Should I major in psychology?

should you major in psychology is a psychology degree worth it or is it useless what can you do with a psychology degree and can you find a job with it I'm gonna answer all of these questions in this video and help you decide if a psychology undergraduate degree is the right fit for you hi I'm clinical psychologist Dr. Ali Mattu I was a psychology major at UCLA then I got a PhD in clinical psychology and eventually became an assistant professor at Columbia University I've mentored a lot of undergraduate university students some into pursuing psychology as a major and some out of pursuing psychologist major I'm gonna help you figure out what path is right for you in this video but before I get to that I need to share my origin story with you the year is 2001 I almost flunked out of high school I got rejected from every college I applied to so I came here to De Anza Community College and the very first class I have on my very first day of my first semester is introductory psychology I actually take it right over here in Forum 1 the classroom right here professor Wendell Gosling taught this class and I remember I sat all the way in the back because I thought this class would be total BS actually let me see it's actually open and oh my gosh this is it this was my classroom i sat I sat in the back right over here and then as the semester went on I went closer and closer all the way to the front of the class I was hooked and I wanted to take every single psychology class I possibly could each class I took completely changed the way I saw everything around me gave me felt like it gave me the superpower like I saw relationships and my own thoughts and situations completely differently and it was answering all these questions are I always had about humanity and our species and why we do the things we do comment below if this is anything like your story at all or why you discovered psychology and love psychology this is why I think psychology is such a popular major it's because the more you study it the better you understand yourself the better you understand the relationships in your life the situation's you're in and I had no clue what I was going to do with this major but what I knew is for the I was having a ton of fun taking his classes I was learning a lot for the first time in my life I was a good student and I'd figure out the career opportunities job prospects I'll figure that all that stuff out later I need to interrupt right here because that is a big problem in psychology a lot of psychology majors make the decision to major in psychology based upon their early psychology classes but early psychology classes are very seductive they're like the best hits of psychology and these classes are actually a lot easier than the classes you would have later on in the major why is that? it's because psychology is so popular interest psych courses are huge moneymakers for universities they're filled with 50 80 100 sometimes 150 sometimes way more than that students and as a professor when I have taught those classes all I can really do is have big multiple choice exams and maybe a little bit of an essay you don't really go that in-depth I can't do that thorough of assessment of my students understanding of the material and the material is also very surface level in those early classes again it's like the best hits of psychology the real reality of being a psychology major doesn't hit you until much later that's when you have to take the harder classes you might have to take a bio psychological class statistics in psychology and that's also when you'll probably get real exposure to career opportunities in psychology's so let me let's go outside I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the reality I want you to imagine that this bicycle wheel is a psychology major and right at the core of it is psychology the scientific study of thoughts feelings and behavior everything goes around psychology but psychology is very diverse you actually are studying a little bit of many subfields within psychology stuff like cognitive psychology which is all about thoughts and memories and how we process information biological psychology which connects biology and psychology together understanding the nervous system and how it works developmental psychology which is about how do we change as we get older social psychology which is all about how social contexts influence what we think and how we act then there's clinical psychology which looks more at what happens when things go wrong and people start to experience problems in their functioning and how do we treat those problems I should have kind of put these around more but this is basically psychology and when you're majoring in psychology you get a little bit of all of these there's a lot more subfields I didn't include them all but what unites these things together what unites psychology is theory you learn the biggest ideas in psychology you learn science how is the scientific method applied in psychology along with that comes ethics you learn a lot about shady psychological experiments that were done and how we now aspire to do these experiments in an ethical way along with that comes critical thinking skills being able to look at research and evaluate what part of it makes sense what part of it doesn't what's correlation what's causation it helps you to be able to think through all these things and you also learn the critical skill of communication learning how to communicate your thoughts in a written form in a social form through teamwork and then also through a written teamwork I guess orally into through presenting and all this is psychology and a psych major will develop these these skills and this is what makes psychology a liberal arts degree because you're learning basic skills that you can use to apply to a lot of different things this is also what makes psychology good training for going into further study in psychology a pre-professional psychology major because you can go into any of these subfields after you've majored in psychology but psychology is also a hub science what that means is psychology is connected to many other different sciences and other fields so people in other fields often cite psychological research in their work some of those fields include marketing and business artificial oh no there goes science no science is a core we need science in psychology artificial intelligence and sociology my model's breaking apart public health neuroscience maybe that science dropping is symbolic of the replication crisis in psychology but that's a whole nother video psychiatry education nursing anthropology and now we lost cognitive psychology psychology is a hub science it's connected to many other fields it's one of seven hub sciences that have been identified and so it's like this is what makes psychology good for individuals