Where are the top psychology programs?

<p>I'm considering majoring in Psychology and want to know which schools are considered to be ranked at the top.</p>

<p>There have been dozens of threads on this topic, if you search for them. Here's one that's fairly thorough.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=199767%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=199767&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Clark University is renowned in psychology.</p>

<p>I believe Clark has some kind of history with Freud himself, if that means anything to you.</p>

<p>Watson, the father of behavioralism is a Furman University Alum</p>

<p>I didn't realize that Freud ever visited the US. I was under the impression that he lived his entire life in Austria and England. </p>

<p>Generally speaking, most good undiversities have a solid Psychology department. However, if one whats to look into the "top psychology programs", then Stanford, Michigan, Cal, UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Wisconsin-Madison are generallyconsidered the very best.</p>

<p>beacuse its one of the most popular majors, just about every school has a decent department. judge the department by looking at what types of classes they offer, and any research opportunities available for undergrads.</p>

<p>Thanks for the help.</p>

<p>The Gourman Report rankings had these as its top 15:
1. Stanford
2. Yale
3. U penn
4. U Michigan AA
5. U Minnesota
6. UC Berkeley
7. Harvard
8. U Illinois UC
9. U Chicago
10. Columbia
11. UC San Diego
12. UCLA
13. Indiana U Bloomington
14. U Colorado Boulder
15. Carnegie Mellon</p>

<p>Would these be considered accurate? If not, which ones should be moved up or down?</p>

<p>I'm gonna go ahead and again say, for undergraduate rankings in social science fields, the quality of individual programs is based largely on how strong the students pursuing the program are...which means the schools overall quality is a good indicator of the strength of the program</p>

<p>As this is said, I would always say to ignore the Gourman Report, as it doesn't use numbers or data, or atleast doesn't publish them - to consider the quality of a program, you need to see how succesful the students are when they first come to the undergrad, and what they go on to do post-graudation, Gourman doesn't do that and thus in my eyes is entirely unreliable</p>

<p>Actually thethoughtprocess, Gourman has a "rating of alumni" which measures the loyalty and average income of alums. That is taken into consideration when calculating the overal rankings.</p>

<p>Secondly, quality of the student body is a constant when looking at the top universities. I'd say with the exception of a couple of universities, the mean SAT score at top 30 universities ranges between the high 1300s and low 1400s (assuming SAT averages are measured according to one standards). The notable exception are Caltech, Harvard, Yale and MIT. So, unless you think a 50 point difference in SAT averages makes a difference, I'd say that you should look at other criteria to differentiate between universities.</p>

<p>I'd say it is the faculty and facilities that deptermine the respective strengths of departments at a university...not the constants such as quality of students.</p>

<p>the problem with psych at the major universities is that the best professors, who are the experts in their fields, rarely teach undergrad.</p>

<p>Where would Brown rank in Psychology?</p>

<p>Brown is good (top 50 but not top 20) in Psychology. However, Psychology is popular, that any of the top 100 departments would be good.</p>

<p>But isn't that Gourman report 10 years old already?</p>