Back to Requirements for the Psychology Major
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Beyond the requirements which must be met by all psychology majors, how should you go about selecting particular courses? Which of the various courses that meet each category requirement should you choose? How should you choose additional electives from psychology and other areas of study?
In part, your decisions about courses should be based upon your plans for after graduation. For more information about psychology-related careers, click here.
To select courses relevant to your interests, the Psychology Department has described three different "tracks." They are entitled: Graduate School and Research Track, Human Services and Counseling Track, and Industrial Psychology Track. These tracks do not describe required courses for the psychology major. Instead, they represent guidelines, suggested courses most relevant to the three areas of interest. You may click on each track to find a sample four-year course schedule for students following that track of study.
This track is designed for BA students who wish to work in research positions after graduation or who plan to do Ph.D. graduate work in psychology. Alternatively, students with these goals may wish to pursue a BS degree.
This track is designed for students who plan to work in human services after graduation. It also provides background for students planning master's level work in social work, clinical, counseling, or school psychology. Students planning to pursue a Ph.D. degree in these areas may fulfill the requirements for the BS degree or follow the Graduate School/Research track above, adding courses from the Human Services track as electives.
This track is recommended for students who plan to work in personnel, management, or other business-related fields after graduation. This track also prepares students for master's level work in Industrial-Organizational Psychology or the MBA degree in Business. Students planning to do Ph.D. work in Industrial-Organizational Psychology may fulfill the requirements for the BS degree above or follow the Graduate School/Research track above, adding courses from this track as electives.
A final factor which is important to take into account in planning your course schedule is the background required to be successful in those courses. As you select courses, you should consider the level of course difficulty and prerequisite requirements.
Examining the psychology course offerings, you may notice that courses are designated by three number extensions: a number in the 100's, 200's, 300's, or 400's. These numbers give you an indication of the difficulty of a course in terms of work load. You should expect to do more work in a 400-level course than in a 200-level course. Also, the quality of work will be different. In a 400-level course you will be expected to do more independent work and are more likely to be studying primary source materials, such as journal articles.
The second purpose for the numbering system is to help structure your academic experience. Upper level courses build on and expand upon information and analytic skills you acquire in lower level courses. Therefore, before taking upper level courses, you must successfully complete at least one course at the next lower level. For example, you must complete the 100-level course (there's only one) before taking any 200-level psychology course (except Statistics). To take a 300-level course, you must successfully complete at least one 200-level course, and so forth.
Some psychology courses have specific prerequisites in fields other than psychology. For example, you need to take Math 118 (Finite Math) and have some familiarity with using computers in order to meet the prerequisite requirements for Statistics. In other cases, we strongly recommend certain classes which will help you with your psychology courses. For example, English composition (ENG 115 and 116 or 125) courses strengthen your writing skills so that problems in writing will not hold you back in the many papers you will be writing in psychology courses.
A general worksheet to help you plan a schedule which fulfills both the Psychology Department's requirements and the College's graduation requirements can be found in Appendix D of the Majoring in Psychology handbook, available in the Psychology Department. You can follow the four-year sequence of courses for each of the tracks described above. These take into account the prerequisite requirements, different levels of psychology courses, and classes in other subjects such as Math and English which will help you succeed in psychology. You can follow the schedules to outline a sequence of courses for yourself.
We recognize that this ideal sequence may not be possible for students who enter North Central College as transfer students, or who decide on psychology as a major late in their careers here as students. However, you should follow the sequence as closely as possible, and realize that you may need to spend an additional term (or more) at North Central if you do not enter the sequence early enough.
Perhaps the most common obstacle to following the recommended sequences of courses is FOE (fear of experimentation) and FOM (fear of math). All too often students interested in majoring in psychology delay taking PSY 250 Statistics and PSY 255 Research Design and Experimentation. The usual reason for delaying these courses is that students are anxious about their abilities in research and mathematics. However, delaying the very courses explicitly required for the major does not solve the problem of anxiety; it merely puts off the day of reckoning.
Instead of procrastinating, we suggest that you develop a plan to prepare yourself well for these courses so that you will be less fearful of them. Plans can include taking math classes which will help prepare you for Finite Math (Math 118), the prerequisite for Statistics. You can plan a schedule to insure that courses which build on one another follow in succession so that you don't forget important concepts (for example, taking Math 118 in the fall, followed by Statistics in the winter, and Research Design and Experimentation in the spring). You might consider preceding this sequence with a summer course in Math 110 to prepare you for Math 118, or taking Statistics in the summer when you can concentrate your efforts solely on it.
You should also be aware that North Central College has an Academic Support Center where NCC students can get individual help in selected subjects, including mathematics. In addition, the College's Counseling Center occasionally sponsors workshops to help students cope with math and test anxiety.