<p>Hi! I was wondering if a current or alum Rice psychology major would give me their thoughts on the Psychology Program at Rice, i.e., quality of faculty, availability of course selection & quality of courses, academic/career advising, approachability of and support from faculty, or anything else you'd like to speak on? I appreciate any information you could give me. Thanks so much!</p>
<p>Hi! I graduated from Rice as a psych major last May (in grad school for psych now). I absolutely loved psych at Rice. The faculty are awesome, and there have been a lot of new hires recently that are really adding to the department. Classes were generally great (I mean like anything you have a not so good one every once in a while), normally pretty small, and I have always found that the professors are really available to help and genuinely seem excited about what they teach. One negative I would say is that Rice, being a small school, doesn’t have some of the super-specialized psych classes I have seen offered at other schools (I mean Rice has all the ones you need to move forward to grad school, but I’ve seen some just awesome classes at other schools that I would have loved to take). Also, I’m not sure who is in charge of this, but several times there were 2 or 3 psych classes I wanted to take that were all offered at the same time which was frustrating.</p>
<p>My advice for anyone coming to Rice for psych (or probably any school) is to try to get involved in a research lab really early. I worked in one from fall of sophomore year until I graduated. This is the way that you make a good relationship with one professor in particular, and generally that leads to better relationships with other professors. Having relationships with professors is how I got all of my advising because I didn’t find the advisor assigned to me when I got there particularly useful. Also, I would say take advantage of some of the opportunities that the department offers, like doing an independent honors thesis because it’s a perfect springboard into grad school.</p>
<p>Overall, I loved psych at Rice, and having been in grad school for 2ish months now, I feel like it prepared me really well for continuing with my education in psychology. Please let me know if you have any more specific questions either here or in a pm.</p>