<p>All good points, bc, I agree. I must be countering the common "LACs are always worse" claims that were raised. :) As I said, students should decide on the Big U or LAC first, if they have a preference, then look at finer data.</p>
<p>also look at the course listings at the big universities, to see how many classes are actually taught by the top notch faculty- often times they work solely with the graduate students</p>
<p>Huskems, I doubt schools like Michigan or Wisconsin will allow TAs to teach. I have never hear of teachers that aren't professors at elite universities. They may handle labs and discussion groups, but they will almost never teach. </p>
<p>For example, at Michigan, the vast majority of intro level courses are taught by Adjunct Professors or Lecturers, all of whom are PhDs. Advanced level classes are taught by many star professors.</p>
<p>vossron -- did I read that correctly -- total undergrads of all majors, not total undergrad Psych degree?</p>
<p>If so, I can't see how data regarding the % of the entire undergrad population at UCLA that goes on to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology has any relevance to the % of UCLA undergrad PSYCH majors that complete Ph.D. programs.</p>
<p>Most rankings guides don't rank undergraduate schools by major. It's a rather impractical system, because you spend less than half of your time taking classes in your major field. Beyond that, "psychology" is actually a lot more abstract than people think it is. Most people, when thinking of psychology, think of clinical psychology, but I never took a single class on abnormal psych when I was a psych undergrad.</p>
<p>Really, any solid school will have a solid psychology undergrad program. All of the schools on your list have solid psychology programs. Where the difference will come is research experiences. My small LAC had a number of research experiences to get into, but the variety was small and the professors were of course more interested in teaching than research. My current graduate school has a myriad of research labs and things that undergrads can get into (paid!) -- so many opportunities! If you're interested in research I would keep that in mind. UIUC, Penn State, IU-Bloomington, UNC all have good psychology programs, and Michigan and UW-Madison are some of the TOP psychology graduate programs in the country with surely a lot of research opportunities. (of course, top grad program does NOT mean top undergrad program!) However, they're good schools for psychological RESEARCH.</p>
<p>Also, Alexandre: That's patently untrue. At large universities like Michigan and Wisconsin, they most certainly do allow advanced graduate TAs to teach entire classes on their own. I am at Columbia, one of the top psych programs in the country, and there are several classes (especially over the summer, and especially intro classes) in which graduate TAs are the primary instructors in the class, not the professor. Usually the professor is the main teacher, but not always. And not all adjuncts have PhDs. Many adjunct professors here are ABD researchers who are completing their dissertation work.</p>
<p>In addition, although the main lecturer may be a professor, often the lecture section is so huge that the majority of useful information comes from a TA. For example, my epidemiology class is easily 500-600 students large. But our seminars are led by advanced epi students. They're good teachers, though, so I wouldn't worry.</p>
<p>bclintock: I went to a school "further down the list" (#63, actually) and I'm in a top psych program. My colleagues went to undergraduate schools I've never heard of and aren't ranked, and I have friends from my school and our unranked brother school at Chicago, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, etc. Where you go doesn't so much matter as what you do there.</p>
<p>Correct; it's just available data, which must be carefully interpreted. It's not meant to be a ranking, especially since such disparate schools are listed. The data reflect a relatively large psych department compared to other departments at a given school, combined with the future PhDs of the psych majors.</p>
<p>The data may indeed be more useful for students drawn to LACs. For example, for the given case of psychology, and the few cases of a high school student having interest in becoming a clinician or doing research, she might start with the LACs on the list where her statistics indicate a "match" for admission, and further research these for an overall fit. Or perhaps some students might infer that relatively high future PhD numbers indicate a quality undergrad program.</p>
<p>wow really helpful replies!
thanks a lot~
now i wanna ask :</p>
<p>IS IT RECOMMENDED TO MAJOR IN PSYCHOLOGY IN UNDERGRAD?
or should i do that in graduate school.....and major in sth like business or art history (the other two areas that i like) in undergrad? since...i wnt rly get a job after undergrad if i major in psych right?</p>
<p>thx</p>
<p>if you want to study psych in grad school, i'd definitely recommend you majoring in it as an undergrad</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is true. Over 80% of undergrads do so (and about 20% of undergrads are published for undergrad research).</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>
[quote]
IS IT RECOMMENDED TO MAJOR IN PSYCHOLOGY IN UNDERGRAD?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>thanks (:
i'm considering finance, phychology, and art history...
