Contact your professor early to avoid any last minute problems. If your advisor/professor is unavailable to clear you for registration or sign your forms, another full-time faculty member in the department can clear you IF you have contacted your advisor by e-mail before your registration date or add/drop deadline and at least 24 hours prior to seeking any other full-time faculty member for their approval.  Bring the e-mail with you for verification that your professor has been notified.

Add/Drop forms can be obtained at Student Services Dowling Hall.

Selecting or Switching your Advisor & Declaring your Major

You may select any full-time faculty member to serve as your advisor. Some students ask a professor who has previously taught them in class; some students select a professor with research interests compatible with their own. However, there is no requirement that your advisor be someone who has taught you before or with whom you share particular interests. 

Keep in mind that Psychology is an extremely popular major. It is very possible that the first faculty members you ask to advise you will not be able to do so because they are unable to take on additional students. Do not take this personally! Our faculty size is actually smaller than some departments with far fewer undergraduate majors, and some faculty members already have 30, 40, or even more advisees. You may need to contact more than one (or two!) faculty members before successfully finding an advisor. It is therefore a good idea to start this process as early as you can (or as soon as you decide you want to major in Psychology). E-mailing a potential advisor is certainly a good place to start, but you might also consider making use of the posted list of faculty office hours (Click Here) to follow up your electronic request in person.

When you have succeeding in finding an advisor, you must formalize this relationship by having your new advisor sign the blue advising form available in Dowling Hall or in the bookshelf next to the elevator in the Departmental Lobby.  You should then bring this signed form to Cynthia Goddard so she can make a copy of it and add you to our official Departmental records.  Of course, you will also need to obtain a signature from your old advisor (if you are declaring Psychology as your first major), and then submit the completed form to Dowling Hall.

Statistics - What counts? 

Double majors in Psychology and Mathematics can take Math 162 (Statistics) instead of Psychology 31.  The Department does not accept the Statistics AP as a substitute for Psychology 31.  Students who are double majoring in Psychology and Economics use Econ 13 (Economics Statistics) as a substitute for Psychology 31; these students should bear should bear in mind that their stats course likely did not cover analysis of variance (ANOVA), a technique with which they will need to familiarize themselves before taking PSY 32 and the advanced lab.  Biopsychology majors may use either BIO 132 or PSY 31 to fulfill their statistics requirement.

Only statistics courses taken in a psychology department and which include at least one week of coverage of ANOVA can be transferred as PSY 31.  A one-semester course that is a mixture of methods and stats does not cover either topic thoroughly enough to receive transfer of credit for either PSY 31 or 32.  A two-semester combination course may be able to transfer as PSY 31 credit only, pending review of the syllabus.

Transfer of Credit

To petition for transfer of credit, students must access the Student Services WebCenter site and complete the transfer of credit request form. Students will not receive an immediate decision on their transfer of credit request; such requests often take up to a month to process and no action will be taken on a request if a web-link to the full course description is not provided using WebCenter. If no web-link can be found, or if the course's description is in a foreign language, then a hard copy may be submitted instead (translated into English if necessary).

The Department will NOT approve transfer of credit for PSY 32 or the advanced laboratory, as these courses must be taken at Tufts in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. Courses taken for a grade in a non-Tufts program abroad can be counted towards the major with approval from the Transfer of Credit committee, as these are not technically pass-fail courses even though no grade is listed for them on a Tufts transcript. For more information on study abroad, click here.

To apply for transfer of credit for a Related Field course, students must go through WebCenter and specify a course from the official related fields list in the Undergraduate Handbook. It is up to the department in question to approve this petition. In other words, if a student takes a course abroad that she believes is comparable to SOC 141, she must use WebCenter to petition the Tufts Sociology Department to approve the credit for SOC 141. A non-specific Sociology credit is not sufficient; if that is all that Sociology is willing to grant, the student must then follow the procedure detailed in the Undergraduate Handbook (p. 6) for petitioning the Psychology Department regarding a non-listed Related Field course.

Seniors who are graduating must fill out a degree sheet, a major concentration form, and a Senior Exit Survey which are available online in the Forms & Guides section or in the Psychology Department.  Once   your advisor signs the degree sheet and the major concentration form, you should submit the forms to the staff assistant, Cynthia Goddard, Room 101, in the Psychology Department.  She will obtain the signature of the Chair of the Department.  You will receive an e-mail when your degree sheet is ready to be picked up and brought to Student Services, Dowling Hall.  Please bring your completed Senior Exit Survey with you when picking up your forms.