Psychology
Human behavior, cognition, mental health, and developmental psychology.
Who It's For
You are deeply curious about why people think, feel, and behave the way they do. If you enjoy asking questions about human nature, are comfortable with research methods and statistics, and want to understand everything from mental illness to decision-making, psychology is a fascinating and broad major. Students who are empathetic, analytically minded, and enjoy reading research do well.
If you expect psychology to be purely about counseling and therapy, the required statistics, research methods, and neuroscience courses may surprise you. Students who dislike writing research papers or find data analysis tedious should be aware these are major components of the degree.
How Your High School Classes Connect
How much each subject matters in this degree
Common Coursework
Survey perception, memory, development, personality, and mental health across the lifespan.
Run t-tests, ANOVAs, and correlations to analyze data from behavioral experiments.
Design experiments, surveys, and observational studies to test psychological hypotheses.
Trace how thinking, personality, and social skills change from infancy through old age.
Study how people influence each other — conformity, persuasion, prejudice, and group behavior.
Investigate how people perceive, remember, think, and solve problems in their minds.
Explore how the brain, hormones, and genetics produce behavior, emotion, and cognition.
Study psychological disorders — anxiety, depression, schizophrenia — their symptoms, causes, and treatments.
Compare theories of personality — traits, psychoanalytic, humanistic — and how personality is measured.
Trace psychology's evolution from philosophy through behaviorism, cognitive science, and neuroscience.
Study classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and cognitive models of how animals and humans learn.
Study how the brain processes visual, auditory, and tactile information from the environment.
Common Next Steps
Brightest = most common path
Top Colleges for Psychology
Related Careers
Primary Path
Also Common
Job Market Outlook
Explore Career Paths
Interactive map showing how Psychology connects to 11+ careers
Is Psychology right for you?
Take our free 20-minute assessment to find out if psychology matches your personality, interests, and strengths.
Take the Free Assessment