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00:00:02
Welcome everybody this early Saturday morning a very warm welcome to the
00:00:08
University of Amsterdam my name is Annemie Ploeger. I'm a teacher
00:00:12
from the psychology department I teach one of the first-year courses well and
00:00:18
I'm very happy to welcome you here and to tell you something about the study
00:00:22
and why would you like to study psychology and I will also tell you
00:00:25
something about the curriculum about the courses that you will follow if you
00:00:29
start studying here but first this cartoon here you see these little guys
00:00:36
and one is saying when I grow up I'd like to study about people well maybe
00:00:42
that's also an idea that you have I like to study people and that's why you're
00:00:46
here you maybe like to study psychology people interest me I'd like to go to
00:00:51
some big university and study all about people well the University of Amsterdam
00:00:56
is a big University so here you're at the right place and I see you want to
00:01:02
learn about people so that with your knowledge you will be equipped to help
00:01:06
them when it's maybe something you also have in mind like I would like to help
00:01:12
people well that's one of the things that well we already already like to
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emphasize here already it is early morning that is something you can do
00:01:24
when you study psychology you can become a clinical psychologist but psychology
00:01:28
is much broader than just becoming a therapist so actually they say no I'm
00:01:36
just nosy actually what we're asking from you is that you're curious that you
00:01:42
like to know more about people about people's minds and that you like to know
00:01:48
how to study these minds so when you aren't your only motivation is that you
00:01:55
like to help people then well we already have to disappoint you from this moment
00:02:01
so we hope that you have a curious mindset and that you'd like to learn more
00:02:05
about human behavior. So I will tell you something about the University of
00:02:12
Amsterdam, of studying psychology and I will tell you
00:02:16
something about the psychology program and that's for the year the 2019/2020
00:02:22
because the selection procedure for the program that starts in the fall now in
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2018 that selection procedure already started
00:02:32
so I hope you are here sitting here not for willing to start in the fall because
00:02:39
that's impossible but we hope you will are willing to
00:02:43
start one year later in 2019 so what I said, my name is Annemie Ploeger, I am a
00:02:50
developmental psychologist and as we will see developmental psychology is one
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of the courses in the first year and I'm the teacher of that course so what will
00:03:00
I talk about I will talk about the study program I will talk about career
00:03:05
opportunities of course that's very important you do not only want to study
00:03:09
but you are probably also interested in what kind of jobs you can do when you
00:03:14
study psychology I will tell you something about the selection procedure
00:03:19
as you probably know we have more people that want to study psychology than we
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have places so there is a selection procedure and then I'm very happy that
00:03:31
Julia is here and she's an international student and she will tell something
00:03:37
about student experience how is student life here at the psychology department
00:03:43
so what is actually psychology so psychology is the science so we like to
00:03:51
emphasize that it's a science so we use scientific methods to study our theories
00:03:58
our hypotheses the psychology is the science of behavior so we like to study
00:04:04
people and how they behave but that's not the only thing we also like to study
00:04:09
the underlying processes so why do people show certain behaviors now you
00:04:16
can think about motivation and about intentions about ideas that people have
00:04:23
the question is why do people behave the way they do that's in one sentence the
00:04:30
question that will be addressed when you study psychology so science is mostly
00:04:39
about seeking answers to "why"-questions so I already asked the big questions why do
00:04:47
people behave the way they do so that's the the main topic of our study of
00:04:54
course you can split up this in much smaller questions that are really
00:05:01
testable that you can actually study so we like to contribute to scientific
00:05:10
knowledge that's what you do when you study at the University we like to
00:05:14
become a scientist and contribute to the scientific knowledge that we already
00:05:19
have so that means that you must have a very open mindset because maybe you have
00:05:28
an idea of why people behave the way they do then your mindset must be open
00:05:34
you must be able to study this question to study your your idea your theory
00:05:40
about how or why people behave the way they do so you must be able to verify
00:05:46
what you think about this behavior and you must also be able to falsify it so
00:05:53
you must be open-minded that you are are able to say at the end of your research
00:06:01
project well my idea was wrong. So that's like a different mindset and that's
00:06:07
not often what you see in daily life people are usually looking for
00:06:12
confirmation of what they think but what we will try to teach you is that you
00:06:18
will question anything that people say that's not only the case for psychology
00:06:24
that's the case for all studies at the university well and to give you some
00:06:32
idea this sounds may be very abstract and theoretical but to give you some
00:06:36
idea of how that works I will give you an example and maybe you have heard
