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For a complete list of FAQ, see the
undergraduate handbook.
Registration & Add/Drop Forms
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 (PDF) 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.
Degree Sheet & Sr. Exit Survey
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 & Resources 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.
Get Involved with Research
Make an appointment with a professor you would like to
work with, and just ask. Professors doing research want students to work
with them. Inspect
the list of
faculty research areas in the student handbook or on this website.
These should give you some idea of who is doing what. Several members of the
faculty are affiliated with research laboratories and
centers. An interest in a professor's area of
specialization and some prior reading
are useful but not always necessary. In some areas, special knowledge is
required (e.g., statistics or experimental design). In most areas,
professors are able to provide on-the-job training. After a course in the
area of expertise of a professor, a student is in a good position to help on
research, especially if the student has done well in the course. Sometimes
a professors research group is full, so if your request gets a "no thanks"
from Professor A, ask someone else in the department or ask Professor A at a
later time. For further information, visit our section on
Research FAQs.
Independent Study
Students interested in doing any form of independent
study (including Senior Honors Thesis) must find a supervising full-time
faculty member in the Psychology Department with whom they would be
interested in doing research with and get their approval before registering
for the course. In addition, students must complete an Independent Study
Form that can be
downloaded from this site (PDF),
filled out on-line (PDF), or picked up in the Psychology Department office, in addition to
registering for the course via SIS. For more information on independent
study, view the undergraduate Honors page.
Senior Honors Thesis
Students interested in doing a Senior Honors Thesis must
find a supervising faculty member and complete an Independent Study Form
that can be
downloaded from this site (PDF),
filled out on-line (PDF), or picked up in the Psychology Department office, in addition to
registering for the course (PSY
199) via SIS. Those registering for
PSY 199 must also fill out a form which can be picked up in Carol
Downings office in Dowling Hall. For more information on writing a Senior
Honors Thesis, view the undergraduate Thesis page.
Apply for Membership in Psi Chi
If you would like to be considered for membership in Psi
Chi please complete either Application Form 1 or Form 2 which can be found
in the Psychology Department, 490 Boston Ave. Return the completed form and
any required supporting materials to the mailbox of
Professor Joe DeBold in the Psychology Department by October 1
for Fall semester induction and February 1 for Spring semester
induction. For further information on eligibility criteria,
click here.
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