A major in psychology is popular and practical from the perspective of having a clear career trajectory. The only option isn’t to become a therapist, though. Students who major in psychology go into everything from marketing to social work, to counseling, with many going on to graduate or medical school to achieve licensing. The first step is your undergraduate degree. There are strong psychology programs at most well-respected colleges and universities, but the Ivy League, UCLA, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke, and Rice are particularly famous for having outstanding psychology programs.
As a high school sophomore interested in psychology, chances are that you have a vision of where you want to end up career-wise but not necessarily a handle on the journey you’ll have to take to get there. That’s where expert advice can be crucial. We help our students all along their path, often from helping them pick out high school courses to, years later, helping them pull together graduate school applications. We have seen so much through these multi-year journeys with students and their families and, while we are not psychologists ourselves, we’ve learned what it takes to pull off not simply an outstanding college application experience — but an outstanding start at adult life.
Obviously, it takes a high level of commitment to your academics to get into a top-tier school, which means strong grades and scores, but that’s actually not the secret sauce. Tons of students have exceptional grades, far more than top schools can accept. So, ultimately, the key to this process is actually what you are doing outside of the classroom in your activities and extracurriculars.
In this post, we give you a peek into how we work with our students to refine and develop their activities as early as sophomore year to set them on a path towards exceptional outcomes when they apply to college.
Getting into a top school requires top strategy. That’s where we come in.
Below, we’ve broken the types of activities that you need to be doing as a sophomore interested in psychology down into a few big buckets, or types. You don’t need to be doing all of these things, but you should try your best to pull off at least three of the four. Beginning to develop a diverse list of activities that emphasizes the character traits that will be crucial to successfully pursuing psychology, like patience, empathy, intellectuality, and curiosity, will show that you are truly committed to this path. Starting now, or building what you are already doing, will also hopefully lead to at least one leadership role, such as club head, by senior fall.
AN ACADEMIC TEAM
First, you need to be part of an academic team. This is most likely not directly related to psychology, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t pull on core areas of academic focus for students of psychology. A Quiz Bowl or Science Olympiad competition may not have a section specifically called “psychology” at all competitions, but areas like “Anatomy and Physiology,” “Disease Detectives,” and “Crime Busters,” are an amazing way to develop your interest in the human mind while also participating as part of a team, building leadership, and learning from upper classmen. Ideally, you would become a team captain or head by senior year, so that means doing more than simply showing up to meetings and performing well at competitions. You really need to throw yourself into the team, and you need to prioritize communicating with leadership, as well as the faculty advisor(s) to make sure that you are on track for becoming a leader yourself in time for college applications. Obviously, this is a good thing to do regardless of college applications. You’ll learn to lead and support younger students, which is valuable regardless, but we’re here to tell you what you need to do to get into a dream school. So, join the team or double down if you are already on it.
MENTORSHIP-FOCUSED SERVICE
The next thing that we want to see you do is to participate in a long-term service project or volunteer opportunity within your local or school community that is focused on mentorship and guiding others. This could include a Big Brother-type program, a reading buddies program, a tutoring partnership with an under-served community, or coaching a junior or Special Olympics sports team. It could also include something that works with individuals older than you, like volunteering at a local nursing home playing games with residents. What matters most is that this experience is long-term. You should start now, and continue this work through until at least you press submit on your applications (ideally through high school graduation in case of a deferral or waitlist). This is important even if you don’t have an opportunity for a named leadership position in this activity like captain or club head.
We work with our students to identify and obtain these types of volunteer positions separate from what is available at school, which further differentiates them from classmates who didn’t take the initiative to find something independent of the school structure.
RESEARCH
Something else that we highly prioritize for students interested in psychology is research. Opportunities for participating in research as a high school sophomore may not be immediately obvious, but that’s sort of the whole point. Most high school students don’t conduct or participate in research. This isn’t because they aren’t capable, but because they don’t know how to find opportunities. We work with our students to identify and secure opportunities with local researchers and graduate students, and to develop independent research projects that result in work that can be published by an academic journal focused on work by high schoolers.
Taking on a research project isn’t a small ask of you, and we get that, but it is truly a gamechanger on your application. And don’t be surprised if you search for “Psychology Research High School Student” and not much comes up. These opportunities aren’t just plastered across the internet. Finding an opportunity typically requires taping into the networks around you, and that’s where we can help.
SUMMER PROGRAM OR ADDITIONAL COURSEWORK
We also highly recommend that our sophomores interested in psychology invest time in pursuing additional coursework through a local community college or accredited online school. Summer programs, while often expensive, can also be an outstanding way of digging more deeply into the field of psychology than you are able to through courses at school. Whether it’s choosing a summer program or an additional course, the most important things are to pick opportunities that truly resonate with your interests, to give it your all every step of the way, and to not give these programs too much power. Taking a course or doing a summer program at a dream school is not, by itself, going to help you get into that school. Exceling in a well-respected program, no matter the school, however, will.
As a sophomore college feels far away. This moment is an amazing opportunity, though, to take control of your future by focusing in and pushing yourself in a sustainable way that deepens your passions, grows your interests, and builds your character. Whether you are going it alone, or have help developing your path, what you do today will set the tone for your college essays a few years down the road.
If you have a dream school but aren’t sure how to get there, we can help.