Resources

Both the Psychology Club and Psi Chi meet at least twice monthly. The organizations are independent, but frequently work together on projects and many students are members in both organizations.

For current information on these organizations, please click the VLink/CampusLabs links below.

Psychology Club

Psychology Club - V Link

The Psychology Club is a student organization open to all students with an interest in psychology, regardless of major. Activities vary from year to year but often include organized trips to regional and national psychology conferences, invited speakers, community service projects, and research activities. 

Psi Chi

Psi Chi Honor Society - V Link

Psi Chi is an international psychology honor society. As an honors society, membership in Psi Chi is based on demonstrated academic excellence. The membership requirements include: an overall GPA of at least 3.0, completion of 3 semesters, completion of 9 semester hours of psychology courses, a minimum GPA of 3.0 in psychology classes. For more information about Psi Chi, including membership application forms and a full list of membership requirements, visit www.psichi.org. 

Psi Chi Grants and Awards

Members of the international honors society in psychology, Psi Chi, can submit applications for a number of grants and awards. There are various grants/awards available to both faculty and students. Visit this site for specific information about grants/awards and their deadlines.

Required Research Participation for Introductory Psychology Students
All students enrolled in General Psychology PSYC 2301 are required to obtain experience with the methodology of psychological research through participation in psychology studies or through the completion of available equivalent options. A summary of the research requirement is provided below and you will be provided with additional details early in the semester.

The Research Participation Pool (RPP) Manager:
The Research Participation Pool (RPP) Manager is the individual assigned to oversee required research participation of Introductory Psychology students. The RPP Manager provides additional guidance about the process, oversees alternative assignments, and keeps a database of student participation.

Requirements for Introductory Psychology Research Participation:

1. All students enrolled in General Psychology (PSYC 2301) must complete 4.0 hours of research (or equivalent non-research alternatives) by the deadline provided in the course syllabus. Overall, the required research component of the course will be worth 10% of the possible points in the course. These points will be awarded to students on a prorated basis. For example, students who complete 4 hours of research will be awarded all of the possible research points; those who complete 2 hours of research will be awarded half of the possible research points; etc.
2. Information about available research studies will be posted on SONA, a cloud-based software system. More details regarding SONA will be given in class.
3. If you complete 3.5 hours of research without showing up late (or failing to show up at all) for studies, you will be rewarded (credited) with the remaining .5 hours.
4. You can only use TWO hours of ONLINE research participation toward the required 4.0 hours. You are welcome to participate in more than two hours of online research, but you will only get credit for a maximum of 2 hours.

Alternative methods for obtaining research participation credit:

1. If you would rather not participate in a research study, you can earn credit through equitable alternative research-related activities.
2. Details about these alternatives will be provided by the RPP Manager throughout the semester.
3. Many research studies are limited to adults (age 18 or older). If you are younger than 18, you will still need to earn research credits, but should do so by completing 4 hours of alternative activities.
4. Participation in research studies is always voluntary. You always have the option of choosing alternative assignments.

Psychology students at UTRGV can work with faculty in a variety of research areas including clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, animal behavior, health psychology, neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and forensic psychology.

Engaging in research can help students to:

• Apply their knowledge and get hands on experience,
• Better understand the research process,
• Develop a closer mentoring relationship with a faculty member,
• Learn whether or not graduate work in psychology, including the research process, would be interesting to them,
• Improve their chances of being admitted to graduate school (where research skills are valued), and
• Get a letter of recommendation for work or graduate school applications.

Undergraduate students sometimes participate in research as volunteer student assistants, for upper-division course credit (PSYC 4380), or (rarely) for pay. You must make individual arrangements with a faculty research mentor in order to enroll in PSYC 4380.

Students who are interested in conducting research should approach a faculty member that has research interests that are appealing to the student. That faculty member can help guide the student in developing a project or joining an ongoing project. Students sometimes also become involved in research through Psychology Club or Psi Chi activities.

Graduate students in psychology are particularly encouraged to become involved in research, such as through a thesis project. It is particularly important for students who plan to later pursue a Ph.D., where research skills are more strongly emphasized and previous research experience is more important.

