Research Opportunities

Colleges and Universities A-Z Lafayette College
1

Any Students, Recent Alumni or parents of same - can you speak to the opportunities for a Psych major to work with a prof on the prof’s to be published type research 9as opposed to the student’s own projects) - my son is looking at research schools because he specifically wants a chance to learn in the lab. (ignore the account name, my older kid is a thespian, set the account up when he was auditioning for schools)

2

My D was a Psych major who graduated in 2016, There are abundant research opportunities and professors who want to get students involved in their research. I’d say your son would have to take the first few psych classes (I think stat and design/analysis – not 100% sure of the course names) before he will have the tools necessary to do any meaningful research. Her experience was:

  1. She helped out on two projects in a minor way with one professor sophomore year.

  2. She worked on one project as a Premminger Scholar/Advanced Research Student with a second professor that ended up not having publishable results. But she got paid (not a ton, but something) to do the research, stayed on campus over the summer with free housing for the summer, got great experience, and had a fun summer. The prof. she did this work with wrote one of her grad school recommendations (which I’m guessing was excellent since my D had great success in terms of grad school admissions).

  3. In her senior year she worked on an other research project as an EXCEL scholar with a third professor (where she also got paid for her research) and the results were recently published in a peer-reviewed journal.

My D had a wonderful 4 years at Lafayette. Any questions about her experience, feel free to PM me.

3

Also… One nice thing for Lafayette psych majors is that there is a choice of a BA which is more liberal arts based or a BS which is more science based degree. My D was a psych major but ended up taking 6 science (Chem, Physics, Bio) and 2 calculus courses as well (and still fit in a minor in theater and a ton of ECs).

4

It’s totally possible. I’m only a first-year, and I will be conducting research in economics this summer. You just have to get your face out there and give the professor a reason to want you on his or her team.