Arts-Psychology / Law Question (1 Viewer)

[spence]

Hey everyone
I've looked at a couple of threads about this course, and I understand that doing this doesn't let you do honours unless you spend more time at uni doing extra psych units. Just wondering, how many extra units are needed before you can go on to honours?
Thanks

 

[MaryJane]

They are currently re-structuring it, so you will have to double check in the 2008 handbook which should be out this month. At the moment you have to do two additional 300-level units (statistics and research methods)... There was originally two extra 200-level units to do, but I believe they have been amalgamated into the one 300-level methods unit.

Just to clear this up for you, no course gets you into Honours automatically; its not just a double-degree thing. Even those students who enrol in the B-Psych(Hons) from the outset have to compete with the other psych students doing BA and BSc for a place in honours.

Doing the extra psych units isn't too difficult, although you will have to plan on doing at least two summer sessions to catch up on your law units, so you can finish your Psych/LLB in December and start honours in February (because honours do not take mid-year enrolments).

 

[spence]

Thanks. One more question, if your GPA is too low to get into honours, is it possible to transfer into other uni's fourth year, or would they usually need a higher GPA?

 

[Cyan_phoeniX]

Are you saying is it possible to do the honours at a different university or is it possible to transfer into a uni fourth year in general?

If you meant the former - Generally, you would do the honours year at the same university. With psychology, i think the exception is that the department doesn't offer the area you want to write your thesis in, or due to an unavoidable move. I don't think there is any restriction in stopping you from doing your honours year at another university, but usually you would do it at the same university. I'm not specifically sure about the requirements of psych honours in other universities, but i'm guessing they are probably the same (neither higher or lower), so there's no real advantage in changing universities (and Macquarie's got a good psych department, so you would probably want to stay anyway!).

If you don't get a high enough GPA to do honours, you could always do a diploma of psychology, or take on more psych units to try and raise your GPA.