 I want to thank you all for being here today and you're in for a special treat. I'm so pleased to welcome Kerry Perry from the University of Washington. Kerry is the Academic Services Director in the Psychology Department, which is going to talk about the requirements you need by admission, all the good stuff and answer questions for you, okay? The one thing I want to say is that Kerry has to leave by 2.20, so if you have questions, you can write it down so that you can ask her and we need to get her out of here by 2.20, okay? So have you all said, ready to hear from the expert? All right. Hi, everyone. I know everyone's got the cookies in their mouth there. So I will say that I have handouts for Suvai as well as business cards and so if you think of a question later that I didn't answer or we don't have time, you know, feel free to email me directly or give me a call and I'm happy to talk with you later. We also are always really happy to have students come visit us in the psych department. I know some departments don't kind of have the capacity to see prospective students but we definitely do and would love to see you as soon as you're thinking that you want to be there. UW does run every Thursday, transfer Thursdays in the afternoon and it's sort of a combination of, you know, hearing from admissions and then financial aid and then we have an individual psych session every Thursday at 3.30 that kind of follows that directly. So you're always welcome to come to that or to make an individual appointment. We're happy to see you anytime. So I have a bunch of things that I always, you know, try to cover. So I'll be checking my little list now and then. One thing I would say kind of at the outset is sometimes we end up kind of veering a little bit into people asking a lot of questions about getting into graduate school. So I probably ask that just for the sake of time that we just kind of think mostly about undergraduate right now I'll touch a little bit on how our program prepares you for different kinds of graduate programs. But, you know, we'll go with this step for now. But again, you know, you've got more questions and you want to follow up with me. Happy to do that. So it's so gorgeous out today. I think last year when I came it was raining, I'm pretty sure. But it's just, it's beautiful. And I always joke that, you know, if I had like a little power boat I could be here like that because if you look across the water to Vashon Island, you're, we're directly across here from Point Robinson and if you could get out of your little boat at Point Robinson and walk a mile and a half up the road, that's where I live. So I, you know, I was looking at the kind of map quest today and so I always try to remember which streets to turn on. And it's like, okay, there's this point that I'm at, there's this point I'm going to and this is how you get there. So it's always a fun little trip to come over. So I, you know, as soon as I said I've been at the university for a very long time in the site department for a very long time. So I'm going to cover kind of some of the basics about what our program's like, how it's set up and admission requirements to the major, kind of the things that you can be doing here at Highline to, you know, when you transfer to kind of be as ready as possible to get into the major. And definitely, you know, I would say as we go along if you have questions, just, you know, shout them out or raise your hand or, you know, whatever works for you just so we make sure we get to cover them. So we do, we are one of the largest majors on campus. We have usually about a thousand undergraduate majors in psychology, so we're, you know, a little bit behind biology, but other than that I think in the College of Arts and Sciences we're maybe second largest, huge. Wonderful faculty who are most of them doing current, you know, really unedged research and so you're having the opportunity to both take classes from them and also to work with them as part of their research teams. They, almost all of our research labs will take on undergraduate students to work with them for anywhere from one to three or more quarters and so it's a great way to get to see, you know, the inner workings of a research lab and look at how things are studied from that perspective and I think that's something that as a huge, you know, research one institution that makes us unique and it's, you know, you get the bigness which is sometimes a downside but you also get, you know, a really huge range of opportunities to get involved and learn things from different perspectives. We do have faculty who are doing work in, try to remember all the areas in animal behavior, behavioral neuroscience, adult and child clinical psychology, child development, cognition and perception, social and personality, a couple of people in quantitative psychology and I feel like I'm missing one but I think that's mainly it so those, all of those areas are represented in our undergraduate curriculum to one extent or another and so there is a good opportunity to, while we don't have specialized tracks within the major, students often do end up kind of creating their own if they've got, let's say, a particular interest in cognition and perception, they're going to take our core level course, move on to more advanced upper division courses and perhaps do research or field work in the community related to that. What we do have in the way of tracks is we offer both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science and I think people often hear the word science and imagine chemistry and biology and our Bachelor of Science is really, has a much heavier quantitative emphasis so you're going to do math through the calculus level, you're going to do a more in depth two quarter statistics series, there'll be a requirement to do undergraduate research, it's mainly the