Internships are a vital part of your education and professional experience before you graduate with your bachelor's degree. Upon graduation you will be competing for jobs that require an internship or professional work experience and a simple bachelor's degree will not be enough!

Here are some tips for you to consider:

1. Start looking for an internship early. Search online databases and find application and interview tips from professional organizations like the American Psychology Association and the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers. UTRGV’s Career Center is a great place to start!
2. Talk to UTRGV psychology professors who often hear about opportunities that you might not know about. Many keep bulletin boards or notebooks with current internship information for students. You will need a psychology professor's approval in advance if you wish to receive upper-division course credit.
3. Visit UTRGV's Career Center. They can help you with job and internship placement. The center should also help you build your resume and application packet to give you a strong competitive chance at finding the best job in the psychology field.
4. Join UTRGV's undergraduate or graduate psychology associations (PSI-CHI, etc) as well as state (Texas Psych Association) and national (American Psych Association) as they have an abundance of resources for students. The more involved you are, the more often you can hear about opportunities.
5. Look into the various types of internships for which you may want to apply. Consider counseling at a women's shelter or Planned Parenthood, working with mental or emotional victims of post-traumatic stress disorder at the local VA hospital or local, state, and federal law enforcement agency.
6. Get your resume ready, along with any psychology research studies you have participated in or prior volunteer work information, to prepare for interviews.
7. Send in application packets to the companies for which you'd like to intern. Call the businesses if they haven't gotten back to you within a week of the internship closing date. Ask politely about the status of your application and if the committee needs anything else from you.

Undergraduate Psychology Internship Sites

• Tropical Texas Behavioral Health
• U.S. Department of State Health Services
• Child Protective Services
• Texas Department of Criminal Justice - Parole Division
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Darrell B. Hester Juvenile Justice Center (TYC)
• Communities in Schools of Hidalgo County
• Hidalgo County Community Supervision and Corrections Department
• Mujeres Unidas
• McAllen Police Department
• Hope Community Counseling Center
• New Beginnings

Although some students choose to go on to graduate school, many choose to enter the workforce. The basic requirement for a wide variety of jobs in the world of business, government, and many other public and private work domains is a college degree.

Although there are few jobs that advertise specifically for a person with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, students graduating with a Psychology degree generally get jobs in the business world (employee development and training, customer service, office work, management, sales…), education (if they also pursue a teaching certificate), health care and social services (specific counseling tasks, administration, research…), and in government (law enforcement, probation, administrative work…). However, in order to be truly competitive in the workforce, you should prepare yourself throughout your college years for a career that you would find rewarding by taking classes, both within and outside of psychology, related to your career goal and by developing your job-related skills in out-of-class experiences, such as internships.

Registering early, long before your anticipated graduation, with the UTRGV Career Center can also be helpful. The Career Center can assist with your career development and provide the guidance to better prepare you for that career.

There are many resources available that can help you along the way:

• For further details on careers available to Psychology graduates, visit the APA website’s Psychology as a Career page.

If you’re considering furthering your education with a Master’s or Doctorate in psychology, it’s important to plan ahead.

Explore online resources.

There are several resources online that help students make an educated decision on applying to graduate school. Dr. Juventino Hernandez Rodriguez from UTRGV and his research lab created a website to help students find resources. The resources are organized and updated on a regular basis. Also, there is a tab with unique resources for UTRGV students. https://sites.google.com/view/reach-for-graduate-school/before-you-apply

Talk to faculty.

Visit with some faculty members during their office hours to ask for advice and honest feedback. You don’t have to know the professor or be taking a class with them. Your professors are knowledgeable about this process because they’ve lived it (some more recently than others!).

Identify the types of programs to which you intend to apply.

You should begin investigating and identifying programs to which you may apply long before you plan to apply. A good time to begin this is the summer before your junior year.

One excellent source for beginning to investigate graduate programs is the American Psychological Association's Graduate Study in Psychology. This source is published yearly and lists most of the psychology graduate programs in the United States by state. Admission criteria and various statistics for the programs are listed along with program websites and contact information.

Graduate program websites are another good source of information. They will usually have links to specific research labs, where research is being conducted by faculty members and students. Updated contact information for particular graduate programs can usually be found on their websites.

