<p>I want to do a Psychology Major for Premed. Does anyone have an official list of the best psychology majors? Has anyone heard anything from little birds? I have NO idea, and this is really important to me. My stats are good, so don't worry about selectivity: that's my job. I just need to know who has the best psychology program.</p>
<p>I think the only rankings that are published are for graduate psychology programs. I know that Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley, and Harvard have the top psychology programs in the country. I've also heard that the University of Minnesota has one of the top child psychology programs in the world.</p>
<p>MIT also has a good psych program.</p>
<p>I'm talking undergraduate...bump bump</p>
<p>I'm also interested in this.</p>
<p>Here's an undergraduate ranking but its a bit outdated...<a href="http://www.socialpsychology.org/gunder.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.socialpsychology.org/gunder.htm</a>
It seems a little biased against psych programs at liberal arts schools though</p>
<p>I don't believe in saying any school is "best" for a particular subject: the right school for YOU will be different from the right school from someone else. However, here are schools that I have found to have strong undergrad psychology programs. Think about what you are looking for in terms of size, locations, etc. and then use this list as a starting point. I am sure there are other great schools I've missed. </p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges:
Amherst
Beloit
Bates
Bryn Mawr
Clark
Claremont McKenna
Colorado College
Colby
Connecticut College
Dickinson
DePauw
Earlham
Franklin & Marshall
Furman
Grinnell
Haverford
Kenyon
Lafayette
Macalester
Smith
Mt. Holyoke
Pitzer
Pomona
Reed
U of Richmond
Rhodes
Scripps
Skidmore
Southwestern (TX)
St. Olaf
Swarthmore
Union
Vassar
Wesleyan
Whitman
Willamette
Williams</p>
<p>Universities
U of Michigan
UC Berkeley
UCLA
UCSD
UC Santa Cruz
SUNY Binghamton
Boston U
Brandeis
Case Western
U of Chicago
Columbia
Emory
Miami U (Ohio)
Northwestern
Rutgers
Notre Dame
U of Pennsylvania
SUNY New Paltz
U of Pittsburgh
U of Oregon
Ohio State
USC
U of Wisconsin
U of Vermont
Syracuse
NYU
U of Rochester
STanford
Tufts
Tulane
Vandervilt
UVA
Wake Forest
Yale</p>
<p>I think that choosing a college based on some ranking of bread and butter departments like econ, poli sci, or psych is a flawed strategy. It's a bit like asking which grocery store has good eggs and milk.</p>
<p>However, if you insist on statistics, then here is one small piece of the puzzle. The following list totals the PhDs awarded in Psych over the most recent ten-year period for each undergrad college in the NSF database. Then divide the total PhDs for each college by the current undergrad enrollment so that you have a nominal measure across schools of different sizes.</p>
<p>Here are the first 50 and ties followed by the number of Psych PhDs over the ten-year period per 1000 undergrads of current enrollment. I think it's safe to assume that all 50 of these schools have solid Psych departments, a reasonably high percentage of psych majors, and a reasonably high percentage of students interested in pursuing the kinds of academic/research careers where a PhD would be useful. Many of these schools also have extremely high rates of med school placements.</p>
<p>1 Pomona College 48
2 Swarthmore College 47
3 Barnard College 45
4 Vassar College 43
5 Wesleyan University 42
6 Wellesley College 39
7 Smith College 36
8 Bryn Mawr College 36
9 Williams College 36
10 Brandeis University 35
11 Brown University 34
12 Pitzer College 34
13 Haverford College 34
14 Clark University 33
15 Oberlin College 32
16 Duke University 32
17 Grinnell College 31
18 Yale University 31
19 Tufts University 31
20 Carleton College 30
21 University of Rochester 30
22 Amherst College 30
23 St John's College (Annapolis, MD) 27
24 Hamilton College 27
25 Spelman College 27
26 Kalamazoo College 27
27 Davidson College 26
28 Drew University 26
29 Mills College 26
30 Birmingham Southern College 25
31 Rhodes College 25
32 Union College (Schenectady, NY) 24
33 Kenyon College 24
34 Emory University 24
35 Hendrix College 24
36 Cornell University, All Campuses 24
37 University of Pennsylvania 24
38 Bates College 23
39 Mount Holyoke College 23
40 Stanford University 23
41 Southwestern University 23
42 Harvard University 23
43 Trinity University 23
44 Denison University 22
45 Austin College 22
46 Franklin and Marshall College 22
47 University of Chicago 22
48 Scripps College 22
49 Connecticut College 22
50 Reed College 21
51 Sarah Lawrence College 21
52 Occidental College 21
53 Allegheny College 21</p>
