You need non-academic exit strategies
Great Filters
There are several "Great Filters" along the academic path where plans can get disrupted.
- Finishing your undergrad degree. Over a hundred thousand students complete a psychology undergraduate degree each year in the USA alone so we will assume you finish your Bachelor's, too.
- Getting accepted into grad school. This is the first major filter. A decently large research-focused graduate program can get hundreds to thousands of applications each year, accepting up to maybe 25 people, often far fewer. Applications are filtered not only by academic excellence, but also publications, "lab fit", prior lab research experience, and various factors outside your control, like whether the PI has funding and whether the PI is even considering taking students that year. You could finish and the perfect PI could be on sabbatical. You could apply with a great CV, but the PI is taking one student and one person in a thousand has a slightly better "lab fit" because they happen to hit it off with the PI; it could be something as banal as both of them happen to like the same sports team or share some other similarity that is completely unrelated to academia. Great people that would be successful in grad school get rejected every year.
- Finishing grad school. Most people do finish grad school, but most don't end up with a competitive academic CV by the end. Most people work very hard, but don't "play the game" well enough to actually succeed in academia. Publications are the currency of academia; some people don't realize that, others refuse to play. Also, graduate programs take several years and the pay is shit. Many people mentally fall apart during the process, straining relationships and going into crisis. It can be a tough time in life, especially if you've been in school since you were a child.
- Securing a good post-doc. This process starts in grad school. Post-doc funding is also limited and the pay is shit again (less shit than grad school, but more precarious). Plus, you will likely have to move somewhere new, which is a deal-breaker for some people. How mobile are you going to be and how willing are you to leave wherever you are to go where the work is?
- Securing a faculty position. This is exceptionally competitive and often takes many years.
All that is getting ahead of ourselves.
How are you doing right now?
If you are, okay, that's a good start. Make sure you start volunteering in a lab!
If you're not in the top 10%, what are you doing to put yourself in the top 10%?
If you're not expecting to be in the top 10%, what makes you think you'll get accepted into grad school at all?
Remember, thousands of extremely competitive young scholars get rejected each year.
What chance would a less competitive person have?
Under-qualified people do get accepted sometimes, but it is rare.
You can find stories of someone with a poor GPA or limited experience getting accepted, but this is the exception, not the rule. If you're interested in academia, start playing the game yesterday. Maintain a high GPA, volunteer in labs, and work toward getting publications. In academia, publications matter more than any other single factor. Grants are good, too, but publications are what matters (and publications help you get grants). Letters of reference are also crucial during undergrad; you get strong recommendations by working with professors, which you do by volunteering in a lab.
Think about exit strategies
The overwhelming majority of non-top 10% undergrads get Great Filtered out of grad school. What do they end up doing? Well, they don't find jobs where they use their psychology bachelor's degree because the place to do that was grad school. Maybe they work as a bank teller. Maybe they become a barista or bartender. Krispy Kreme might be hiring, too.
This can change at higher levels. A lot of people with Master's degrees or PhDs in psychology that would not be competitive in academia find work in industry positions. Some more statistically minded find work as data scientists, which can pay very well.
Remember that you don't need undergrad psych to study psych in grad school
It is worth contrasting the limited options of a non-top 10% psychology undergrad with a non-top 10% undergraduate degree in engineering or statistics.
Students with these majors can generally find white-collar office jobs at a higher entry level than people finishing a Bachelor's degree in psychology. As far as "exit strategy" goes, these degrees provide more potential when continued academics aren't of interest or don't work out; most engineering graduates don't want to continue in academia anyway. However, these other Bachelor's degrees provide a stronger Zeroth Great Filter: finishing an engineering or statistics undergraduate degree is itself more of a challenge.
If you're not sure what real job you would get with a Bachelor's degree in psychology, I highly recommend rethinking your Bachelor's degree, especially if you are going into debt to obtain it.
Remember: a Bachelor's degree in psychology doesn't open any special career path for you.
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