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University Psychology Vs. IB psychology


godofib

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Hmm about 4/5 of my graduating class took Pysch SL. They then took the AP exam for psychology, and the friends that I talked to who studied/crammed got 5s or 4s. The ones who didn't study got 3s. In the US, 3+ gives you college credit in many unis. So I'd assume that doing Psych SL lets you skip the 101 course in college, which would mean that if you refused the credit and just took the course, you'd get a pretty easy A [easy=work required but not intellectually exhausting]. This is for the US.

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For the UK, many universities actually prefer that students applying to study psychology in university don't study it in the IB, because the approach is different and when it comes to studying psychology in university many IB students get confused and mixed up. They prefer to teach students from scratch. UK universities don't generally require Psychology to have been studied in the IB, because it's not offered as an A-Level course and so half their students have no background in it.

Psychology at university level requires the us eof lots of statistics, so you need to be good at math (Math SL isn't always required, my friend was accepted on courses at not-so good universities like Brighton with Math Studies). If you want to know more about the exact course content of UK courses, Goole their course modules and you will find an exact description of what is covered in the module, how it is assessed (exams, essays, what percentage they count for).

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  • 9 months later...

I took IB Psych SL, didn't take the exam, and took Intro to Psychology this past semester at university. The difference was that there were a couple more topics covered and a few things covered in greater detail. The fact that I was familiar with some of the concepts (mostly the earlier ones, my SL class only covered four perspectives and my uni class covered 7) made the class much easier at the beginning, leaving me time to focus on other, more difficult things so I didn't crash and burn at the end of the semester. There's an advantage there. Had I taken the exam, I might've gotten credit for the course, but I'm glad I took it anyway. I took the SL course junior year, so I needed the refresher, and I absolutely love the professor. She's the reason I declared a major in Psychology, and the reason I'm willing to drag myself out of bed for an 8:30 AM class next semester.

But that's just me. And most institutions don't give credit for SL Psych anyway; you might as well just plan on taking Psych 101. Worst-case scenario, you have an easy class.

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  • 1 month later...

[quote name='godofib' date='Jul 21, 2009 - 03:14' timestamp='1248142493' post='52844']
I was just curious to know that if I have done SL psychology, how much harder would university psychology be in US, UK and Canadian universities? I am confused whether I should take a psychology course in university or not. Advice needed.
[/quote]

Psychology at uni definitely becomes easier. I can only speak for the UK but being familiar with methodology and many theories helped a lot because there is some stuff that will never disappear from psychology courses (e.g. classical and operant conditioning). What is different in uni is how much they focus on statistics. I had up to 3 hours of stats per week which included experimental design and evaluation of experiments. That's the most important thing you get from IB is the evaluation of experiments because that is what you have to do all of the time in uni. They do not want you to just regurgitate the facts they want you to have an intelligent opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of experiments.

Why do you want do psychology as your degree?

Edited by blindpet
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How about in New Zealand??? Would they rather accept someone who has some background in Psychology or no...

I haven't done Psychology in IB because it was a subject not taught in my school but I am doing some reading about it!

Is Psychology a hard subject? with a great workload?

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[quote name='jennysways' date='Jul 07, 2010 - 11:23' timestamp='1278516197' post='72796']
How about in New Zealand??? Would they rather accept someone who has some background in Psychology or no...

I haven't done Psychology in IB because it was a subject not taught in my school but I am doing some reading about it!

Is Psychology a hard subject? with a great workload?
[/quote]

It's not hard, but I'm a little biased. It's kind of a mix of biology and history in terms of the nature of the work; there's a lot of memorization, names and dates as well as anatomy/other vocabulary.

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