What should I minor in with my Psychology degree?

Hi Clifford!

Majoring in Psychology can be extremely valuable, and can easily applied to a lot of various industries (business, human resources, counseling, social work, etc). If you have an idea if the industry that you'd like to work in after you graduate, try to select a minor that correlates to that field. If you aren't sure about which industry you want to pursue, my honest opinion would be to select a minor that you are genuinely interested in.

Great question! It's wonderful to think about how a minor and a major can work in tandem. As a psychology undergraduate, I was not quite sure where I wanted my psych degree to take me. There are a lot of areas that psychology can lead, and my suggestion would be to consider the type of work you'd like to do and choose a minor based on that. For example, Industrial/Organizational psychology would benefit from a minor in something like Business or Leadership. If specific research interests you, a minor that relates to that subject may help. Overall, I truly believe that a psychology major benefits all areas of life. Do your research on the different types of jobs psychology can take you to, and do some soul searching on what you find inspiring. Choosing a minor that you're genuinely interested in will benefit you in ways that are even hard to predict!

One thing that will benefit you regardless of which area you want to study in psychology is a minor in Statistics. Most Psychology programs require you to take a class or two for the Psychology major, but a minor will stand out better on the CV and resume than the major alone (most people don't think statistics when they think psychology). Throughout grad school, statistics and research will be a huge part of what you do; you'll either be planning and conducting research, or you'll be reading research conducted by others related to your discipline. An understanding of Statistics will help you improve your abilities in each of those domains, and thus improve your chances for success in and after graduate school.

In addition, I recommend you take advantage of research opportunities within your school's psychology department, as this will allow you to better see the parallels between statistics and psychology. Most professors are conducting research of some form and would love to have an research assistant. How you go about this is up to you; you can choose to work with a professor who is studying something you're interested in, a professor with a record of presentations and publications (and including undergraduates as coauthors in them; both of these approaches can typically be easily researched on the department faculty website), or you might just choose a professor you got along with in one of your classes. Work with just one professor to start, then expand to two (maybe three if you're enjoying it and can handle it). Not only will this help you get a better understanding of how to read the articles and conduct the research related to your fields, but this is also a great way to get strong letters of recommendation!

The statistics minor can be a bit difficult if you're not confident in math, but if you approach it more as a language course, it starts to make sense; statistics is all about reading the story numbers tell us, it's not so much about the math itself. I myself opted for a grad school program in social psychology, but my two friends from undergraduate went on to clinical psychology program after earning the statistics minor.

I like the Business/Leadership suggestion, but, for a different reason. Some day you may want to move up in the ranks, wherever you happen to be. A background in business/management, etc. could help you to do so. I always regret not taking finance/accounting type courses, because it would have helped me understand budgets and grant writing. You may even one day want to start your own business!

Whatever you do, please don't take something that is so closely aligned with Psychology that you aren't really getting much extra out of it. And example would be Sociology, and, possibly, Criminal Justice.