My son got accepted to Kutztown College and Bloomsburg College. Does anyone have an opinion about which of these two colleges has a better psychology program? He’s also going to apply to King’s, Univ. of Scranton and West Chester University.
http://www.finaid.org/calculators/awardletteradvanced.phtml
Most of the lines are for financial data, but it also includes some other factors that could be important as well.
Undergraduate psychology programs are not ranked, so it’s really difficult for any outsider to evaluate the relative strength of two psych departments that don’t have doctoral programs. I’d guess that their departments are probably comparable.
A quick glance reveals that Kutztown’s professors come from a mix of well-regarded doctoral programs, most of them quite excellent. They have four tracks in their psychology department: general, clinical-counseling, industrial-organizational, and paralegal studies, which may give students a greater range of coursework to choose from. The Bloomsburg professors come from some good to great doctoral programs as well, and they have an aging and gerontology minor.
The core of a psychology major is the same everywhere - general psychology, statistics, research methods, usually a couple of classes in developmental, and then your choice of electives. Where the differences really come in are those electives, and which ones are offered, but Kutztown and Bloomsburg seem to have roughly similar offerings. The biggest difference is Kutztown’s offerings in industrial-organizational psychology and in legal/law-related psychology/paralegal studies (which don’t seeem to be available at Bloomsburg). There are also a few more physiological/biological psychology classes at Kutztown.
But the greater availability of coursework doesn’t mean that it’s higher quality, and some of those classes aren’t offered very often (the organizational ones are only offered every third semester, and that’s very likely because they are taught by the same person).
Thank you for all the great info!