aim of that track is to prepare students best who want to perhaps go on to research oriented graduate programs in psychology so you get that stronger foundation of analysis and research. We have though, you know, over the years I'm sure if you look around in the community you look at the companies that are hiring and what they're hiring and everything is very data driven and so we do nowadays certainly have a number of our students who choose our Bachelor of Science track, not so much because they want to go into a research PhD insight but because they want to get that stronger foundation in quantitative and data analysis so that can be a reason to do that. I would say a little bit fewer than a third of our students do the Bachelor of Science the others do the Bachelor of Arts. Both will prepare you very well for graduate programs in particular in applied psychology areas like social services, social work, counseling therapy, so I think students here very often kind of blanket statements when they get to UDUB about if you want to go to graduate school you need to get a Bachelor of Science, not true. So remember you heard that here. Is that true? Not true. So definitely not. It's just that if you do want to go the research route the BS is probably a little bit stronger foundation. There's about a 25 credit difference between those two tracks and so a reason to perhaps choose a Bachelor of Arts over the Bachelor of Science is that it frees up 25 credits to you know sort of spend in another way so you can spend that maybe with a second major, a minor by earning credit for field work or research studying abroad so there are a lot of reasons to think carefully about that choice and I think in particular when you're coming in as a transfer student and in most cases you're coming in at the start of your junior year and so many people would like in those circumstances to only spend two years finishing that undergraduate degree and so that you know means really careful thought about how to prepare. Really the label BABS itself isn't going to matter. It's more if you're applying to a research focus graduate program what you want to present to that program as the candidate is a really in-depth research experience and you want to be very strong in the quantitative areas. To some extent they'll look for that but more than that our graduate students all tell us you know the better you are at statistics and data analysis the more you hit the ground running when you start your graduate program so it kind of just helps you. Yes? Yes. So I'll sort of move a little bit into talking about our admissions and prerequisites for our major. So some students you know more and more students now are transferring from Washington Community Colleges ready to apply to our major. Still the vast majority are not they still have you know one or two classes that they still need to take but more and more you know the community colleges are starting to offer equivalents to all of our psych courses. Highline's done that for quite some time so has been kind of leading edge on that. Those prerequisites are introsychology which definitely you have that here biopsychology some schools call it physiological psychology and psych research methods and I believe you still have all those here so if you're able to get all this done before you transfer to UW awesome if you're not you're going to get into what you still need in your first quarter we'll save spaces for you and get you in there. So don't feel like if you know you just kind of miss down on taking that class it's not going to impact your admission to UW it's not going to impact your ultimate admission to the major so we'll just take a little bit longer. So there are those three classes and then there's a math prerequisite and there are two ways you can go on this admission to the major requires math either through your I think it's your math you call it math 111 yeah either math 111 or the math 141 142 combination and math 111 transfers to UW is our math 111 math 141 142 transfers to UW as math our math 120 which is precalculus and then you get another five credits of general math credit if you before transferring have a strong notion that you're probably going to want to pursue the Bachelor of Science in Psych I would definitely suggest the 141 142 route make sure you take both of them though because to get into UW 141 alone is fine or 142 alone is fine if you test it into it but to earn the credit that you need toward the major the 120 you actually have to take both of them and then to your question about calculus if you do want to go that Bachelor of Science route and therefore are going to need calculus in order to get into our statistics classes for the Bachelor of Science then moving on to your math 151 here is the best thing to do if possible so I feel you know generally speaking that any courses that are in sequences if you can take the entire sequence at a single institution it's advantageous usually because there often is not you know real perfect articulation from one institution to another so it may be a little bit bumpy not impossible but where you can get an entire series done try to do that if possible the same and this is kind of an aside but the same actually holds true for foreign languages foreign language requirement to be admitted to UDUB is either two years of a high school language or two quarters like 101, 102 of a college language the requirement to get out of the University of Washington to graduate is either three years of a single high school language or three quarters through the third quarter first year series of the college level language so if you're in a situation where you know you're thinking okay I'm going to take through French 102 and I'm good to go to get into UDUB that's awesome you are but then you're going to have to ultimately take French 103 or Spanish 103 or