marlgirl

I'm strongly considering switching majors, double majoring, or pursuing a co-term. Can anyone here tell me about the Psychology and STS programs?

I'm considering

1) double majoring in physics and psychology
2) minoring in physics and majoring in psychology, probably with honors
3) switching my major to STS, possibly co-terming in psychology
4) majoring in physics, co-term in psychology

If I major in psychology, it will take a fifth year to graduate. This would also allow me to study abroad though, which I'd love to be able to do. Majoring in just physics or STS would let me graduate in four years. Thoughts?

Also if you know of any especially good (or bad) psychology or STS classes or profs please let me know!

Thanks!

celestial605

Ooh, neat. I think you should take some psych and STS classes if you haven't already and see if that leads you to one option over the others.

I'm a psych minor (was a major at one point) and have been taking classes in the psych department for 3 years. As you probably know, the psych department at Stanford is awesome (That's what the rankings say, and that's what I say too.)

As for psych classes and profs, I suppose it depends what branch of psychology you want to focus on or if you want to take a little bit of multiple areas. I recommend BIOSCI 20 (counts for psych): Brain and Behavior - I took it as a freshman and it got me interested in both psychology and neuroscience. The professor, Russell Fernald, is pretty cool. PSYCH 120: Cellular Neuroscience with Jeff Wine is also pretty good, though requires slightly more advanced bio background; Wine is a good guy as well. Definitely take BIOSCI 150: Human Behavioral Biology with Robert Sapolsky - it's offered every other year (this year but not next year). He's a wonderful teacher and the class is extremely interesting, whether you're an English, Bio, Econ, or Music major... it'll be relevant and fascinating. This course also counts towards psych major/minor, and you don't really need any bio background.

I recommend James Gross in general - really dynamic lecturer and cool guy who studies emotion regulation. I haven't taken a class with him, but I TA'd PSYCH 1 when he was teaching, so I got to see him lecture and meet with him weekly. Lera Boroditsky is also a cool lecturer - she studies language.

That's all I can think of right now - let me know if you have more questions about the psych department.

marlgirl

Yeah, I've heard great things about the psych department. I've very excited about the possibility of actually having great teachers for the majority of my classes in the major and being able to choose classes based in part on the quality of teaching. There is so little freedom in the physics major that you're pretty much stuck with whoever is teaching the class the quarter you need to take it.

In psychology I think my main interests are in more social/clinical aspects of psychology. I did research in perceptual learning in high school at a cognitive science lab which was pretty cool too. I am interested in learning a bit more neuroscience-related psychology, but really don't care to take the bio core. Premed scare me. I definitely plan to take Biosci 150. Jame Gross teaches Psych 1 this fall, so I'll get to have him as my prof, which I'm very happy about. I'd actually be very interested in work in his lab at some point.

Do you have any idea how co-terms in psych work? If I majored in STS, could I still co-term in psych? How many classes should I plan on taking in psych if I were to try to do that? I'd probably want to hang around an extra couple of years to do the co-term, which would be fine, I'm just trying to figure out if that's really feasible.

celestial605

I don't know anything about co-terming, sorry. The student services specialist is really nice, though; Kate Cressall... I believe her email is cressall@psych.stanford.edu