Degree Requirements

1. Register for Monday Seminar each semester

This seminar (listed as GR9397x and GR9398y) will expose the student to research being conducted by faculty and students within the Department of Psychology, at other departments within Columbia University and in the NYC metropolitan area more generally. NOTE: In December of their first year, students will give a 10-minute talk in this seminar, outlining their planned MA research. Students should register pass/fail.

2. Register for the Colloquium Series each semester

(This is listed as GR9999x and GR9999y). This series of talks will expose students to a broad range of research within psychological science from experts in the field. Students are encouraged to actively engage with speakers and attend the reception after the talk. Students should register pass/fail. 

3. Register for Supervised Individual Research each semester (GR6600x and GR6600y)

4. Presentation at the Annual Research Day each year 

This event is typically held at the end of the spring semester each year. All MA students will present. Second year students will present their MA talk (see below) to the entire department at this event. Further details will be sent by email each year. 

5. Yearly Reviews of Satisfactory Progress

The student must demonstrate to the Primary and Secondary Advisors satisfactory progress at the end of Year 1 and Year 2. Prior to May 1st of each academic year, the student needs to meet with both their Primary and Secondary Advisor to review progress on their research and to discuss any issues of concern. Prior to this meeting, the student should prepare a 1-2 page written proposal/plan for the upcoming summer. Summer funding is contingent upon residence in NYC during the summer and upon an acceptable research plan, approved at this meeting, for the summer and for the following academic year. 

The Graduate School considers progress to be minimally satisfactory when progress is such that a student completes all requirements for the MA degree en route to the PhD within two academic years (four semesters) of registration, not including official leaves of absence or periods of parental accommodation.

6. Apply for External Funding (e.g., NSF, NSERC, etc.) for which you are eligible

7. Completion of the MA Research Project in Year 2

You will give a brief (15-20 minute) presentation on your MA research project near the end of your second year during the Annual Research Day. A write-up of the MA research project should be prepared in a format appropriate for publication. On June 1st of Year 2, an initial write-up of the research is due to your Primary Advisor and a Second Reader (a faculty with appropriate expertise in the area of research). On July 1st of Year 2, your Primary Advisor and Reader will return comments/feedback to you. Between July 1 and September 1 there can be one or more rounds of editing between you and your advisor/reader, as is appropriate, but the paper must be finalized and approved by September 1. Approvals must be sent by email to both the DGS and Joanna Borchert-Kopczuk by September 1.

8. Seminar Course Requirements

Students will take three graduate level seminar courses within the department. These seminars, with two exceptions (Hassin's GR9350, and Davachi's Fall 2017 GR9165), cannot be 9000 level courses. The grade of A- or better must be obtained in each course in order to receive credit for completion of the requirement. Any course that is offered by a core faculty member of the Department of Psychology is eligible to be one of these three courses. If a student wishes to take a graduate level course that is not offered by a core member of the department to meet this requirement, he or she must consult with his or her advisor and obtain permission to do so from the DGS. Students are encouraged to use these seminar requirements to gain a broad understanding of psychology. 

9. Statistics  & Methods Course Requirement 

a) Currently a two course sequence (GR6006 Introduction to Statistical Modeling in Psychology and GR6007 Analysis of Change) is being offered. As part of your MA requirements one of these two courses should be taken. 

b) In the event that the above is not being offered in a particular year, a list of approved statistics courses that may be used to meet this requirement is provided at the following link.

c) You should also consider taking a methods course (e.g., GR6050 Psychophysiology Methods and Analysis Laboratory or GR6060 Human Brain Imaging for Cognitive Neuroscience) as early in your career as possible.

 

10. TAships

Teaching is considered to be an integral part of your graduate training. As such, you are expected to serve as a TA for one course per year during your funded years (1-5). Across your graduate career, at least two of your TA appointments should be in classes with laboratory sections (i.e., methods or statistics courses).

Occasionally, when we are able to demonstrate strong need for additional TAs, GSAS will allow us to hire 1-2 6th-year students as GSAS Teaching Fellows. These appointments are not guaranteed. They require special permission from GSAS and always depend on enrollments, the number of TA openings we have, and other factors. 

