GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY LAB
CAREERS AND EDUCATION

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There are diverse ways your education in psychology can serve you. If you are looking for a career in management, in human resources, in education, in marketing, and in many other areas, a psychology background can be useful. If you are interested in going to graduate school in psychology, it’s pretty obvious that you need to be prepared with some knowledge of psychology. An important consideration is that you prepare yourself well as an undergraduate for your future.

In the workplace, most positions of responsibility are going to require you to be able to communicate well, including numerical literacy. You need to be able to translate numbers into comprehensible words. You may also need to determine the needs of your organization, which requires basic research skills. You will probably need to interact with diverse people, for which courses in Social Psychology and Cross-Cultural Psychology can be important.

In many cases, employers are not interested in your major specifically. They want people who can communicate well, who have technical skills, who can work in a team, and who have completed projects.

If you are interested in graduate study in psychology, you will be competing with others for a limited number of positions. It isn’t unusual for a graduate program in clinical psychology to receive 500 applications when they will accept maybe 5 students. You have to do something to make yourself stand out if you are going to be one of those five.

Lab Exercise

Careers

1. Identify two career areas in psychology that would interest you and find two divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) that could relate to your career interests. You can refer to the APA web site for a listing of its divisions, which relate to the varied areas of psychology:

http://www.apa.org/about/division.html

2. Identify the skills that you need to have for a career in your area of interest. You can get a general sense of what skills employers are looking for by going to the links on the General Psychology Lab web site. What are the specific skills that relate to your potential career choices?

3. Find three courses in psychology and two courses in another department at Ithaca College that will help you move toward your career choice. Explain why these courses will help you.

Graduate School

4. Find a graduate program in some area of psychology (e.g., Clinical psychology, counseling psychology, experimental psychology, human factors, organizational psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, etc.). Identify the following elements regarding what they require or recommend for acceptance into their graduate program.
What school and what degree?
Undergraduate GPA
Courses required at the undergraduate level
Other requirements for admission (letters of recommendation, internships, etc.)
Average and/or minimum scores on the GRE

5. Find four courses in psychology and two courses outside of psychology that would prepare you for graduate work in psychology in the program you’ve identified. Explain why they would help you get into the graduate program of your choice.

Homework Assignment

1. Identify the APA divisions related to your career interests and describe why those divisions are relevant.

2. Identify five courses (3 in psychology and 2 outside psychology) that would help prepare you for your career. Identify five courses (3 in psychology and 2 outside psychology) that would help prepare you for the graduate program you’ve identified. Explain why they would help you develop the skills and knowledge needed for your choices..

3. Describe what experiences outside of the classroom at Ithaca College can help prepare you for your career and a graduate school choice?