whatever your language is when you're there and that just kind of adds to the you know set and stone requirements that you'd rather get done here if possible so that you can sort of sample from a wider range of choices and have more latitude in choosing your courses if you are a native speaker of another language and UDUB defines that as a language that was spoken in your home and that you were schooled in through kind of the equivalent of our seventh grade then that makes you a native speaker and that takes care of the requirement right there so if you have any questions about that you can email me or I can put you in touch with admissions if I don't know the answer so those are our prerequisites we do admit to the major every quarter including summer and admission is competitive it's not like crazy wild competitive like foster school of business and bioengineering and places you know like that but it is competitive and what we're looking at very specifically is the cumulative GPA for those three psych courses and we want that cumulative GPA to be about a 3.2 or higher we all know that people have rough quarters things go on in your life hit some bumps along the way if you have a quarter when one of those three courses just didn't really work out the way you would like you can retake that course both grades are always part of your academic record but the retake the higher grade is what we will look at so we kind of give you a do over if you need to retake that course you know I've had students retake two courses I've had students sometimes retake three courses that starts to get a little time consuming and you start to feel like there's the wall in your head and maybe you don't want to continue there and you know at that point that's where a conversation with me or one of my colleagues in psych advising would be you know is this really the route that you want to go so but we do understand certainly that people have missteps and need second chances to do things that is really that you know people will ask is there an essay, is there a statement of interest is there are there letters of recommendation required no to all of those and on the one hand you know it is a very cut and dried admission process and on the one hand that's great because you know exactly what you need to do to get in on the other hand it kind of stinks sometimes because you want to be able to explain things or you know talk about your goals and you know and have other things evaluated what I would say is I very much enjoy working with transfer students I think that it's a group that brings a tremendous amount of diversity to our university to our department and a diversity of experiences really you know I have folks who I work with who are single parents who are older students who are veterans who are international students who have been working in three or four careers already and so people are just bringing you know a real richness of experience and so I work one of my colleagues says you know too closely but I don't think that's true with our transfer students and I have a particular commitment to you because I feel like if you've put in two years of effort you've done everything you can you got into UW which is fantastic I'm going to do everything I can to help you continue along that path toward your goals so I will sometimes with our transfer students in particular with everybody but in particular transfer students I will sometimes take other things into consideration and so just know that there are humans working there in my department and I try to be that very human face when it comes to admissions and thinking about things because you know you get there maybe you still had to take a final course you're applying to the major in your second or even third quarter at UW I don't really feel like that's a time to tell you to start over with something else so feel fairly confident that I'm going to work well with you yes you still bring all the credits and so it's kind of funny you come in as a freshman and like if I look at somebody's transcript I was just looking at someone last week and we code them on the transcript they're a number one if they're freshmen 2, sophomore 3, junior 4, senior and this was a Brenny Sart student she brought 90 credits with her all of which were applying towards her ultimate credits for the degree and in that first quarter she's a 1 in her second quarter she's a 3 as a freshman and then boom you're a junior the next quarter but it is a different pool of applicants that you're part of on the point of entry to UW yeah so you get all the credits definitely other questions about that point of transfer or application or admission to the major yes basically I don't have to take anything, I just first finish those and then talk about transfer the more of those you can finish here at Highline the better if you're able to finish all those and you come to UW and you're in your first quarter you're going to apply to the major in that very first quarter so that's pretty cool so if you do miss out on one of those and you transfer in students come into UW in fall quarter when the vast majority of students transfer in or in winter quarter not in spring and you also have the option of applying for summer kind of summer slash fall for fall quarter we typically see about 85 or 90 incoming UW students who are planning to be psych majors and we work with our first year program's office to sort of design specialized orientations for those students so that they're getting orientation to the university but they're also getting a really in-depth orientation to the psychology major department you'll meet all the advisors, you'll meet some faculty some alumni, some peers who are going to be who are just like a year ahead of you in the process but who all came in as transfer students and so we try to help you from that first day that