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How difficult is a Psychology Degree?

Of course I know all degrees are difficult, I'm just wondering HOW difficult. I know difficulty is subjective because each person will find it to be a different experience, but for example is there a lot of maths or a lot of science involved, if you have taken the degree how did you find it personally? Any information would be great x
Hi - sorry you haven't had a response to this yet. I'm just going to bump the thread in the hope that someone sees this and can help :h:
Original post by katie091000
Of course I know all degrees are difficult, I'm just wondering HOW difficult. I know difficulty is subjective because each person will find it to be a different experience, but for example is there a lot of maths or a lot of science involved, if you have taken the degree how did you find it personally? Any information would be great x


Hey! I've not long begun my degree in Psychology with the OU. It is definitely subjective as the OU will teach it very differently to a traditional university, seeing as they have to get everyone on the same page, so my account will vary compared to others. I'm half way through my first module already and I would say I am doing well! I do not consider myself an intelligent person by a long shot. :lol: This module has basically been teaching basic Maths at practically GCSE level, so teaching us how to do percentages (which I appreciate as a little refresher!) etc, so it's very gradual but it has very quickly started to introduce very basic statistics. The next level up is a big jump from this though and has been a shock to the system for many students.

There is science involved, even at A level, you study the brain and hormones and what each part does etc, so there's bound to be science of the brain thrown in there. From my understanding though, statistics in Psychology involves collecting large amounts of data, organising it, observing and making correct judgements about what that data shows you etc and in that process, you use some Maths to sort it all out. You do psychological studies and write projects and reports. It may be a little more complicated than that but I'll have to wait and see!

A psychology degree covers nearly all aspects of it from therapy, to forensics, to ethics, animal testing, investigations, history of psychology, application of psychology etc. I've learned that doing a degree isn't about intelligence - it's about being interested in the topic and persevering! Right now, I'm finding it slightly challenging but I'm getting through it without any major problems, but this is only the beginning. I'm studying intelligence at the moment actually, so this should be interesting... to see how dumb I am. :lol: But already looking into ethics, animal testing and doing a project this year.

If you're the slightest bit interested in Psychology, then I'd say to just go for it. Once you start, it all falls into place.
For me personally I had studied psychology at gcse and a level and so I had prior knowledge which helped me have a head start. I'm also passionate and interested in the subject so I've never found it boring. The degree involves a lot of essay writing which comes fairly easy to me as I have always done well in English. So for me I've found the degree challenging but not impossible and I've picked up firsts in the assignments that I put time and effort into.

However, for me, each year one module was focused on statistics and learning how to use SPSS and input data and numbers into a computer. I personally struggled and got low grades in these modules because I am naturally horrendous with maths and data and computers.

Everyone's different. There's a girl on my degree who is really really clever and shines above us all in presentations and group work. But she had severe dyslexia so she has a hard time writing the essays.

Another person in my class is bright and is very intelligent and always produces brilliant work however she loses so many marks because she's terrible at referencing.

Everyone's weakness' can impact how difficult you find any degree.

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