23, which is when I got my lowest GPA of 3.58. Besides that, I have held positions as Resident Advisor, Senator, Peer Tutor, Orientation Advisor, and Teaching Assistant during the past four years. I took the GREs after a little preparation and got a 158 on Quant and 156 on Verbal on my first attempt. Still waiting on the writing score. I definitely plan on taking it again.
Most of the psych department is made up of professors who are 60+ in age and do the bare minimum research to keep their job. We also have no facilities/equipment for those who are interested in conducting studies. I was able to convince one of the professors to do research with me utilizing surveys, focus groups, and interviews with our school's international and domestic students as the sample. It didn't lead to a publication, but I did get a poster presentation out of it at the university level.
I looked for REUs for the past two summers but only a handful of programs accepted international students and those who did were in the top-tier. So, no luck there. So, that's all I have for research experience excluding the two projects I am working on for Spring 2017 which I can't really use for my SOP since they haven't even started yet.
I have strong personal reasons for pursuing higher education in psychology. I want to focus on cognition, emotion regulation, and self-control and study psychopathy from the lens of attentional and cognitive dysfunction. How should I structure my SOP with this information and to what degree can I safely express personal and family history/experiences to display my interest and curiosity?
Posted Jan 5, 2017, 11:00 PM UTC