first orientation day start to form some community and find your go-to people and places because that's man, you get there and you really feel like you have to hit the ground running because you didn't have the freshman and sophomore year to sort of figure it all out so we try to do what we can to make that process more possible I also in fall quarters offer a two-credit class that is specifically for incoming transfer students this year I have 70 students in the class so they're all in their first quarter at UW most of them came from Washington community colleges and it allows them in that first quarter to take a lighter academic load for one thing because it's two credits and then if they're taking two five-credit academic classes they're at the 12 credits they need if they have financial aid or veterans benefits or international students but it also the main thing is that it gives everybody in that class a really in-depth orientation to the major the department resources available to students will spend an entire day talking about getting involved in research an entire day getting involved in field work, a day talking about study abroad a day about career development so we and through that you're working in that class with peer leaders who were in your seats the year before and with fellow first quarter transfer students so it really helps in that first quarter when you're like oh my gosh they said it was going to be different and I didn't quite see how it was going to be this different but it is there's something about the feeling of the pace and hugeness of the university and you know the overwhelming kind of feeling of trying to navigate through all of this and do it on your own so we try to give you kind of an infrastructure to help you land on your feet so those are possibilities we don't offer those things for people coming in in winter at least at this time because it's a much smaller group and so we just kind of don't have the capacity to do that but we still for incoming winter students will meet with those students individually and do individual advising sessions as part of their orientation so they're still going to get a personal welcome from us not really we admit pretty equivalent numbers of students in each of fall winter and spring we admit a much smaller group in summer and so summer is actually our super competitive quarter I mentioned before typically that cumulative GPA for fall winter and spring is going to be about a 3.2 in summer is usually about a 3.6 this past summer was a 3.8 so just to we had just like a huge number of people with tremendously high GPAs applying that quarter and not a lot of capacity so that was that was kind of horrible to write those emails say oh gosh you have a 3.7 I'm sorry that's not quite good enough but they all got in this quarter so they're all they're good, they're happy so to make sure to cover it yeah for that situation specifically the summer to fall the email that we send students is you know gosh once again our summer admissions were extremely competitive if you would like us to just sort of slide your application into the fall virtual pile let us know so you don't have to as a student do more let work on it you just need to say yes please move it on down the road so I'll talk a little bit more about some of the resources available but we'll also stop and see if folks have other questions at this time about any of the logistics yes so like classes in psychology actually so classes in the major are kind of divided into our gateway classes the 101, 202, 209 and a few other 200 level electives that are open to all students and then everything else at the 3 and 400 level is primarily majors only some of them do open up in our registration period every quarter is broken down into a couple of different portions all of our application courses are initially every quarter open only to current majors and some of them in a later registration period open up to pre majors but you can't do the major without being in the major basically so if you're not getting into the major you want to come and meet with me and see kind of what the issues are is it a pretty simple I need to retake biopsych do a little bit better and chances are great of that happening and I kind of can hit my head against the same wall and that is probably a wall that you're going to keep seeing in our classes before it goes away and so then it's just kind of a we're never going to say you cannot apply again but sometimes I'm going to say this might not be the best choice let's think about what your goals are for your life and your career and future education and is there another pathway to do that and there pretty much always is another pathway because we're not vocational technical majors so you don't come out with the stamp that says you are this or that you're not licensed to be something with the degree that we offer so there's almost always another way to get there sometimes it might work better for your learning style the way you express yourself so once in a while those conversations end up with a different path but sometimes they end up with a plan of action to continue on the path but there aren't a lot of psych courses that you can take without being in the major so getting in is important yes yeah a 3.7 student number 3.7 is for sure going to get an infall yeah absolutely and we do it's not that we have arbitrarily set this 3.2 and we actually don't have a GPA cutoff that says 3.2 we have a quota of students we can take each quarter and what we do in the summer is we look at okay we graduated 475 students last year we can take in 3,500 students this coming year and we break it down by quarter so let's say in a given quarter the quota that we're looking at is 150 students perhaps we get the applications we sort of sort them in our database by highest admission GPA to less high and go