00:06:39
about this before about the therapeutic touch well you know here you see a
00:06:45
picture of how that works some people argue that they are able to feel the
00:06:53
pain that some patients say that they feel so here you see the patient and
00:06:58
these patients is suffering from some pains and now these therapists they
00:07:04
don't touch this this person who touches actually an incorrect name but they go
00:07:12
over with their hands they don't touch the body but they feel they try to feel
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where the pain is that the patient is saying to be feeling. Well and this
00:07:23
became a quite, in some circles, popular method to help people and of course it's
00:07:29
very good to help people but at the University we ask questions
00:07:33
we say well is this it's possible and is this true this is actually a theory that
00:07:41
we can verify so then what we can do is ask these people ask the patients do you
00:07:50
think these persons are right do they feel where your pain is and then this
00:07:55
person may say yes and then the therapists say yes of course we feel
00:07:59
this so that's one way to study this but we as scientists don't think that's the
00:08:05
right way because these people have a certain mindset they are involved in
00:08:09
this situation they are not blind to the whole the circumstances that are being
00:08:17
studied so we think the the method that I just described to study this we think
00:08:23
that's that's not scientifically correct so how can we study this in a
00:08:28
scientifically correct way well this experiment has actually been done so
00:08:35
what you see here is a subject on the left side and what you see is a
00:08:40
researcher on the right side and what happens here well it's important to note
00:08:46
is that the subject and researchers cannot see
00:08:51
each other there's a screen in between them and what the subject does, the subject
00:08:56
can move hands below the screen and then the researcher is moving her hands above
00:09:07
one of the two hands of the subject and then the subject has to tell which where
00:09:15
I'm it's my hand whereas the hand of the research on the left side or on the
00:09:20
right side well this is one way to study this the question can it is actually a
00:09:28
good procedure is this something that we can scientifically verify so this is a
00:09:33
very nice way to study this well and now the question is what if the theory is
00:09:41
right what if the patient can actually feel where the hands are of the
00:09:49
therapists well if the theory is right what do you expect what could be the
00:09:54
percentage correct so the subject has to guess which hands
00:10:00
in this situation above which hands my hand is the hand of the researcher so
00:10:08
what do you expect what kind of score do you expect if people can feel yes yeah
00:10:14
but what if it if the theory is correct yes above 50 and if if if it's really
00:10:22
true if people can really feel where somebody's hand is. But without
00:10:27
actually touching it well then you expect maybe even a hundred percent
00:10:32
correct if we can feel this if if we without seeing feel that there's a hand
00:10:38
above my hands then we would expect that in a hundred percent of the cases
00:10:43
subjects can correctly guess where the hand of the researcher is. Well and what do
00:10:50
we expect which percentage correct do we expect if this theory is false? Then
00:10:59
it's 50/50 right because you may think if it's wrong
00:11:04
it will be zero percent but this is an important thing you're correct it's
00:11:08
50/50 because the subject can guess it guesses and there are two hands left on
00:11:16
the left and on the right and what what happens is that you can always guess you
00:11:24
can gamble and you can guess it correctly just by chance so that's why
00:11:29
we expect when the theory is false, that in 50% of the cases the subject will be
00:11:37
correct and in 50% of the cases will be wrong.
00:11:39
Well and now we did this experiment and what were the results? These were
00:11:47
the results. So just below chance level just below 50% correct so that means that
00:11:58
this theory has been falsified by this researcher so because when these
00:12:04
subjects are only the people that came up with this idea were correct then you
00:12:11
would expect a percentage correct more in the direction of a 100%.
00:12:15
Yes? Okay, well these kinds of experiments are we doing at the
00:12:22
University at the psychology department at a daily basis. So all teachers almost
00:12:28
all teachers at the University of Amsterdam also do research and of course
00:12:33
not all of them do this particular experiment but we do thousands of
00:12:39
experiments on all these kinds of behavior. So what is psychology? So it's a
00:12:46
science it's a science we'd like to create scientific knowledge we need to
00:12:52
be open in order to test the theories that we have and well how do you collect
00:13:01
such knowledge? Well you can do an effective research,
00:13:05
you think about a methodology so one of the procedures that I showed you is a
00:13:11
right way to study this with a blind subject. The subject is not
00:13:17
seeing where the hands of the researcher are so that's a sound methodology well and
00:13:26
what if we did not find these results but let's say the percentage correct was
00:13:34
55% maybe 60% do we say okay then the theory is correct or do we say well it
00:13:40
was not a hundred percent so we say it incorrect well as you probably know we
00:13:45
have methods to study this. When do we call a finding a significant finding
00:13:52
and well we have statistics to study them so by telling you this I already
00:14:03
told you something about the program that you will follow when you start
00:14:08
