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