I have been trying to look into schools with good psychology departments lately, but I am finding it very difficult. The best I can find on the Internet are comprehensive listings of all psych departments in the U.S., and none of those oh so popular college rankings have psychology programs ranked. So, IYHO, what schools come to mind when you think of “good psych department” ?
What areas of psychology are you interested in - experimental, clinical, developmental? Group psych testing (or whatever they call it these days)? The reason I ask is that departments often emphasize one area over another. My background is in experimental psych and departments I find exceptional might be found wanting by someone with a clinical background.
(If you’re interested in working with monkeys, Bucknell was a pretty good place. When I was an undergrad, University of Chicago was considered an excellent place, but that was <counting on fingers and toes> a while back.)
My high school psychology teacher always said that University of Wisconsin–Madison was good, and that wasn’t where he went. Also, I believe Stanford has a pretty sweet program.
Cornell has an excellent program too, they talked about on the tour how they were in the top 5 in the nation every year and were sometimes number 1.
Are you looking at undergrad psychology? If so, go for a good school overall. Where you get your undergrad degree matters far less than where you get your grad degree, and you want to have your options open if you decide psych ain’t your thing.
Check out US News & World Report, which ranks schools for psychology based on both research & clinical.
In the meantime, the University of Indiana at Bloomington and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln both have pretty good graduate programs.
I goto NYU’s undergrad psych dep’t…we have a strong program, particularly experimentally. Off the top of my head, we have at least 5 wonderful professors (in both teaching and research), and many of the social psych profs run clinical programs as well.
I should amend that–by wonderful i mean that the professors are both excellent teachers and nationally recognized researchers.