Credit Counting

Because psychology is so diverse a subject, we require that every student take at least two courses from the social science point of view in psychology and at least two from the natural science point of view. To determine what courses fulfill these requirements please use the attribute search feature at courses.yale.edu.

Also, please do not confuse this distinction with the Sc (Science) and So (Social Science) university distribution requirements. For instance, some of the psychology courses that are counted as So are courses taking the natural science point of view.  

We strongly recommend that students take PSYC 200. However, because of time conflicts, we do sometimes allow other courses to count. We can count S&DS103 as fulfilling our statistics requirement, and you do not need to do anything to count this course.

This is possible in rare circumstances, but the decision to count a course outside the major will be decided on a case-by-case basis via petition to the DUS. To petition to count a course outside the psychology major, you will need to email the DUS with the following information:

(1) a copy of course syllabus

(2) a copy of the course reading lists.

Sadly, there is no real way to determine which courses will need to be lotteried until shopping week. That said, there are certain important courses that are limited/lotteried nearly every year. For example, research methods courses are almost always limited (this is due to the need for computer and other facilities that only hold a limited number of students). For this reason, research methods courses often tend to be over-subscribed. We therefore strongly suggest that you plan to take one of these courses before your senior year.

You can count up to three non-psychology courses towards psychology major credit. But again, as explained above, most petitions are not approved.