studying psychology at the University of Amsterdam so here you see in a second
00:14:14
the first half year of the study program so what we think is very important is
00:14:21
that you know something about methodology and statistics so already
00:14:25
during the first semester of your studies you will get a course on this
00:14:31
topic and that's because we think it's so important that you get this mindset
00:14:36
that you get this open mindset that you want to study the theories that you hear
00:14:43
about but of course you don't do not only want to study methodology and
00:14:50
statistics so well let's see yes this is something is going wrong here in it all
00:14:59
right oh well okay no I see this is the first
00:15:03
course I thought that other courses would pop up but that's first I first
00:15:07
introduced these other courses because psychology is a science of behavior and
00:15:13
mental processes and now I will focus on the behavior so we we talked about the
00:15:19
science the scientific methods and now let's talk about behavior so what is
00:15:23
behavior or what behavior well we study basically all behavior as a psychologist
00:15:30
you find any behavior interesting but of course you
00:15:33
can make choices and what mental processes
00:15:37
well for example perceiving before you show any behavior you first have to see
00:15:43
or hear or feel something and that's what we call perception so what you also
00:15:52
you will already study in the first semester the first year a lot about
00:15:57
perception because that's the start of all behavior information is coming in
00:16:02
and you react to that behavior but first you need to you need to perceive
00:16:08
something now of course you need to think you make decisions so you think
00:16:12
about the information that is coming into your mind you feel things you want
00:16:17
things so these are the mental processes that we study well we have four key sub
00:16:25
disciplines and the first one you will learn about is cognitive psychology so a
00:16:31
cognition is actually a difficult term what exactly is cognition well it is
00:16:36
anything that has to do with these mental processes with perception with
00:16:42
thinking so this is actually a very broad theme cognitive psychology is
00:16:48
basically everything you need to know about behavior in a single course well
00:16:54
here you see an example of something that you can perceive so well who likes
00:17:00
to tell what he sees in this picture? A deer. And what you see well at least
00:17:10
what I see, it looks like the deer is popping up well now I show
00:17:17
you this so now I put it upside down so now it's maybe see the deer upside down
00:17:24
but now look away for a moment blink with your eyes and now look again well
00:17:32
for some of you maybe you see it exactly the same but for others you do not no
00:17:39
longer see that the deer is popping up but you see, it seems to be the case
00:17:45
that it's now not popping out of it but that it's like carved.
00:17:51
Carved into this thing that you see here so this is called an ambiguous picture so
00:18:00
this is a picture that you can see in multiple ways well that's part of
00:18:05
cognitive psychology and we like this kind of pictures because it tells you
00:18:09
something about how we perceive things that there's not a single way of
00:18:13
perceiving things that there are very often multiple ways of seeing something
00:18:22
well so you get an in the first semester of your first year program you get an
00:18:29
introduction to psychology so that's a very broad course where you get
00:18:33
information about all sub disciplines but the first sub discipline that you
00:18:38
will dive into is cognitive psychology well and the general theme of this block
00:18:45
is psychology: scope, basis and method. And then the second sub discipline that you
00:18:55
will study is developmental psychology well as I told you I'm the teacher of
00:18:59
this course at the course in January it's a full-time course and
00:19:04
developmental psychology is mostly about children how children develop how they
00:19:09
develop their cognitive skills how they develop their social skills but
00:19:14
development you can also see it as a development over the lifespan so it also
00:19:19
includes aging getting old why do we get old and what happens when you get old to
00:19:26
your cognitive abilities change when you get old why do we have specific diseases
00:19:32
when you get old so that's also included in developmental psychology well here
00:19:38
you see a very simple task that we often do with children so what you see here is
00:19:48
a number of red dots well it's hopefully very easy for you to tell the number of
00:19:56
dots so it's five and what we do do these tests usually with children
00:20:01
around the age of 4. And often they are already able to count these numbers but then we
00:20:09
do a little trick with them. What we do is that in a second row of numbers, we
00:20:15
spread them out. Well and what you see is that we spread them out but that the
00:20:21
number of dots remain the same but the interesting thing what if you ask a
00:20:28
four-year-old which column has more dots then even though they can
00:20:37
count they count well it's five sometimes they if you start counting one
00:20:41
two three four five but then you asked which column has more and then they say
00:20:47
the right one has more so that means that young children cannot combine
00:20:53
different dimensions so they can count they can see what's shorter and what's
00:21:00
longer but they cannot combine this information so that's why they make this
00:21:06
mistake and what we see is that when they get older when they get 6 or 7
00:21:12
years old that they will do fine on this test well this is a very basic test a
00:21:17
very old test designed by a very famous developmental psychologist Jean Piaget.
