Psychology - master

The master's program is based on three main parts that are designed to help students develop professionally (via courses and the master's thesis), vocationally (via vocational teaching and work requirements related to the courses Psy-3000 and Psy-3900) and career-wise (via a collaboration with the UiT Career Center).

The program consists of a master's thesis (60 ECTS) and courses (60 ECTS).The masters thesis forms the core of the program and is supplemented by two mandatory courses in the first semester and four elective courses in the first three semesters.

In the first semester, there is a mandatory introductory course (Psy-3000 Research Proseminar) that provides details of the areas of psychology in which the Department can offer supervision, and of ongoing research programs to which students can link their own research. The other mandatory course is in statistics (Sta-3300 Applied Statistics 2), provided by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. It gives a basic introduction to statistics, hypothesis testing, and regression and variance analysis.

The elective courses may be taken in the Department of Psychology or other departments. The aim of these courses is to provide a solid foundation either for the student’s work on the masters thesis or as a suitable complement to the student’s portfolio of subject areas. The subjects offered enable specialization in e.g. biological, cognitive, educational, social or developmental psychology or health psychology.

The Careers Center contributes to the program in various ways, such as the “Arbeidslivsdagene” career days (every autumn), general career guidance (2nd semester), a course in CV writing and job searching (3rd semester) and a course in interview training (4th semester).

The study environment stands out by being small and active where the opportunities for students and supervisors are arranged for close and good collaboration. The academic environment also persists after the study period. Graduated students are invited back to the department every year. Together, the graduates are updated on what is happening at the program and the master's students learn from the work experiences of their predecessors.

The department also has a Student Research Programme in Psychology, offering a unique opportunity to motivated psychology students to spend an additional year within the program that is exclusively dedicated to a specific research topic. The aim of the Student Research Programme is to train students in conducting research, which can serve as basis for continuation to a PhD fellowship. Training within the Student Research Programme will be accepted as part of a PhD programme at the Faculty. Therefore, a completed Student Research Programme in Psychology can shorten PhD fellowships by up to two years.