Psychology is a diverse discipline and its study offers no cookie cutter approach. Different schools slice and dice the field in different ways in an attempt to give undergraduates exposure to psychology's breadth and depth. Psychology departments focus primarily on teaching students how humans learn, think, interact and develop mentally. Students are also exposed to the research methods and theories used to assemble and organize facts.
There a number of skills the psychology student is expected to master. Some colleges require at least one semester-long course involving research experience or empirical research (lab), a course in statistical methods, and at least two or more courses outside the department (generally, these must relate to psychology). Finally, students complete their major by homing in on a chosen area of psychology in upper division courses or seminars, some of which may require substantial final papers or research projects.
In addition to the skills psychology students must master, they are required to select two or three courses from two or three areas of the discipline, but every school divvies these up differently. For example, at Pennsylvania University, home to North America's oldest psychology department, students select two courses from three categories:
1) the biological basis of behavior
2) the cognitive basis of behavior
3) individual and group bases of behavior
At Yale, students must take two courses from the social science point of view and two from the natural science point of view.
And at Michigan University, psychology majors must take at least one course in two of the following areas:
1) Biopsychology/Cognitive Breadth Group
2) Developmental/Psychopathology Breadth Group
3) Organizational/Social/Personality Breadth Group
Psychology majors have a small number of specializations available to them, depending on the school they attend. Students may pursue specialized tracks in psychology such as, philosophy, neuroscience, or computer science tracks. At the University of Pennsylvania, psychology may be studied as a core scientific discipline on its own, or in conjunction with another field, including cognitive science, biology, philosophy, linguistics, and sociology. And at the University of Michigan students decide between a psychology focus, or a biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience focus.