00:21:23
And when you will start studying psychology you will learn a lot about
00:21:27
him so in January that's still the first
00:21:33
semester, you will get the course developmental psychology and
00:21:38
the general topic is human development so that's very broad not just children
00:21:44
also adults and the elderly well when you study psychology yeah one part of
00:21:52
the study is sitting in classrooms like this but even bigger because often
00:21:58
around 500 students start studying psychology at the University of Amsterdam so
00:22:05
that means for lectures you will sit in very big lecture
00:22:11
rooms so here you see an example of this well and maybe that doesn't seem
00:22:17
to be very attractive maybe you'll feel like a number
00:22:20
or you feel lonely in the math but fortunately next to these big lectures
00:22:26
we have small working groups seminars tutorials what you see is these are very
00:22:34
small groups up to 20 students and you will have the same group the whole
00:22:44
semester during the whole semester you will have these tutorials with the same
00:22:48
group of students and with the same teacher so the means that you can
00:22:52
actually get to know people you can get to know other students you can create
00:22:56
friendships with them and you also know this teacher. For first year students it
00:23:03
is very important that they have someone that they can talk to that they can ask
00:23:07
questions to so this teacher is also a mentor so we are very proud that we have
00:23:15
this possibility to have these small scale groups and well for example if you
00:23:23
compare these small scale groups with groups that the VU University, the other
00:23:27
university of Amsterdam offers, you have smaller groups. So you
00:23:31
have a big lecture hall for the lectures, but small working groups.
00:23:40
So this is the complete program of the first semester. You'll get first year
00:23:45
tutorials and during these tutorials you will discuss the materials that you get
00:23:51
during the lectures and you will do you practice with the stuff that you learn
00:23:57
about so these are also very practical is the practical part of the study.
00:24:07
So then the second semester so the sub discipline that you will get in the
00:24:11
second semester of the first year is social psychology well and here you see
00:24:15
two caps and that is one part of one of the most famous experiments in social
00:24:20
psychology because you see that these caps have two different colors
00:24:25
and if I would give half of you a blue cap and the other half of you the red
00:24:30
cap what we found as social psychologists is that even within a few
00:24:35
minutes you will get an idea about your own group with the blue caps and you
00:24:42
will favor people with the blue caps if you are in the blue cap group and people
00:24:48
in the red cap group will favor the people with the red cap even though you
00:24:53
don't know each other within a couple of minutes this happens well and that's of
00:24:57
course very interesting finding a very basic finding that also gives you a
00:25:02
possibility to explain why people show behavior like xenophobia like racism
00:25:08
because even in a very simple experiment within a couple of minutes you can find
00:25:13
this in group and out group behavior
00:25:19
well then the second sub-discipline that you will learn about in the first year
00:25:24
is work and organizational psychology and this sub discipline is about where
00:25:32
you will be a psychologist so you will think about healthy workspaces what
00:25:39
is a healthy workspace in what kind of environments can people flourish in what
00:25:44
kind of environment do they get stressed how can we change an environment where
00:25:49
people feel stressful how can we manage people how can we make them work
00:25:54
together in groups so these are examples of what you study in the field of work
00:26:01
and organizational psychology so in the second half of the first year, you will
00:26:11
get social, work and organizational psychology but you see that's not the
00:26:16
only thing. Now the theme is that humans are social animals but the other
00:26:25
part that you will get in the second semester is clinical psychology and well
00:26:29
that's maybe the sub discipline that at the moment may interest you the
00:26:35
most. Also with clinical psychology if you will specialize in clinical
00:26:41
psychology you can become a therapist so here you see that situation: the therapist
00:26:45
is talking to a client and that's what people in clinical psychology do so for
00:26:52
example try to create a better life for someone with a depression or someone
00:27:00
with schizophrenia someone with autism etc but because we are scientists we do
00:27:10
not only do practical side of clinical psychology but we also like to know
00:27:15
what's going on in the brain of people in general but especially are we
00:27:20
interested in what is going on in the brain of people with a disorder like
00:27:25
depression so next to clinical psychology you will get bio psychology
00:27:31
so you will learn a lot of things about the brain how the brain works how
00:27:37
neurons work how neurons work together so the question how does our body
00:27:44
influence our behavior so how does the brain work and how does the brain
00:27:48
connects to the rest of your body will also be a significant part of your
00:27:53
first-year program so that's what you get in the second part in the second
00:28:02
semester clinical psychology combined with bio psychology and the general
00:28:08
theme is problematic behavior and it's biological basis well then something we
00:28:17
think it's really important is that you are able to write as you probably know
00:28:23
when you finish an academic study and you start to work most of your output
00:28:29
will be written output and that's one of the reasons why we
00:28:36
think it's very important that you can write well as an academic so we teach
00:28:41
you academic writing so that's different from the writing that you learn in school
00:28:45
of course you already when you are in high school you already start with writing
00:28:50
in an academic way but we will extend that and we will hopefully we will
00:28:55
manage that all of you can write in very clear text about a scientific study
