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Psychology

For additional information on Psychology at UC Merced, please visit the Psychology website.

Overview

Psychology is a social science that helps students better understand and interpret scientific information and ways to apply quantitative tools such as statistics. Psychology is often of inherent interest to students.

Taking a psychology minor provides an interesting exposure to novel and exciting ideas that students would not otherwise encounter and can be of great use to students who are majoring in other fields. For example, students taking a pre-med curriculum find a psychology minor useful for understanding the social and psychological aspects of medical care or as preparation for a career in psychiatry. Students in management and economics find coursework in social psychology, decision-making and organizational and industrial psychology to be of particular use to their careers.

Program Learning Outcomes

Students who complete the Psychology major and minor will:

  1. Show knowledge of the key substantive content of the field of psychology, including memory and thinking, sensory psychology and physiology, developmental psychology, clinical and abnormal psychology, and social psychology;
  2. Demonstrate that they understand the basic principles of and correctly interpret applications of the designs and methods that psychologists use to gather data;
  3. Show that they can understand and correctly interpret the statistical analyses psychologists use to analyze data; and
  4. Show that they understand and can apply the writing style used in psychological literature (APA style).

Alumni Success

Student graduates from our program are engaging in graduate studies and careers. A few of these after-college endeavors are listed below.

Graduate School

Student graduates from the Psychology program are studying at the University of California, Berkeley; Pepperdine University; Yale University; California State University campuses at Northridge and Long Beach; and the University of North Carolina.

Careers

Student graduates from the Psychology program are working in a variety of professional settings including county and state medical and mental health agencies, university administration offices and community groups providing social services.

Updated 2021