@notapsycho
It's hard to tell how much a rocky start will affect admissions decisions. It totally depends on the person/people and could be different depending on how much they value or devalue it.
My advice is that you are going to have to rely heavily on a GRE score (they're already very good, but try to take the test one more time if you can afford it and bring them up even more!), and on those letters of recommendation. Will your recommenders let you provide a template or have some input about all the specific and wonderful things you would like them to include? If you are close enough with your recommenders, you could tell them that you are concerned about your prior transcripts and ask them to place
emphasis on attesting to your achievements and academic ability in your LORs (The don't have to explicity state, "To address (your name)'s initial academic failures, I would like to advocate that he/she/they indeed have strong potential to succeed". Instead, just have them write several
strongly worded sentences that specifically state that in their opinion you have a highly likelihood of succeeding at the rigor of a doctoral program, and then have them state specific evidence/reasons why). You could ask them to use language like "extremely motivated, bright, intelligent, takes initiative, tireless work ethic, great influence to those around her, extremely inquisitive, etc etc.... They could also talk about how you are "extremely grounded and mature thanks to valuable life experience.")..... Have them say
so many positive things about your likelihood to succeed in a doctoral program that they begin to overpower the early transcripts.
Simply priming the admissions officers which so much positive language will make them begin to see your first few transcripts in a much more positive light.... Remember that failure is an inspiring and attractive concept,
if you portray it as a strength rather than a weakness.
In your case, you might benefit very much from a Masters in Psychology, which you could pursue if you don't get in this cycle. That way for your next cycle, you can have even more academic success to back up your story and make your case. An MA GPA will in most cases outweigh a BA GPA.
Your opportunity to explain in the Statement of Purpose is really important. If you wrote a PHENOMENAL essay about what happened and why, and how it lead you to success eventually, then you might be able to pull off getting in in lieu of the old transcripts. Some very smart people (some of whom may now be admissions officers) may have been in the same boat. It's not uncommon for a "smart" person to fail initially, due to reasons having nothing to do with academic ability. If I were you, I would allude to it making statements about things like how academic performance not correlated with intelligence or success (don't use those exact words, but something along those lines)- and talk about being a "life-long" learner and emphasize the lessons you learned during those years rather than talking about how they were "depressing". Remember that doctoral programs are just like jobs. You wouldn't go into an interview for a corporate job and tell the interviewer that you are or have been depressed in the past, right? Of course it's ironic being that this is the mental health professions. But hypocrisy aside, it does not look good to self-disclose in a professional setting unless you know the person (co-worker, boss, or in this case person of interest) really really well. Typically it is best to have your achievements speak for themselves, because they can see the pattern of success on paper. That is another reason Letters of Rec are instrumental- the information is not coming from you, its coming from a third party simply verifying your information.
That being said, it sounds like you may want to do at least some explaining. So yes, that will need to involve some words erring on the side of self-disclosure. In your SOP, dance on the line of "alluding to" those early years, but DO NOT characterize them as a failure. It may help to try to convince yourself personally that this is not the case. "Fake it til you make it". For the explanation, only write 2-4 sentences. You want to de-emphasize it, not draw attention to it. If I were you, To get some inspiration for writing this portion of your letter I would get on Google and research some famous/well-known/successful/influential people who totally failed out of school at first, but went on to have their intelligence shine through in their careers, leading to them now being renowned and known. See what kinds of inspirational things they said about their early years, how they characterized that, and then take that language and make it your own. Remember to EMPHASIZE your strengths, do not put anything in an outwardly negative light. You have to totally own it, and doing so means you cannot cast it in a negative light because that will be the end of your chance at getting in. Make it POSITIVE and then quickly shift into talking about how successful you've been ever since re-enrolling. You could say something like "At the time I was learning more through the subjective experience of life itself than I was in academics. It turns out that this experience has become extremely valuable and was a catalyst for my interest in Emotion Regulation" (That's pretty terrible wording, but along those same lines).
Try to
really emphasize how interested you are in psychology. Detail the studies and research experience and posters you have done and try to come off overall as someone who is totally obsessed with psychological science and who LOVES learning. Admissions officers are looking for someone who wants to pursue academia for decades. It will be very important to show that you love school and learning. Flunking out of school initially could seem like you were just disinterested in learning.
You need to make a case for yourself to mediate that misconception. Talk about how
fascinating it was to take an alternative path during your initial attempts at school. Talk about how diverse the different people you encountered in those different schools were, and how
rich and valuable the lessons you learned from those first few periods of your academic career were. Initial failure was just "another form of learning", but the common theme is that you
love learning in general and are now in a phase of life where you would/could learn in the setting of a doctoral program.
Here is a list of successful people who flunked out of college. Read about their story. Examine their perspective on those times, and think about how that period of their life was one of the steps toward their eventual success. Obviously you don't want to name drop any of these people (especially since they are not in the field of Psych)- but you could simply use their story as inspiration for how to portray your own story:
Albert Einstein- was nicknamed "the dopey one" ("der Depperte") in childhood because he was believed to be stupid.
Bill Gates- dropped out of Harvard University.
Oprah Winfrey- she was a college dropout from Tennessee State University.
Dick Cheney- Not only did he flunk out of Yale University once, but twice.
Scott Carpenter- He started out studying aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado, but flunked out during his senior year (later became the first human to enter space).
F. Scott Fitzgerald- He failed out of Princeton University
David Geffen- Not only did he flunk out of Brooklyn College, but he also dropped out of the University of Texas.
John Lennon- expelled from the Liverpool College of Art.
Steve Jobs- dropped out of college
Ted Turner- kicked out of Brown University
Paul Allen- dropped out of Washington State University
Finally, turn to inspirational quotes on initial failure and the lessons learned from failure to guide you in writing your SOP. It's not always advisable to include quotes in your SOP, but I find that before writing, reading as much as I can on a subject to prime and inspire my mind in the right direction is incredibly helpful. I will leave you with a quote:
“It’s not the critic who counts; Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit goes to the one who is actually in the arena; Who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; Who knows the great devotions, the great enthusiasms, and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and, at the worst, if he fails at least he fails while daring greatly; so that his place will never be among those timid and cold souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
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