00:29:03
So that's academic writing, so that's another block and you will write a
00:29:09
propaedeutic thesis so you will actually end your first year with your own
00:29:16
product, a nice thesis on scientific literature. The theme is
00:29:25
written communication and also in the second half of your study you will
00:29:30
get your tutorials so again you will have small groups where you discuss
00:29:36
things and also in small groups you will do this academic writing and you get a
00:29:42
lot of feedback from your tutor on your academic writing so what do we offer
00:29:51
next to these lectures and next to these tutorials we offer a digital work
00:29:56
environment so up until this year that was in blackboard but next year we will
00:30:02
start with another program canvas but that's quite similar so what we offer is
00:30:08
weekly assignments so we want you to keep on studying over the whole year and
00:30:14
not just studying for a final exam so you get weekly assignments weekly tests
00:30:20
and so we hope that you keep up and also when you study regularly you will
00:30:27
remember more. So of course students have a tendency to study only right before the
00:30:33
final exam starts but we know from research that you remember less if you
00:30:39
only cram knowledge into your mind at the end of a course so we will test
00:30:47
you continuously it's also practice for the final test and because we work with
00:30:53
this digital environment you get immediate feedback so a lot of these
00:30:58
weekly tests will be multiple choice so you immediately see where you stand
00:31:03
Whether you did it right or you have to study more. Well then the second year
00:31:11
of the study program so when you finish your first year of course you will go
00:31:16
into your second year and then we will first dive more into what is it to be an
00:31:24
academic? So academic thinking is very important also a second course on
00:31:29
methodology and statistics will happen then and we also start with
00:31:37
thinking about test construction because psychologists work a lot with
00:31:40
tests and often people think that creating a test is very easy you just on
00:31:45
the Sunday afternoon you design your own test but that's not the way it works
00:31:50
designing a good test that you can use to gather scientific data is
00:31:57
really a difficult process well then you can also get a course on professional
00:32:06
orientation because we think it's important that you already start
00:32:10
thinking about your future early in your studies so you get information about
00:32:17
master programs that you can do and we help you with thinking about your future
00:32:24
and already making some first decisions well in the second year you will also
00:32:30
get a course on psycho diagnostics how do you know that someone is depressed
00:32:34
what are the criteria well the same for autism or schizophrenia for personality
00:32:40
disorders, all these kind of disorders will come by and you will learn about
00:32:45
this well you also get the philosophy of psychology to get a broader picture and
00:32:51
history of psychology and in the second year, that's the first time that you can
00:32:57
choose something that you really like so we offer a lot of electives and you can
00:33:02
choose among them and the one that you like the best that's the one you're
00:33:07
going to do and here you can even do an elective that's outside psychology so if
00:33:13
you think I'm also interested in sociology or in
00:33:17
whatever kind of topic, you can also choose an elective at the University of
00:33:23
Amsterdam. But even you can go to any university in the Netherlands to do your
00:33:27
electives so that gives you a lot of freedom well then in the second year we
00:33:34
also have tutorials and you'll also practice a lot of research skills but
00:33:41
also and that's very important when you want to become a clinical psychologist
00:33:45
or therapist conversational skills so how actually do you talk with clients?
00:33:52
What is your first reaction when you hear for example something that you don't
00:33:58
like do you immediately start yelling at someone or do you drop back well course
00:34:04
as a clinical psychologist as a therapist you have to take a stand in
00:34:08
middle you must be interested in what the other one is saying. But you should
00:34:12
not react emotionally that's what you learn during this course on
00:34:17
conversational skills well then the third year of the study program then you
00:34:23
already choose a specialization so I talked about these sub disciplines
00:34:28
first of all cognitive psychology and developmental psychology and social
00:34:36
psychology, work and organizational psychology, clinical psychology and
00:34:41
methodology these are the six specializations that we offer at the
00:34:45
University of Amsterdam so during your third year you do compulsory courses in
00:34:50
that particular specialization and then you also do some electives and very
00:34:59
important you will write a bachelor thesis and you do research in groups and
00:35:05
this is the moment that you do a research project from the beginning to
00:35:11
the end. So you start with thinking about a research
00:35:13
question you start thinking about how to study it how to design an experiment you
00:35:19
collect the data you analyze the data you write up the results in your thesis
00:35:25
At the end of the bachelor you are already
00:35:30
at the start of being a researcher being able to carry out a research project
00:35:40
well and then in the fourth year that's already your master's stage so you can
00:35:45
stop studying after you receive your bachelor degree that's already a
00:35:50
fantastic degree but most students continue studying and will do a master
00:35:56
program well we offer several master's programs. They're devided into six
00:36:04
specializations that we have but within these specializations we have specific
00:36:09
master tracks so one of the master tracks that may be of interest to
00:36:14
you is sports psychology some people like to become a sports psychologist so
00:36:18
that's possible here at the University of Amsterdam now then you will do an
00:36:24
internship so for the first time if you do a clinical master you will actually
00:36:30