To begin to identify programs you will need to first need to address several questions:

Are you willing and able to move away from South Texas?

This has an obvious impact on where you can apply. If you are not geographically restricted to South Texas, there are many programs to consider.

Within which subfield(s) of psychology do you want to pursue graduate studies?

There are graduate programs within the many subfields of psychology. Students who intend to seek careers in mental health settings will apply to clinical or counseling psychology programs. Other options include Industrial/organizational psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, and health psychology. Individuals who pursue these areas of graduate study will prepare for careers that involve research and/or teaching.

Which degree are you seeking?

You can apply to terminal master's level programs (programs that end with a master's degree) or programs that will lead up to a Ph.D. If you applying to clinical doctoral programs you can consider Ph.D. programs or Psy.D. programs.

A Ph.D. program will have a heavy emphasis on research; however, Clinical Ph.D. students will also study the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders and other clinical skills. A Clinical Psy.D. program will place a greater emphasis on clinical training and the practice of clinical psychology.

Ph.D. programs usually take between 5-7 years to complete. A student in a Ph.D. program will conduct research with a faculty mentor and earn a Master's degree and defend a Master's thesis en route to their dissertation research and defense. Admission to clinical doctoral programs is very competitive. The APA's Graduate Study in Psychology provides admission statistics for many graduate programs.

Master's level programs are typically designed to be completed in two years. Master's programs may or may not require students to conduct research and defend a master's thesis. Terminal master's programs are competitive, but they are usually not as difficult to get into as Ph.D. track programs.

Apply to a range of programs.

To improve your chances of being admitted to a graduate program, it is advisable to apply to a range of programs. Applying to a large number of programs can be expensive, but to maximize your chances of acceptance, you should identify a reasonable number of graduate programs that vary in terms of their selectivity. Taking your academic record, research experience, and GRE scores into account, decide which programs you have a decent chance of getting into and focus on those, but if your record merits it, consider sending applications to top-notch programs as well. If possible, also identify some less selective schools that you wouldn't mind attending.

Prepare for the Graduate Record Examination in advance.

Some graduate programs will require you to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test. This is a test that is intended to predict performance in graduate school, and it is used by many selection committees in their admission decisions. To maximize your chance of doing well on the GRE, you should familiarize yourself with the test and begin preparing for it well in advance of taking it. The GRE is not the sort of test you should take without preparation, so develop a battle plan for how you will prepare for it.

The GRE has three major sections: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing. First, familiarize yourself with each section and the question types. To do well, you will need to develop or maintain excellent verbal and quantitative skills. A university is a good place to do this, but there are also various prep books, computer programs, and apps for smartphones and tablets that can also aid you in this process. Most importantly, take your mathematics and literature classes seriously; the math, vocabulary, and writing skills that you develop will be very important on test day.

It is advisable to take the GRE General Test in the summer after your junior year. This will give you some time to retake it and allow you to focus on your applications during your senior year.

Depending on where you intend to apply, you may also need to take the GRE Subject Test in Psychology. The GRE Subject Test has three major sections: experimental, social, and other, which are intended to measure your knowledge of psychology. The content spans much of psychology as an academic discipline.

To prepare for the subject test, you should review a good introductory textbook and retain the knowledge you acquired in your psychology coursework. There are also prep materials that are available for the subject test.

This psychology subject test is offered three times a year (in October, November, and April), so be sure to take it well before the deadlines for applications that require it. University Testing Services administers the GRE at UTRGV. Edinburg Testing Services is located at the UTRGV Community Engagement and Student Success Building, Rm 1.101, in Edinburg at 1407 E. Freddy Gonzalez Drive. Call (956) 665-7570 or (956) 665-7523. The Brownsville Testing Services is located in Resaca Village 1601 E Price Rd. Suite E.

For more information about the GRE, including question examples and registration information, visit the GRE website.

Make Excellent Grades.

Keep your grades as high as possible. To have a good chance of getting into graduate programs, you should demonstrate that you are an excellent student by earning very good grades. This is easier said than done, but earning high grades can make you a competitive candidate.

Apply, belong, and participate.

Apply for memberships in psychological societies and groups such as Psi Chi and SWPA. Belonging to societies will often open the doors to other opportunities (e.g., scholarships, and research conferences) that you otherwise may not have known about.

