psychology undergrad schools

jessiehl
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:25:57 +0000

My relative, who is a prof. at MIT is telling me that every undergraduate who wants to do research can do so at MIT, it is never a problem.



This is true. Over 80% of undergrads do so (and about 20% of undergrads are published for undergrad research).

OP: I don’t know much about most of the schools you mention, but I know that McGill is very good (we have a human factors scientist at my company, who is also a part-time lecturer at MIT, who got his PhD in cog psych from there).



IS IT RECOMMENDED TO MAJOR IN PSYCHOLOGY IN UNDERGRAD?



That’s an interesting question (and I have some close perspective on it - my boyfriend was a psych major and I was a neural & cog sci major). I would say that yes, you can major in psych as an undergrad, but you should supplement it with what as an undergrad I called “employability boosters”. A psych major with no grad school can’t actually do much with the degree on its own. However, a psych major with some business/econ and maybe some media studies or art classes can go into marketing or advertising. A psych major with a strong bio background can get a job, albeit a fairly low-level one, in neurotech/pharma. A psych major with a strong computer science background can work as a usability engineer, and a psych major with some mechE or aero/astro supplementation can be a human factors engineer. A psych major with a little tech background and a good writing background can be a tech writer.