Psycholgy Major

[pharmdreamer]

What is included in an undergraduate BA in Psychology. Is it a lot of research paper/paper writing or just memorizing the books etc... I am thinking about switching majors and am was curious as to what to expect.

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[myelin]

hey, glad that you're interested in psychology. the best place to check with would be the undergraduate advisor in the psychology department at your institution. also, you can go through the schedule of classes and see what courses are required for the psychology degree. then, find the description for that course and see if it's something that you are interested in. most universities have this on-line now.

as for my undergrad experience, it's a lot of reading, memorizing, and paper writing. yep, sounds a lot like college in general. best of luck to you.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

My experience was a lot of reading, discussion, and term papers.

 

[JackD]

Finally! Something i actually know something about.

Papers? Yes but about the same as any other college class.

Research? Yes, in the go to the library and find books on this or that sense. Most likely there won't be any personally conducting experiments kind of research.

How much reading, how much work, how much memorization? Depends on how well you want to do. If you want to stop at the BA, it probably won't be too rough, at least not for someone who has clearly already proven they can at least handle college level work. If you are talking about getting into a masters or doctoral program after, there is going to be a ton of work. I spend hours and hours and hours every week studying, in addition to going to nearly every lecture in a semester. If you want good grades, it will be a lot of work. I know plenty of people who don't go to class, don't read the book, and just study off of class notes that they downloaded from a course's website, who pass the classes. You could do very little work and probably scrape by. The amount of work you do really depends on how far you want to go.

Remember, graduate psychology programs are really competitive. A lot of people think they can get their BA or BS in psychology, graduate with a 2.7 GPA and then get into a doctoral program. I may not be in graduate school but i have seen a lot of people kid themselves and i have seen people get C's in nearly all of their psychology courses who insist they are going to be a doctor. I've seen 65 people in a class of 70 raise their hands when asked they are planning on becoming a psychologist and have a class average final grade be in the low 70's or upper 60's. Or people who can barely grasp basic algebra and yet claim they are going to be a researcher.

I guess the point of my little rant, besides giving the grad students a chance to laugh at an undergrad giving advice about getting into doctoral programs, is if going to graduate school for psychology is your goal, then bust your *** from now on and do as well as you can because it is a long, tough road.

 

[myelin]

JackD - you make a good point about being able to print off class notes from the class website and being able to pass the class. While that may get you by, it will all catch up to you in graduate school when the classes you are taking assume that you already know about x concept or x theory. when you first start graduate school, have both arms fully extended and ready to carry tons of new information to learn...all by class time on wednesday (it's 4pm on tuesday). you catch my drift.

also, go to class! when it's time to apply to graduate programs you'll need at least 3 letters of recommendation. it's hard to ask for a letter of recommendation from a professor that only saw you 50% of the time in class. doh. diasble that snooze button and get up.

another word of advice (even though it wasn't explicitly asked for): when you're writing the papers for your classes as an undergrad, taylor them to your interests. don't just write about some easy topic because it gets you by. if you write about a topic you enjoy, then later on down the road you can elaborate on that same paper, or go a different direction with it for another class. you'll also have the lit search done ahead of time which saves valuable time.

 

[JackD]

JackD - you make a good point about being able to print off class notes from the class website and being able to pass the class. While that may get you by, it will all catch up to you in graduate school when the classes you are taking assume that you already know about x concept or x theory.

My point exactly

That would be on the top of my "DON'Ts" list. Again, i may never have taken a graduate class but i am 100% sure doing that would doom any chances of making it in graduate school, unless you were already an expert on the subject to begin with.

I go to nearly every class (as i say this, i am skipping my developmental psychology class), read every chapter of every book while taking notes, and spend days studying for tests after that. But if you really love the subject, you won't care about spending a ton of time working on it.