 

11. Training for Teaching.

Some training in the methods and theory of teaching prior to or concurrent with your first TA assignment is required for all GSAS students. This GSAS requirement is typically fulfilled by enrolling in GR6200 Practicum in the Teaching of Psychology. If you are unable to enroll in this course, you should notify Caroline Marvin, the Director of Instruction, to work out a way to fulfill this requirement by participating in at least three appropriate teaching workshops through the Center for Teaching and Learning. Note that enrollment in Teaching Practicum is required for students who want to apply for a Teaching Scholar Award.

12. Apply for MA

Students who have fulfilled all of the requirements must apply for the MA through this link by *Sept 1* to get the MA in October of 3rd year. This is an additional step, aside from sending the requirements to Joanna Borchert-Kopczuk for the courses, masters paper and advisor approval. Once submitted, students can check the status of their degree applications in SSOL.

The requirements for the MPhil. degree must be completed by end of Year 4 and appropriate paperwork indicating completion of requirements must be submitted to GSAS by May 15th of Year 4 (i.e., by the end of the 8th semester of graduate work). MPhil students need both a primary and secondary advisor (as per the MA requirements). 

To apply for Mphil degree please complete the top portion of the Mphil application located here and send it to Joanna.

You will also need to request that your comp approvers send an email to Nim (cc'ing Joanna) stating what they approve as your comp requirement. Your application will not be released to GSAS until this is received.

Please note that the Dissertation Proposal is not a required part of the Mphil degree application; in fact it is completed following conferral of Mphil (no later than September of the 5th year).

1) Completion of all MA Requirements.

2) Register for Monday Seminar each semester (listed as PSYC GR9397x and GR9398y)

3) Register for the Colloquium series each semester. (This is listed as GR9999x and GR9999y)

4) Register for Supervised Individual Research each semester (GR6600x and GR6600y)

5) Presentation at the Annual Research Day or Monday Seminar

This will is typically held in the spring semester. Further details will be sent by email each year. All advanced students will make a yearly presentation of their research to the entire department at the Annual Research Day or Monday Seminar. 

6) Yearly Reviews of Satisfactory Progress

The student must demonstrate to the Primary and Secondary Advisors satisfactory progress at the end of each year. Prior to May 1st of each academic year, the student needs to meet with both their Primary and Secondary Advisor to review progress on their research and to discuss any issues of concern. Prior to this meeting, the student should prepare a 1-2 page written proposal/plan for the upcoming summer. Summer funding is contingent upon residence in NYC during the summer and upon an acceptable research plan, approved at this meeting, for the summer and for the following academic year.

To maintain satisfactory academic progress, all work for the MPhil degree—including the dissertation prospectus requirement, if relevant—must be completed within four academic years (eight semesters) of registration, not including official leaves of absence or periods of parental accommodation.

If, however, the student holds an appropriate master’s degree from Columbia or another institution and received two Residence Units of advanced standing, all MPhil degree requirements—including the dissertation prospectus requirement, if relevant—must be completed within three academic years (six semesters) of registration.

7) Apply for External Funding (e.g., NSF, NSERC, or other brief proposal, such as with a foundation)

Note that an NRSA proposal is a major undertaking. If you decide to apply for this particular grant (and we urge you to do so), it can count as 2 comps--please see below under (10). If you are not applying for an NRSA, however, and you do not have external funding already, you must apply for any other small grant(s) for which you are eligible. 

8) Two Additional Elective Graduate Level Courses 

These can be graduate level seminars or lecture courses from Psychology or from another department at Columbia or institution that offers cross-registration. You may register for courses at other institutions through the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium. Please be sure to consult with your PI and the DGS to ensure that the course you are interested in can be used to fulfill this requirement. Monday seminar and lab meetings offered for credit do not count for this requirement. You must receive a grade of A- or better in any elective course that you want to count towards your M. Phil.

9) One Statistics Course Beyond the One Taken to Fulfill the MA Requirement

a) Currently, a two course statistics sequence (G6006-G6007) is being offered. These courses are specifically designed for you, and you are urged to fulfill the statistics requirement with these courses. If you took one of these two courses as part of your MA requirements, the other can count for the M.Phil. requirement. 

b) Alternatively, as long as you have taken one of these courses, you can take another course selected from an approved list of statistics courses, including a methods course (e.g., GR6050 Psychophysiology Methods and Analysis Laboratory or GR6060 Human Brain Imaging for Cognitive Neuroscience. The second statistics course should be completed by the end of your third year. For a list of approved statistics courses see the following link.