<p>interesteddad, that's amazing. where did you get this info?</p>
<p>The National Science Foundation has maintained a database of every PhD/Doctoral degree recepient in the United States since 1920, including the undergrad college. Their database is available on web and can be broken down by field of study. You can perform custom searches and then download the results to an Excel spreadsheet.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the NSF database does not include professional degrees: MDs, Law degrees, etc. </p>
<p>PhD production tends to favor certain types of schools, specifically schools with an "academic" focus, as the main career paths for PhDs are scientific research, academia, think-tanks, public policy, etc. Thus, academic-oriented schools tend to show up on the PhD production lists at a higher rate than "pre-professional" oriented schools. For example, U Chicago consistently shows up higher than a Duke or a Northwestern.</p>
<p>The large state universities don't fare well on this per capita lists simply because, of their huge undergrad populations, only a small sub-set of the students would be aiming towards an academic career.</p>
<p>To me, the best use of these lists is to broaden the search: finding schools that you may not have thought of, especially some schools that are a little easier to get into but still produce future PhDs at a high rate. </p>
<p>This Psych list is a little atypical compared to most fields. Some of the LAC names show up consistently across the board, but usually you see Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford towards the top as well. And, of course, in the sciences and engineering, MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd are near the top.</p>
<p>It looks like Pomona has the best psych program, because it's a small school and still has a bunch of Psych PhDs. Would I be correct in that assumption?</p>
<p>
[quote]
It looks like Pomona has the best psych program, because it's a small school and still has a bunch of Psych PhDs. Would I be correct in that assumption?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>it probably has an excellent psych program. This is no way to judge "the best" however.</p>
<p>Since you aspire to get an MD, the number of students who become PhDs in Psychology may not be your best criterion.</p>
<p>Stanford has the best psychology program in the U.S.-for undergrad or grad. Period. Many, many major psychology experiments took place at Stanford- take Zimbardo and Bandura as examples. Even ignoring rankings (which I distrust), Stanford has made way too many contributions to psychology to be ignored. </p>
<p>That said, Davidson College has an excellent psychology program, as well as a lot of emphasis on cognitive psych/neuroscience. Michigan also has a good psych program.</p>
<p>I would NOT recommend Bryn Mawr to any student who is serious about psychology.</p>
<p>You would know Bryn Mawr a heck of a lot better than I would. But they only produce 950% more Ph.D.s in psychology per student attending than Harvard, so maybe it is the lack of seriousness that produces results. ;)</p>
<br>
<p>950% more Ph.D.s in psychology per student attending than Harvard</p>
<br>
<p>36 per 1000 is 950% greater than 23 per 1000? Perhaps you should become more serious in your study of mathematics.</p>
<p>I said "per student attending". Perhaps I might interest you in some remedial reading? ;)</p>
<p>But, more seriously, I can easily imagine your having a horrible time in a small department with profs you don't like, or interests that are not shared. Can happen at any LAC. But, if it is so horrible, to what do you attribute Bryn Mawr's relative (to Harvard, and all the Ivies) success?</p>
<br>
<p>I said "per student attending".</p>
<br>
<p>So did I. According to interesteddad's numbers, Bryn Mawr produces 36 psychology PhD's per 1000 students attending, and Harvard 23 per 1000 students attending. If you want to move the decimal place and measure "per student" rather than per 1000 students, you get .0036 and .0023. Can you explain to me how this results in 950% more at Bryn Mawr "per student"?</p>
<p>Apologies - you are correct - I thought it was the number of Ph.D's produced. I'm the one who needs the remedial reading. So it's 56.5% higher. Still, that's a huge differential.</p>
<p>Most top schools have really cool Psych programs, but someone I know got to work on a really cool experiment at Stanford with some real famous professor...so I guess Stanford is amazing at psych, atleast for PhD's</p>
<p>At undergrad, I think most top uni's have good psych departments that can be a good springboard into a career</p>