meet clients patients you will actually work with them you will get supervision
00:36:36
your supervisor they'll tell you what to do and you will first observe how an
00:36:42
experienced therapist works and then you gradually you will adopt this
00:36:50
behavior and become a therapist yourself well in work and organizational
00:36:54
psychology we'll go to a company and do an internship there and you can also do
00:37:01
if you want to become a researcher you can do a research internship so there
00:37:05
are lots of possibilities and then at the end you also do a very big research
00:37:13
project and the difference with the bachelor thesis is that you do the
00:37:18
research for your bachelor thesis in a group but for your master thesis you
00:37:22
have to show that you can do research independently on your own so you have to
00:37:28
do the whole process of doing research by yourself of course you have a
00:37:32
supervision so it's not like you will be lonely but you have to show that you are
00:37:38
a master in doing research in your field
00:37:47
then the career opportunities what can you do with psychology so I will show
00:37:54
you some career opportunities related to the courses that you will do in the
00:37:59
first year so cognitive psychology what can you do well you become become a
00:38:04
designer and well maybe you think about a designer like someone coming from a
00:38:10
technical university designing products but what as a psychologist you can
00:38:16
design environments for example you see this classroom and there are actually
00:38:21
people thinking about what is a good way to have an environment an optimal
00:38:28
environment for learning so for example this room is maybe too boring or well
00:38:35
you see the seats of different color so there actually there was someone who had
00:38:40
thought about this room and how to design this room in a way for optimal
00:38:46
learning and you can imagine that you can do that in any kind of situation so
00:38:51
for example my husband is an aerospace engineer but at his work there are
00:38:57
psychologists working on human factors so when you design an airplane you also
00:39:02
have to think about the humans that will sit in these airplanes how they feel how
00:39:08
they have to work, how a pilot has to work so that's all cognitive psychology. So for
00:39:16
example a traffic expert is a specific example and well you can always with any
00:39:22
discipline in psychology become a researcher because you are at
00:39:26
a university, so the focus is on research.
00:39:30
well development psychology and there you can become an educational
00:39:34
psychologist a health consultant and of course you can become a child
00:39:38
psychologist so you work with children with for example autism or ADHD so
00:39:45
that's what you learn when you study clinical developmental psychology.
00:39:54
Well then social psychologists they often design behavioral interventions so for
00:40:00
example people want to quit smoking how do you do this can you design a
00:40:06
behavioral intervention to help people to quit smoking well you have to design
00:40:12
these interventions. So also here you see the term designer and a lot of social
00:40:18
psychologists become a trainer so a trainer in social skills and other stuff that
00:40:24
you can do with social behavior. Well, the work and organizational
00:40:31
psychologist is working in recruitment and selection is working as a consultant
00:40:37
for companies and it's working within the organization to create a good work
00:40:43
atmosphere. Well then clinical psychology and here you have to think about if you want
00:40:51
to become a therapist that that is comparable to doing a medical degree but once you
00:40:57
finish your medical degree you have to continue you have to do a specialization
00:41:01
well that's the same the same is true for clinical psychology so you can do
00:41:05
your Bachelor and specialize in clinical psychology then you do a master get a
00:41:11
masters degree in clinical psychology but that's only the start. Then you are
00:41:15
like a basic clinical psychologist then you have to continue so then you have to
00:41:21
do some advanced degree and also for becoming a certified psychotherapist you
00:41:28
have to study four more years so that's comparable to
00:41:32
a medical degree for example when you want to become a surgeon you also have
00:41:37
to keep on studying before you get your final degree and that you can become an
00:41:43
independent surgeon well the same is true for a psycho therapist
00:41:50
Well with biopsychology you can become a neuropsychologist you can study the
00:41:55
brain but you can also study behavior that's directly related to brain
00:42:01
problems for example people getting old start to forget things how do you know
00:42:08
whether this is normal development when you age or do
00:42:15
you have a disease like Alzheimer so neuropsychologist has all kinds of
00:42:19
tests to study the difference between someone with normal aging and someone
00:42:24
with Alzheimer. So if you think this is interesting then you are very welcome to
00:42:35
come to the University and to do what we have called in English a taster session
00:42:41
so in Dutch that's called "proefstuderen" . So what you get during this taster
00:42:47
session is an example of a lecture you will also study independently and you
00:42:53
will do a small exam you get a tutorial with the opportunity to ask questions
00:42:59
and this year the taster session is on April 11 and you can register on the website.
00:43:14
Well then the UvA selection procedure well as I said we have a
00:43:19
selection more people apply than we can place so that's a pity but so we already
00:43:28
ask from you before you apply to really think about is psychology the study
00:43:34
that I want to do is it really the right study for me? If anyone of you thinks the
00:43:40
answer is yes, then you will be invited to come to an UvA selection
00:43:50
procedure so that's actually you will study here at the University for a week
00:43:55
so that's after, for the Dutch students, you get your "VWO diploma"
00:44:00
then there's a week that you can study here no extra preparation is
00:44:06
needed you can really study in this single week and what you will see is
00:44:13
that there is a lecture day, on which you will study independently.
