Will withdrawing courses lead clin psyc grad schools to reject me?

[monkeycows]

Hi all,
I am in my last quarter in undergrad and I am debating on withdrawing from two of the 4 courses I am taking. The two courses are for my history minor and if I withdrew then I have to drop my minor. I was wondering if anyone knows whether this history minor would give me an extra boost for clinical psych grad school to begin with (i have two other minors too). And if I get these 2 W's for withdrawing (along with one additional one previously when I switched majors), would i more likely get rejected by grad schools?

I can retake the two courses in fall but I would have to pay another quarter full of tuition and at this point I'm not sure it is worth it. The past 2.5 years I have done very well (all As), 3 years of research experience in 4 labs, and served as teachers assistant for honors program and two additional courses. The reason I had a rough time this quarter is because I am doing a honors thesis along with another one, two presentations, 2 posters, 3 independent projects, as well as applying for scholarships and internships. I worry if the Ws would make a glitch in my profile. I do plan to get additional experience as a RA after I graduate before I apply.

Any comments would be appreciated--I worry about how to explain the Ws, if losing the minor is worth it, and if the Ws would be the setback for me. Thanks for those who took the time to respond!

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[Wrinkles]

Probably won't matter much. From what I understand, your choice of minors doesn't matter for grad school admission. Three W's might raise an eyebrow, but if two are in history then I don't think the admissions committee will give it a second thought.

You might consider applying right out of school if you have 3 years research experience. That's enough for most schools.

 

[monkeycows]

that's my concern too! but the W's I have is in inorganic chem (when I was chemistry/pre-med) and switched to psych, and then possibly these 2 W's in history. I thought that minors would be an extra boost in my application but it seems from forums that I was wrong.

I was thinking of taking 2 yrs of RA experience to boost my application. I have a cGPA of 3.62 mostly from my previous major and a major GPA of 3.98. My professor told me my SATs should correlate somewhat with my GRE scores so I am not too worried about that (yet). But, I was banking on the extra experience to get into some of the top schools.

Thanks for the quick reply, it's really appreciated!

If anyone else have comments I would love to hear your two cents!

 

[Thrak]

I think even with three you should be ok. I had three Ws, all in psychology/ statistics classes*, believe it or not, and still got into a Social PhD program. You may have to address it in the interview stage, or if you're really worried, you could even throw a line in there in the application itself under the "anything else you want to tell us" essay option.



* The first was in first semester, freshman year, when I was just overwhelmed with everything. #2 was so I could take the graduate version of the exact same class the next semester. #3 was Multivariate stats, and I just wasn't getting it the first time around.

 

[cara susanna]

I was a history minor, too, along with another more psych-related minor. Neither ever came up at interviews I only minored in history because I love it, not because it would be particularly useful.

 

[monkeycows]

thanks cara! i have two more clinical/psych related minors but i was taking history minor for interest too but this was my first time having a problem with the classes academically. But thats probably because I over exerted myself this quarter trying to take more projects than i can handle. Thanks for your input