Seek out research experience.

It may not be explicitly stated, but most graduate programs in psychology will expect you to have research experience. Volunteer as a research assistant or enroll in research seminars that allow you to become involved in research projects that are being conducted by faculty members. It is also possible to work with a faculty sponsor on an independent research project of your own. However, don't expect your professors to approach you with these opportunities. Take the initiative and seek out research experience.

Get strong letters of recommendation.

Graduate school applications will usually require 3 letters of recommendation. To get excellent letters, you should not only stand out as an excellent student in class, but you should also work with faculty members on research projects. The strongest and most credible letters of recommendation tend to come from professors with whom you have worked closely on a project.

You should ask for letters at least two weeks in advance and provide your personal statement, vita, or resume. If the letters are to be sent by postal mail, you may want to ask for the letter a month in advance.

Provide your letter writers with friendly reminders as the deadline approaches. Occasionally, professors can be forgetful, so don't be shy about reminding them about your letter as the deadline approaches.

Tailor your personal statements.

Personal statements will be required in your graduate school applications. If you have worked on research and/or applied your psychological knowledge in a work or internship setting, you should have plenty to say about yourself.

Your personal statements should be tailored to the programs to which you will apply. Investigate the programs and professors at those programs to find out what sort of research they conduct. Your interests should fit with the interests of the professors in the program. Make sure your fit with the program is made clear in your personal statement.

Be sure to proofread your statement and receive feedback from a professor on a draft of your personal statement. A personal statement with grammatical errors or that is otherwise poorly written will reflect poorly on your academic abilities.

If you are applying to work with a specific lab or mentor, contact them to verify that they are accepting students.

Graduate students often work closely with a faculty mentor. Many graduate applications will ask you to specify the name or names of the faculty that you would like to work with. If this is the case for the place you are applying to, you should contact your desired mentor in advance to verify that they are accepting students. You can also use this as an opportunity to make a good first impression.

Have a backup plan.

Graduate programs in psychology tend to be very selective, so an important piece of advice is to have a backup plan. Identify career paths that you will pursue in the event you are not admitted or you decide not to attend graduate school. While completing your undergraduate degree, consider taking an internship as a way to gain experience and potentially open up avenues for future employment.

The links below provide additional advice and useful information for applying to graduate school.

• Eye on Psi Chi Article
• Many useful links through UNI webpage

There are two main national psychology organizations in America: The American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Both organizations include resources for students and offer student membership at a discounted rate. 

The South Western Psychological Association is a regional psychology organization. Its annual conference is a favorite venue for UTRGV psychology students. 

APA

"The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world's largest association of psychologists, with more than 137,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students as its members. Our mission is to advance the creation, communication, and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives."

APA Student Resources

APS

"The Association for Psychological Science (previously the American Psychological Society) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national and international level."

APS Student Resources

SWPA

The South Western Psychological Association (SWPA) works to promote and strengthen psychology's scientific, professional, and educational facets. At its annual meeting, SWPA offers paper, poster, continuing education sessions, workshops, symposia, and invited talks. SWPA prides itself on serving the psychological community by providing access to scientific advances and professional development within a collegial atmosphere. Students are welcomed and treated as active and valued participants in the discipline." 

There are also many specialized psychology organizations that focus on specific topics in psychology. For a listing of some of these organizations, along with listings of psychology organizations based outside of the USA, visit this site. 

The Honors College provides academically talented and ambitious students an enriched and challenging liberal arts curriculum. The program strives to serve the needs of students who value intellectual growth and want to make the most of their undergraduate education.

The Honors College also offers students the extraordinary opportunity to conduct research at the undergraduate level. The Honors experience fosters the long-term intellectual, ethical and personal growth of each student.

For more information about the program, visit the Honors College website.

All undergraduate students who intend to receive a degree from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley must complete a graduation application available online on ASSIST through myUTRGV by the published deadline in the University Calendar.  That deadline is normally nine months prior to the intended date of graduation. Applications received after the deadline will be processed for the next available graduation date. These deadlines are necessary in order for prospective graduates to be notified of any deficiencies in time to register for the appropriate coursework.