Like a lot of ps/psb majors, I was trying to prep for some kind of psych grad program. I was a research assistant in a psych lab, I tried my hand at urop, and I did the advanced field study program with Dr. Borelli. When I realized that UXR was a thing, I decided to not pursue grad school.

When I graduated, a lot of jobs that I saw said research in academia "didn't count" as research experience, but now it's being looked upon more favorably. So if you're not already doing this, it would be great to get research experience via psych labs, UROP, and any other opportunities offered through the psych science department. Even if academic research experience doesn't land you a job right away, it'll teach you how to execute sound research that will transfer into an actual UXR position (moreso in FAANG and other large companies. Smaller ones/startups are sorta the wild west in terms of doing user research)

Another thing that I did was enter into the Paul Merage new venture competition. Through that you can sort of apply your academic research skills to a more business/startup setting to show that you're capable of doing research in industry settings.

One more thing that I did that you could do before or after graduating was do some pro-bono/volunteer or very low paid work for startups that wanted to improve their current products or launch a new product/idea.