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MA Advising / Forms > Registration & Schedules
Planning Your Program
Here are the courses that you will need to graduate and our suggestions about when to take them:
- Psych 702 - Proseminar: First or second semester
- Psych 705 - Statistics: First semester
- Psych 747 - Experimental: Second semester
- Psych 707 - Thesis Research: Third semester
In addition, you have to satisfy the breadth requirement, write up your thesis in APA format, and take an oral examination on the thesis.
Ideal first semester: take the Proseminar and Statistics, along with an elective. The Proseminar is given every semester, so you can wait a semester if your schedule is crowded. But Statistics is only offered in the Fall, so take it at the first opportunity.
The Proseminar is taught separately by three faculty members. Each professor takes 5 classes and usually has one or two guest lecturers from the Hunter College faculty. The fifth class in each third of the course is usually an exam. The course covers a broad variety of topics, including cognitive science, social psychology, and neuroscience. It is a good course to take right away because it introduces you to current work in psychology and introduces you to research and scholarship ongoing at Hunter. This will be a help when you start planning your thesis work.
Statistics is taught in the Fall semester; it covers basic and advanced topics in data analysis and teaches some common statistical analyses via computer. This course is a prerequisite for Experimental Psychology, which is offered in the Spring semester. The Experimental course will help you design your thesis research so that your data can be properly analyzed.
In addition to the four courses listed above, you also will want to be sure that you meet the breadth requirement. Our goal is for you to have an excellent background in psychology so that you will be able to have maximum flexibility post-MA, whether that will be going on to a Ph.D. program or finding a rewarding job. The catalogue lists the three main areas in which you must take at least one course.
To find out what services are available for students, access the following web page: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/Services_for_Students/services_for_students.shtml
Email, the Internet, and Computer Programs
If you already have an email account, feel free to stay with it. But you can also have a Hunter College account. You should definitely have an account somewhere and check it frequently. More and more, faculty and students use email to communicate. Some faculty send group messages to students in their courses. The MA office will also email you from time to time. If you want a Hunter email account, use the web to register for one: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/Services_for_Students/Web_E-mail/web_e-mail.shtml . You can also go in person to ICIT on the 10th floor of the North Building.
If you do not already know the basics of the Internet, uploading and downloading, sending and receiving attachments, using electronic spreadsheets, and so on, this is a good time to acquire that information.
Library and Computer Facilities
The Hunter College Library has a good selection of books, journals, and on-line databases which you will find very helpful in doing library research for your courses and for background for your thesis. As soon as you have your ID, get to know the library. You might start by learning how to use InfoPsyc, the psychology article and book data base. You can look up the faculty and see what they’ve written lately.
Research Opportunities
The Hunter College Psychology Department has a faculty which is actively involved in research . Many faculty welcome students into their research projects. It is a good experience for the student because it helps prepare you for your thesis, helps prepare you for a Ph.D. program, and helps prepare you for work that you might want to do after your MA. If you already have laboratory research experience, you might be able to get a job as a research assistant.
If you don't have any experience, think about enrolling in Psych 690, Independent Study. To do that, you need written agreement from one of the faculty that they will sponsor you. Depending on the faculty member, 690 might be the possibility of running an experiment that you have designed, serving as a member of the faculty's research team, or doing background library research in order to develop an experiment. Work this out ahead of time with the faculty member so that you both know what the expectations are in terms of what the end product will be and in terms of how much time you will spend per week.
Don't let the fact that you've never done empirical research hold you back from trying it out. Check out our leaflet on the faculty and their areas of interest as well as the research lab information on our website.