really don't know which one to choose as my major!
probably i can major one and minor two others....good idea?
please gimme some advices (:</p>
<p>I'd be careful about picking a college based on undergrad major. Many people start college uncertain as to their major; that's just fine. And most people change their major at least once. You don't want to get stuck someplace that's you choose because it's strong in one major, only to find you're really interested in something else that they don't have. Best to keep your options open. Unless you're just dead certain you only want to major in one particular thing, you're going to be better off at a school that has strengths across the board. </p>
<p>A lot of the better LACs are going to be very strong in core social science and humanities fields like econ, psych, and art history---as are many, many research universities. But I note you say "finance," not econ. Finance is usually a business major. If you're seriously considering this, you might want to look at places that have business schools (as well as strong arts & sciences colleges), which will more often be research universities.</p>
<p>At Michigan, the only classes that I know of that are taught by TAs (PhD students in their final years) are:</p>
<p>Calculus 1 and 2 and I don't see why tenure-track professors would want to waste their times teaching these type of courses, or why I needed them. I actually looked up my TAs after class ended, by my sophomore year they were both tenure-track faculties themselves at other universities. </p>
<p>I took Psych 101, and that was taught by a lecturer(non-tenure track faculty) in a lecture room, and then we had a TA(last year PhD) for our smaller discussion group.(~15-20 students). Actually for my physics 1 and 2 classes, our discussion group leaders were both full professors.</p>
<p>"Calculus 1 and 2 and I don't see why tenure-track professors would want to waste their times teaching these type of courses"</p>
<p>I think it's a valid generalization to say that LAC professors are hired primarily for their teaching ability, which likely means that they enjoy teaching and are good at it, such that "wasting their time" on low-level courses would not apply as it might at big research U, where some professors might be hired for their research ability and for their skill at mentoring grad students. There are different kinds of students and different kinds of professors, and there are homes for all, for which we can all be glad.</p>
<p>well, when you think in those terms, then we can say that it doesn't make any difference whether the person is a professor, instructor or TA, as long as they are good teachers, then they serve the students well. </p>
<p>What I mean by wasting time, is that, you don't need a nobel prize winner to teach you how to perform simple integrations. It's simply not efficient for both the student or the faculty member. For one, the faculty member who win nobel prizes may not be the best teacher at this elementary level. His time is better spent teaching upper level classes where his knowledge and insight offers significant differentiating characteristics to make the class excellent.</p>
<p>^ Fair point. This is going back into ancient history, but in my undergrad days at Michigan the worst class I ever had by far was an Honors Calculus class taught by a tenured full professor. The guy was a native English speaker, but he just couldn't speak about math in any "verbal" language. He only spoke pure math. He'd "lecture" by writing out a long proof on the board--it might take 10 minutes---and then at the end he'd utter the magic words, "QED. Everyone see?" If anyone didn't see or had any kind of question, he'd turn to the board, erase what was there and commence writing out another long proof, or the same one all over again. Disaster. But he was a brilliant, world-class mathematician working at the cutting edge of mathematical research. Probably very good at supervising Ph.D. dissertations, and perhaps even good in advanced math seminars with others who spoke his peculiar form of math-only language. Terrible choice for a freshman calculus class, even with Honors Program students. They thought they were doing us a favor by giving us a top scholar in a small class of Honors students. We'd probably have been better off with a brand new Assistant Professor or even a good TA who was still grounded enough in the non-mathematical world to communicate using a "verbal" language that we non-mathematicians could understand. </p>
<p>Would this guy have been hired at an LAC? Maybe not. But then neither, I wager, would John Rawls (Harvard), arguably the most influential philosopher of the latter half of the twentieth century, who was a terrible lecturer, mumbly, vague, often quite inarticulate but an absolutely brilliant thinker. Or Saul Kripke (Princeton) who revolutionized the fields of logic and philosophy of language but couldn't lecture or lead a discussion worth a tinker's dam. Yet I feel privileged to have yhad the opportunity to study with them at various times.</p>
<p>All my other Honors classes at Michigan, by the way, were outstanding.</p>