down and wherever that 150 is that's going to be that cutoff for that quarter and it has very reliably pulled into about a 3.2 so that's where that comes from we feel like shooting for that you're pretty safe yeah yes those three psychology classes specifically the math course that's the prerequisite just needs to be at least a 2.0 but it's not part of that equation which for some people that's like awesome I'm so good at math that's too bad we do have a lot of our students making the BA versus BS decision based on comfort level in math very honestly you apply to the major broadly and part of the application does ask if you intend to do the BA or BS just because we well we have to code you as one of the two when you're admitted but you can change back and forth like if you come in as a BA student then you decide you want to switch to BS you're not applying again we're just filling out a piece of paper so yeah and we do have people change more often than not they're changing from the BS to the BA at some point because they're feeling like they're running out of time or have had a change of plans in their goals but sometimes the other direction so other questions about grades or admissions yeah that's okay I assume BS but no so she's talking about she's going to be doing pre-med coursework as well as a major the range of pre-med coursework is like doing another major it's pretty similar pre-nursing pre-physical therapy is also pretty hefty pre-occupational therapy not quite as much but if you are planning to go into a health profession ultimately in a graduate program that's health profession related definitely be working very closely with your advisors here because you want to be able to start taking things that you don't want to get to you Devin now say I need to start my whole pre-med sequence that'll hurt yeah and that's a question that becomes a deciding point I think for students a lot of times and med schools don't care at all if you had a BA or BS yeah so it really doesn't matter it's not really more it's more quantitative so it's you know honestly if your aim is really going to med school BA versus BS doesn't matter so yeah and it's the same kind of issue if you want to do another major or if you want to spend two quarters studying abroad it becomes choices and you know you can either stay you'd have a little bit longer which costs a little bit more and postpones the rest of life or you can really think carefully about planning and prioritizing and making decisions about the route that you want to take and we'll help you with that that's a huge part of what we do we do a lot of the nuts and bolts of what should I be signing up for next quarter and I need to apply to graduate and all of that but the much more interesting work that we do and I think the work that is more helpful for our students is working with you individually to say okay these are my goals or these are my interests how do I sort of put together a whole portfolio that includes both my in-class academics and other experiences so that I can get to that point and so that's where we're going to talk to you about getting involved in research volunteering and interning in the community and trying things out and finding out what you like, what you don't like you know opening doors and closing doors closing the doors part is actually very valuable so and when doors get closed they're in my experience with students more often than not being closed by the student and not on the students so it's usually you know wow I thought that I really wanted to do this I've tried it out and I like this part of it but not that other stuff so I'm going to go now this way so it's fun for us and you know we can draw on the years of experience we have working with students and the connections we have in the community hopefully to help you find that path that really works well for you I'm also a super big advocate I've mentioned a few times of studying abroad UDAD has a lot of different kinds of programs if that's is that something that interests anybody a couple of people and I think a lot of times you get to UDAD and you think oh my gosh I've got two years here how can I possibly do that there are lots of ways to do it there are different kinds of programs all the way from going abroad for an entire year to going abroad for two or three weeks and so there's a program that usually is going to meet your needs and we have a wonderful study in the UDAD office I have great contacts there that I put students in touch with and I'm also the one who works with students when they come back here are the courses I took at University of New South Wales how are they going to apply toward my degree program I'm the one who does those evaluations and I usually meet with students before they go to think about the kind of courses that they might take and then when they come back to super flexible let's say it's a course we need to fulfill a particular group of core courses and it's not quite exactly like anything in that core group but it kind of fits the spirit of it I'm going to put it in that category for you because I want you to be able to have that experience I had the great fortunate of being able to study abroad when I was in college back in those days if you went abroad the entire year and you went in your junior year that was just like how it happened and so that's what I did and it was fantastic but I find with most of the students I work with that leaving for a year is often not feasible a lot of people seem to have a lot more commitments and responsibilities this year than I did so I was very lucky you don't need that for admission to the major yeah definitely but when you think about what you want to do when you graduate from a four year school you probably want to go right into a career path or you maybe want to go to a graduate or a professional school and all those