Hello everyone,
I am a a junior at a community college in california. I am wanting to transfer to either UHM Penn State, university of north carolina at chapel hill, and oregon state. I was a psychology major for the first 2 years as i was interning in my school’s athletic training room. this year i changed my major to athletic training but i want to go to a school that allows me to double major in athletic training and psychology. Hawaii is the only school that doesn’t have AT as a bachelor’s degree only a masters. So if i go to hawaii i would double major in psych and kinesiology.
I am not 100% sure how the double majoring process works but i know that i dont want to waist 2 years of psychology. Also i do not have the funds to go to each school and tour their campus so if any of you attend that school can you tell me if you like it or not.
Where did talking about Hawaii come from? I thought you wanted to go to Penn State, UNC-CH, or Oregon State?
Most colleges offer a psych bachelor’s as it is one of the most popular majors right now nationally. As for athletic training, you will mostly find that at particularly athletic schools so your list seems fine. I would just take off Hawaii because you kind of brought that up out of nowhere and they don’t have what you want anyway.
Anyways, if you are in California, why not apply to the UCs?
UHM = University of Hawaii at Manoa.
First of all - is your family wealthy or money not a factor for you, or do you have some kind of sweet external scholarship? All of those universities are OOS public universities, which means that they have limited financial aid for an OOS student, particularly a transfer student. So if you transfer to one of them, you will likely be expected to pay nearly full price if not full price.
I don’t attend Penn State but I work here, so I can’t tell you about the experience of being a student but I can tell you what the campus is like. I joke that it’s basically the stereotypical college campus - what most high school students are envisioning when they think about a generic college. Many upperclassman move off-campus, but “off-campus” usually means in apartments in downtown State College that are walking distance to the campus. Housing is super cheap here, particularly if you share. State College is a great college town - well, I think it’s great for me as a young professional, but it seems like the students make their own fun too. I’ve gone to a couple of pretty awesome student/university events - like they brought Laverne Cox to talk about her life, two Broadway productions have come to the downtown theater, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie came to discuss her book, etc.
I also happen to know that Penn State’s kinesiology/athletic training program/department is one of the tops in the country, if not THE best one in the country. You do have to be admitted to the major, though, which is a competitive process.
However, think about this. You’ll be transferring in, and you’ll have to finish a major that you haven’t even begun yet in two years. The athletic training major at PSU is 11 athletic training courses, 4 semesters of an athletic training practicum for 3 credits each and 5 cognate courses (chemistry, psychology, statistics, physics, and college algebra. You may have taken most or all of these already). Even if you only have to do the athletic training courses and the practica, you’re going to have to begin taking roughly three 3-credit athletic training courses per semester + 1 3 credit practicum per semester. That’s 12 hours of coursework That means that - assuming that you have NO general education courses to make up based upon Penn State’s own requirements - you only have four additional flex classes that you can take, one per semester (for 15 hours; I suppose you could take 2 extra per semester, for 18 hours, but that might be stressful).
Do you only have 4 psychology classes left in your major? Remember that many universities will only accept a certain number of credits taken outside the university for major credit. My old college would only accept up to 12 credits (which was 3 classes, since all of our classes were 4 credits) of classwork taken outside of the college towards the psychology major, and there were certain classes you absolutely could not take anywhere else (like research methods). Unless you plan to spend 5+ years in college you might not have time to double-major.
It’s not a waste to not continue your psychology major; the psychology you have will be useful in your athletic training studies but will also count as free electives (and maybe some social science requirements). You could also potentially minor in psychology.
@julliet Thanks for the UHM clarification. I honestly never hear anything about Hawaii so I wouldn’t recognize its abbreviation.
sorry i meant UHM but they do have kinesiology as a bachelors and athletic training as a masters. Thank you for the wonderful advice. I didn’t think about not all my credits transferring over. Since i was attending a a community college i really want the college experience and i will consider that as well. Financially i do not have a family that can easily afford $30,000+ tuition