00:44:18
you will read literature that is an example of literature that you
00:44:23
will read during your first year. You will get access to the digital learning
00:44:28
environment so you can do assignments you can practice with exam questions and
00:44:33
then at the end of the week there's a test day and you will get a
00:44:36
multiple-choice exam and then this is the most important thing for being
00:44:42
selected so even when you have high grades in high school when you fail on
00:44:49
this test. Well that's how we select; purely based on this test.
00:44:56
So when can you enroll? The selection procedures are in February
00:45:04
2019, so that's pretty far away. There's one round in February and
00:45:10
then one round in March and specific dates will be announced on the website
00:45:14
in September. Well why do we rely so much on this single test? Well because
00:45:24
we know that this test predicts how well you will do when you start studying
00:45:30
psychology. We have collected these data for years and years and what we
00:45:35
found and that's maybe surprising but that the score on this test is a better
00:45:39
predictor of your study success than your grades in high school so that's
00:45:45
interesting isn't it so if you decide to want to study psychology check the entry
00:45:53
requirements especially for international students so for the Dutch
00:45:57
students the "VWO diploma" is okay. Then submit your enrollment application so
00:46:06
that's on the website called "studielink". Attend the lectures on the lecture day
00:46:12
so in the selection week and take the selection test and then afterwards we
00:46:21
will inform you about the ranking so it's a multiple choice test so well the
00:46:25
scores are pretty easy to get so very soon after the test we'll know your rank.
00:46:30
And you get a ranking number so when you're high in this ranking you
00:46:35
know you're in and while you're low on this ranking you
00:46:37
have to wait how many people will who were high in the ranking will actually
00:46:42
show up and study psychology here at the University of Amsterdam so hopefully you
00:46:47
are among the higher ranking students
00:46:53
and the application is on the web site study link and it opens on the
00:47:03
4th of October, so between the 4th of October and January 15th you can apply.
00:47:17
Especially for international students you need to have mathematics in your
00:47:23
high school final exam. So for the Dutch students: all of you do mathematics
00:47:30
at some level. We accept all levels of mathematics that
00:47:36
are offered in high school in the Netherlands but for international
00:47:41
programs you have an international high school we will check this whether your
00:47:46
mathematical skills are good enough to study psychology that's because we offer
00:47:51
these statistics classes so you need to have some basic knowledge of math in
00:47:55
order to be successful in psychology so we don't do these the pretext of your
00:48:00
prior education so even though what I already said you have high grades in
00:48:05
high school that doesn't matter everyone has to do the test. Of course,
00:48:12
if you think you are the right student for studying
00:48:16
psychology then we're very happy to receive your application.
00:48:30
Of course I can understand that you have a lot of questions, but
00:48:35
from our experience from other open days, we know that these questions you
00:48:41
have are often very specific so if you have questions about admission you can
00:48:47
go to the "E" building so you are now in the "C" building. You can go to
00:48:52
the "E" building and there's an information market and there for
00:48:55
example about admission there are people who are specialized in the admission
00:48:59
procedure at UvA, so you can go there for more information if you have
00:49:05
questions about content of the program you can come to me afterwards but the
00:49:11
most important part of this presentation is the student experience how is it to
00:49:17
be a student at University of Amsterdam in psychology so I would like to give
00:49:22
Julia the floor to tell something about it.
