Welcome to Columbia!
Applying to graduate school can be a complex and stressful process! As such, we hope to support all applicants as much as possible in the process of applying to the Columbia Psychology PhD program. If you'd like to apply and have questions about any application steps, please contact [email protected].
The Columbia psychology department is a vibrant and exciting place to be, and graduate students are a central part of making our department what it is. Graduate students in the department conduct research on a wide and interdisciplinary set of topics, and often collaborate with each other and multiple faculty members. In addition, graduate students in the department work to connect with the broader Columbia and NYC communities through teaching, mentorship, and outreach programs. As a department, we strive for inclusion of scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, or veteran status.
Wondering if a Columbia Psychology faculty member would be the right fit for you?
- Take a look at information on the members of the Columbia Psychology Department Faculty.
- Check out these resources from the APA and APS on how to look for a graduate advisor.
- For more resources on how to choose a graduate mentor, you can take a look at advice from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, this GradHacker post by K.D. Shive, UChicago BioScience.
- Also see this general advice on what a mentor is from Duke (not graduate school specific).
Feeling a little bit lost in the grad school application process in general?
Please feel free to reach out at [email protected], or look through some of the following resources:
- Guidance on the Grad School App Process from Psychology Today
- How Applying to Graduate School Works from the Sokol-Hessner Lab
- Grad School's Hidden Curriculum from Dr. Jessica Calarco
- Advice videos from Boston College grad students in STEM
- Advice for International Students (Women of Science Blog)
- PRO-TiP: PhD Program Resources and answers to FAQs than the Harvard Psych Department (Note: This resource was made for Harvard’s graduate program specifically, but still contains useful advice about the PhD application process in general.)
Wondering how to decide which graduate program might be best for you?
Choosing a graduate program can be a hard decision! Below are a few resources that might be helpful for informing your choice:
- Advice from UC Berkeley on how to choose a school
- Advice from Hello PhD blog
- Blog from Nature on factors to consider for choosing a lab/school for your PhD
Notes from a Former Chair
More than a half century ago, a distinguished historian of psychology observed:
Psychology at Columbia is not easy to describe. It stands for no set body of doctrine, taught with the consistency and paternalism found in more closely organized schools. Yet is shows definite and recognizable characteristics. A graduate student in psychology discovers immediately that psychology does not lead a sheltered life; that it rubs elbows with biology, statistics, education, and the world of affairs. [Graduate students] encounter many different trends of thought, and frequently come upon the same ones from different angles. But the separate stands of teaching are not knit together for them into a firm and patterned fabric. No one cares how they arrange the threads that are placed in their hands. The arrangement varies enormously from person to person.
Edna Heidbreder, Seven Psychologies (1933)
At the turn of the century, the Columbia School of Psychology could be readily distinguished from other schools of psychology (Behavioristic, Psychoanalytic, Gestalt). The Columbia perspective focused on the "dynamic" nature of psychology. It was concerned with "the workings of the mind" and "why people do the things they do." It was based on the premise that to understand these activities, "it is necessary to get as complete a view as possible of the process to be studied-- to follow it through its entire course, to discover both its minute details and its broad tendencies, to examine it both from within and from without, and on the basis of this knowledge to note uniformities and to formulate laws [Heidbreder, 1993]." To accomplish this objective, each of psychology's three fundamental levels of analysis-- social, cognitive, and biological-- had to be strongly represented in the department. Graduate training introduced students to each level. With this background, the student themselves could decide how to "arrange the threads that are placed in their hands."
Our department continues to be guided by the belief that an interdisciplinary perspective from multiple levels of analysis contributes to a rich understanding of psychological processes. Most of our faculty rub elbows with different disciplines and bridge different levels of analysis. This provides the maximum opportunity and flexibility for our graduate students to discover their own preferred arrangement for pursuing the science of psychology. Indeed, some of our students move from one level of analysis to another before honing in on their burning issue. Graduate course requirements are kept to a minimum in order to maximize our students' development as individual scholars and scientists. Our generous system of financial support also maximizes our students' freedom to make their own decisions about which research experiences and collaborations best meet their scientific objectives.
The opportunity for students to identify their own area of interest is one aspect of the Ph.D. program that makes graduate life here so exciting. Another is that our department functions as an integrated unit rather than just as a set of separate and isolated programs. Graduate student offices are all in the same area of the department. This facilitates contact among students working on different psychological problems. The department offers a set of proseminars covering the major areas in psychology that graduate students across the department take together. There is a bi-weekly departmental colloquium series on wide-ranging topics that are attended by all the faculty and graduate students. The graduate students also manage an informal bi- weekly tea to which all graduate students and faculty are invited.
By functioning as a department of psychology, our graduate students are exposed to a broad spectrum of psychological viewpoints. Another feature of our department broadens our students' viewpoints even further. The graduate program at Columbia is special in its international nature, with students from all over the world. This international quality of the program, together with its interdisciplinary quality, makes graduate life here very exciting. We hope that you will join us and contribute to the Columbia "dynamic."
E. Tory Higgins, Former Chair
Psychology Department