experiences are the things that are going to help you get there not only do they help you sort of refine your interests and know what the correct direction is for you to be going but these kind of serve as proofs to the program or the employer of your background your experience, your aptitude in that area your dedication to the area so they're both a good way to sort of try things out and also get the experience that you need either to get a job or to get into a graduate program so we don't require them they're not required to graduate with just a bit of an exception but it's you know as they are for some programs some programs require a hefty number of experiential hours and we don't but it's definitely recommended and for our students it's rarely difficult to find the time in your schedule to do that because they are all credit bearing opportunities so you're earning credit if you're volunteering the community, you're earning credit if you're doing research with our faculty you're earning credit if you're doing peer teaching so it's a way to sort of fold it into the whole package and have time to do it because I know most people are working at least some hours a week and many people have families and other responsibilities so it can be the opportunity and credit for these experiences for many people it's just not feasible to add it to an already very full academic schedule in life well so UW, the PhD program at UW is probably one of the most competitive in the country so and it is a strictly research focused program so it's even our clinical programs is to train clinical researchers so people who are going to stay in academia, they're going to become professors and researchers at universities the aim is not to train people to go out into practice and to be practicing psychologists and practice therapists the people in our clinical program certainly are qualified to do that because that's part of the training that they get but the aim of our program is to train researchers and so for any kind of research graduate program what that program is going to look for is for your background, experience and interest to mesh well with what they actually do there so that becomes kind of a whole research project in itself to figure out where you're going to apply right they're really competitive, they look at you know and this is, I don't want to go into this too much but we can talk by email or phone afterwards certainly a research focused program is looking for candidates who are going to be good bits for their program and to have backgrounds that demonstrate that so you know and it kind of varies from program to program, some programs it's more like you're actually applying to work with a particular person than it is that you're applying to the program broadly that's what our university is like but other even research focused programs and other programs at UW are not quite that way so it's a lot of exploring to do yeah so she's asking you know if you did an undergraduate degree at an institution and then you applied to their graduate program do you have a better or worse chance of getting in our program you know there is that thinking generally that it's academically healthier to go somewhere else for your graduate work you get new perspectives you bring your faculty to a new institution but at least talking about our program that being said so I've been in that department I'm in year 23 now and they typically for the whole of our site graduate programs get something like 6 to 800 applicants for about what ends up being about 15 spots and in every year that I've been there at least one of those spots has been someone who got their undergraduate degree from us so so the the first answer is yes generally that's the thinking in practice that's not always how it happens I'm going to put the glasses on and make sure I didn't forget anything so I guess you know I'll just finish by saying that myself I'm you know as I said I'm the academic services director so I'm the advising office but I'm also an advisor I see people every day I have two fabulous advisors who work for me Vicky and Cy and we are I always tell my colleagues at the university there's a lot of variability in how well advising offices are staffed how well they feel supported by their department we are incredibly fortunate that we are I feel sufficiently staffed that we can see all the students we need to see that we can see prospective students that we can do things like you know I get to run this class in fall for transfer students my colleague Vicky runs a class every fall that's for students preparing to enter grad school my colleague Cy does every quarter except for summer he teaches one of our fieldwork classes so we get the opportunity to work with our students in different contexts and you know to provide I hope the kind of support that you really all deserve to have they're usually open doors when you come to our office certain points in the quarter it's a little crunchy and you might have to wait a while but but we're you know there for seeing our students first so I hope that we support students in the way that we set out to I generally do here that students are happy with our department and with the advising office so I think we're doing it kind of okay so just you know that's just to tell you that if you come to UW either as a prospective student to talk with us or as you know a prospective major once you get there or new to the major we're gonna you know be your home base and we're gonna really help connect you with all the things that you need on campus because that's half the battle you come to a huge place it's like a giant city and you don't even know you know where to turn so we'll try to send you to people instead of voice trees or websites and put you in touch with the folks who can really help you move along I guess that's it great thank you you