00:49:32
So they gave me like five microphones and said relax just don't forget to turn
00:49:38
any of them on like easy so yeah I'm international student at the
00:49:44
University of Amsterdam. I study psychology in the major and
00:49:46
communication science in the minor I'm originally from Germany so how many
00:49:52
Germans are there today that's not even that many I was hoping to feel a little
00:49:58
bit home yes mainly I wanted to give you guys some tips so that's why I brought
00:50:06
my script and also because scripted jokes are always the best so I thought
00:50:11
that would help no first studying at the University of
00:50:15
Amsterdam and especially studying psychology I can highly recommend
00:50:18
because I find I don't know if you guys knew that but the University of
00:50:23
Amsterdam has a really high rank for psychology it's I think the best University
00:50:28
in psychology in Europe and one of the 10 best in the world and I
00:50:32
find you can really tell because yeah what's been mentioned now is that of
00:50:37
course you sit in lectures with a lot of people but in the end you have small
00:50:41
groups and I felt like whenever I had a problem I actually knew who to talk to
00:50:46
and I felt like even there are so many people they still individually deal with
00:50:52
your trouble, for example I didn't study in English I study in Dutch so I
00:50:57
had to learn Dutch just for the study and in the beginning of course that was
00:51:01
really hard and so they offered me to get video lectures for the first year so
00:51:05
could literally rewatch all the lectures and it made my life so much
00:51:09
easier so this kind of stuff is what I really appreciate about the University
00:51:14
of Amsterdam because it's massive amounts of students but still you get so
00:51:17
much help and then also of course what's really nice is that you have exams every
00:51:23
month so you actually keep studying so you don't have to force yourself to have
00:51:27
a structure because you're actually forced to study every month so that's
00:51:32
really that that seems to be stressful in the beginning but it really helps and
00:51:37
then specific for international students - how many Dutch students are here today
00:51:42
that's quite a few okay because I also have some tips specifically for
00:51:48
internationals I know you're not going to be starting next year so coming up
00:51:53
year, but you're going to be starting the year after if you're gonna start. But
00:51:56
what I highly recommend is that you open a bank account on time because this
00:52:00
helps you to actually get a phone contract you need to have money on an
00:52:04
account for about six months before you can actually get a phone contract and if
00:52:09
you want to call your parents from time to time like me everyday then it
00:52:16
really helps to have a contract of course. So you could use
00:52:19
internet to call over whatsapp furthermore I recommend that you already
00:52:23
sign up for housing now and you make sure it's registered housing if you want
00:52:28
to receive your food packages from home because otherwise yeah you need you know
00:52:33
you need to be registered on an address in order to be able to get a number
00:52:39
here like a citizenship number so you can get a job you can get insurance all
00:52:44
this kind of stuff there's some practical tips but nobody told me you
00:52:48
know would have been glad other than that I think this is as much as I can
00:52:56
give you all the way but I think you probably have questions about how it is
00:53:01
to be a student here so I propose you have like five minutes to throw them all
00:53:05
at me and I try to answer them so go
00:53:11
are there any questions about student experience? Yes. That's a challenging
00:53:24
question now um well how much is it supposed to be? It is forty
00:53:32
hours, the thing is because I do a minor parallel I study even more because I do
00:53:37
a second subject. But yeah you know it depends, like you have to
00:53:42
calculate all the hours you spend in lectures, which isn't as much because you
00:53:46
literally have like four lectures a week which is each lecture takes two hours
00:53:51
and then you have two sessions mostly in a smaller group so hours that you have
00:53:57
to attend are not so many but then in the end you really want to keep studying
00:54:00
and especially if you're planning on reading the books which is quite
00:54:03
interesting I would definitely recommend that you that you always keep studying a
00:54:10
little bit it's meant to be which is maybe important it's meant to be a
00:54:16
nine-to-five job which means you're literally busy from nine to five but you
00:54:21
have you're free in the evenings and you're free in weekends and I mean that's
00:54:25
great in Amsterdam because as you might know Amsterdam has quite a good party
00:54:30
party scene so you wanna have the weekends off of course enjoy observe
00:54:34
also to enjoy the cultural offers of the city but then of course in order to to
00:54:40
enjoy the weekend you need to see it as a nine-to-five job but that also means
00:54:43
that it allows you for example to work some hours for example I have a minor
00:54:50
job next to uni so yeah any more any other questions yes.
00:55:04
No, it's only starting next year that psychology is offered in English and
00:55:11
well for me it was I knew that all universities in the Netherlands are
00:55:16
really good for psychology that's kind of generally known and then Amsterdam
00:55:20
was a city I liked it had it had the best ranking literally and I also
00:55:25
wanted to learn a new language for me studying and this is also something I
00:55:28
can recommend to you guys for me learning Dutch was very essential
00:55:31
because it helps you to actually meet locals and not always stick to the
00:55:36
international scene which of course is also nice but I've just found it really
00:55:40
nice to learn Dutch so it was like an extra challenge. I also saw it would be an
00:55:44
extra qualification for me to parallel to uni actually also learned a language
00:55:48
on a really good level so yeah this was mainly the reason and then also what I
00:55:55
can recommend for psychology is I don't know if you noticed but sometimes
00:55:59
psychology belongs to different faculties at University so here it's
00:56:02
behavioral sciences but then if you go to different cities for example in
00:56:07
Germany where I was admitted also belongs to mathematical to the
00:56:13
mathematical faculty which means depending on which faculty it belongs to
00:56:18
the focus is a little bit different so in this city where was also admitted
00:56:22
would have been a lot of Statistics and it is it is a lot of Statistics here but
00:56:26
I find it's a pretty good balance so whenever you're like covered in numbers
00:56:32
and statistics and then then you actually get a subject that reminds you
00:56:37
oh yeah that's why I studied psychology initially to actually learn about people
00:56:42
and behavioral things so yeah any other questions?
00:56:52
Well guys then I hope that you aren't scared off by the selection procedure

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March 26, 2018 · 3:08 p.m.
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