10) Comprehensives

The student must fulfill three comprehensives to complete their MPhil. The comprehensives are intended to broaden the student's research experience and add to both the breadth and depth of his or her knowledge base. Ideally, they may also result in publications. The goals of the comps are: (1) to enhance the student’s competence in his or her primary area of research, (2) to enhance competence in methodology, and (3) to provide competence in an area of psychology outside the area of the dissertation research. This latter will be invaluable when students apply for jobs, and when they interview. The student should work closely with his or her advisor to determine a plan for the comprehensives that will further the student’s own needs and research objectives.

The comp requirements can be satisfied by conducting three separate projects or by writing an National Research Service Award (NRSA; which counts for 2 comps), plus one additional project. Students are encouraged to conduct comps with core faculty members of the Department of Psychology. However, because the academic goals of different students differ, some students (guided by the advice of their mentor, and with permission from the DGS) may benefit from doing one or more comp with other faculty, such as with researchers in MBBI, the School of Business, the Department of Biology, Teacher's College, or Barnard College. Students are expected to conduct comps with three core faculty members of the Department of Psychology.

For each of the individual comps, the student should first discuss with their advisor, in detail, how the particular comp will contribute to their research plan and to their intellectual objectives. Then, they should approach the potential comp mentor(s). If the faculty member agrees, the student should make a 'contract' with that comp mentor, that outlines the structure, timeline and end-product of the comp. Together they should lay out the plan of the project and agree on what is needed to fulfill that plan. For instance, conducting and writing up an experiment resulting in a manuscript that is ready to be submitted for publication might be the agreement. Alternatively, a literature review, a meta-analysis, or a theoretical model, resulting in a submission-ready paper, might be the agreement. Alternatively, the student might learn a new skill, (gaining, for example, fluency in ERPs, TMS, Bayesian statistics, neural network models), or they might do serious research with a different participant population than the one with which they would normally engage (for example, minority populations, infants, children, birds, rats, mice, monkeys, elders, memory champions, patients with schizophrenia, people with eating disorders, substance users, artists, prisoners, etc.). The particular details of the contract will depend on both the student and the comp mentor, who should consider the student’s overall goals and interests to determine what comps would most benefit the student. The comps need to have a clearly demarcated endpoint, that should be specified in the agreement that is made at the outset between the student and the comp mentor. These contracts may vary greatly depending on the students' intellectual path, but the expectations need to be coherent with the student’s overall goals (as discussed with the primary advisor) and well defined between the comprehensive mentor and the student. In those cases in which the student is eligible, he or she is strongly encouraged to fulfill two of the comps by writing and submitting an NRSA. The grant writing experience is invaluable, and many alumni of the program have attested to the importance of learning this skill in graduate school. In the case of using an NRSA (which is assumed to be developed with his or her primary advisor) for 2 comp requirements, the third comp must be conducted with a different faculty member. Taking advantage of the opportunity to write and submit an NRSA honors two of the three 'in principle' goals, namely, that students develop in-depth knowledge in the specific area of their own research, and that they learn the crucial pragmatic skill of grant writing, a skill that will be of importance for their career. 

11) TAships

Teaching is considered to be an integral part of your graduate training. As such, you are expected to serve as a TA for one course per year for years 1-5. Across your graduate career, at least two of your TA appointments should be in classes with laboratory sections (i.e., methods or statistics courses).

Occasionally, when we are able to demonstrate strong need for additional TAs, GSAS will allow us to hire 1-2 6th-year students as GSAS Teaching Fellows. These appointments are never guaranteed. They require special permission from GSAS and always depend on enrollments, the number of TA openings we have, and other factors. 

** Please note that we have been advised by GSAS that such 6th-year appointments are unlikely in the 2020-21 academic year. 

 

 

Students are required to defend their dissertation proposal and submit the required paperwork to GSAS no later than September of their 5th year. (Note - this deadline differs from what is published in the GSAS website and is specific to Psychology).

 

Beginning in the semester after defending their prospectus, students will meet once each semester, either in person or by video conference, with their sponsor(s) and at least once other member of their internal committee to review their progress.  Prior to the scheduled meeting, students should distribute a draft of their progress so that faculty may provide constructive feedback at the meeting.

Information about the formalities of defending your dissertation can be found here. 

Read here for information on how to choose committee members.