Psychology, General (MA)

What is A Psychology, General (MA) Degree?

Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processing–the mind.  It’s a field that people really enjoy studying because what’s not to like about basically learning about you?!  The field has a very broad application, even though many people think it’s mainly about counseling people and helping them with their problems.  Psychology is a science—a young one compared to physics and chemistry—because it uses established research methods in its quest to understand why people behave the way they do and think the way they do.

An MA degree program in General Psychology may have a lot of flexibility in selection of courses, partly depending on whether the student will go on to doctoral work or enter a professional field with the MA as a terminal degree.  Terminal Master’s degree students (those who will go into professional work requiring the MA) will complete skills courses that will be used in their teaching, therapy, or counseling work along with some type of thesis or internship project.  Those MA students preparing to go on to earn a doctoral level degree will spend more time in research design and analysis emphasizing the more clinical aspects of the field in preparation to move on to do research at the PhD or PsyD level, often in the same school of study.

The videos below discuss “typical” programs, so they should help regardless of which school you are considering.