who want to go into other fields but here's the problem with psychology it's both liberal arts and a science but there's no clear direction to psychology majoring in psychology is not a road that leads you to one destination majoring in psychology it's it's a wheel that brings lots of different information together but you will never become an expert in any one of these things by majoring in psychology you will get exposure to lots of different things and what will unite it is that understanding of science ethics theory communication critical thinking those are the things that you are gonna gain from majoring in psychology alright my models falling apart and it's getting pretty cold so let's go back inside let's get back to that original question should you major in psychology well there's a few different types of students who major in psychology and let's go through each of those different categories the first category is someone who knows they need graduate training in psychology to do the thing that they want to do these are usually scientists people who want to become scientists or people who want to become some type of mental health practitioner so if you're in that category and you know you're gonna have to go to graduate school awesome major in psychology watch this video right here for all my tips on how to major in psychology and make the most of the time that you have in that major and as soon as possible start getting experience in a lab where you're getting hands-on research experience start getting clinical experience by working in a hospital or volunteering for some type of psychology clinic get training doing a suicide hotline those kind of experiences and yeah major in psychology awesome do it the second category is someone who knows that they're gonna get more education after a bachelor's degree but it might not necessarily be in a psychology field so these tend to be pre professional students people who want to go into dentistry people who want to go into law people who want to become physicians go to med school if you're in this category psychology can be an awesome degree to pursue number one if you love it and enjoy it you're probably gonna get a good GPA and that's going to increase your chances of getting into one of those professional schools number two you're gonna have to do pre-law pre-dentistry pre-med classes anyways and it kind of doesn't matter what you major in yeah in some situations certain majors might be easier for you if you also have to do that pre pre-med pre-dentistry pre-law coursework but pursue whatever it is that you're interested in do those requirements and move forward and take those exams that you have to take if you want to go into one of those fields that's connected to psychology in that hub diagram I showed you earlier then psychology could be a good degree to pursue more likely it's probably gonna be a better double major to pursue it kind of depends on how much training how much education you need it in those other fields so you want to talk to advisors in those other fields and find out what you need how much training what kind of experiences you need to get the type of jobs you want in those fields and then think if psychology is a good primary major or maybe a secondary major a double major to pursue for that career path but if you're watching this video you probably don't fall into any of the categories I've already outlined because psychology is a no brainer in these situations it's the clear major you should pursue if you're watching this video you probably want to be done with school when you graduate with your undergraduate degree you are interested in psychology but you don't know what the career opportunities are if you graduate with that degree so let's figure that out the first thing you need to know is unemployment rates for psychology majors are about the same as majors in other liberal arts degrees and also in other sciences so there's nothing unique about psychology that makes you more or less competitive in the workforce what then separates people who are successful psychology majors versus those who really struggle to find a job here's the secret getting real-world experience right now when you are in college that gives you an opportunity to practice and apply and sell your psychological knowledge some of my students have interned in journalism in advertising artificial intelligence user interface and design and through these different experiences they're able to learn is this a career path I'm interested in what does it take to succeed in this career path and how do I apply psychology to this different environment if you don't want to do that if you don't want to do a lot of trial and error while you're in college and get mentorship from different people to figure out is this a career path for me then psychology is the wrong major for you because there's no clear next step after you graduate for a job in psychology it's both a liberal arts degree as well as a pre professional degree but there's no clear path forward it's this weird hub that's connected to lots of different things if you want that don't major in psychology or make psychology your second major instead pursue something where there is a very clear-cut next path but if you're okay with that if you're okay with pursuing psychology trying out different things while you're still in college then psychology can be awesome and we need so many more people who have a firm foundation in psychological science being ambassadors for psychology in a wide variety of fields I want to encourage you to do that I also want you to be realistic and know what it takes to succeed if you decided to major in psychology definitely pick up a copy of the psychology major's companion and watch my video on tips for majoring in psychology got links to both of those in the description below and I want to hear from you what questions do you have about majoring in psychology let me know in the comments below if you want to join our mighty psyche community go ahead and hit that subscribe button I make videos about psychology and mental health you're gonna find career stuff you're gonna find reactions lots of different fun stuff so definitely check out the channel and thank you to Pedro for providing the comment of the week

Channel: Doctor Ali Mattu

Views: 567,999

Keywords: ali mattu, psychology, the psych show, Should I major in psychology?, Is a psychology degree worth it?, Is psychology useless?, What can I do with a psychology degree?, Can I get a job as a psychology major?, Is majoring in psychology right for me, psychology major careers, is psychology a good major, is psychology right for me, how do i know if psychology is right for me, majoring in psychology, psychology major, psychology degree, careers in psychology, is psychology hard

Id: S2CdeuG1STE

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020