BSc Psychology

Our BSc Psychology (including Foundation Year) could be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entry requirements for a three-year version of our psychology courses and you want a programme that improves your skills to support your academic performance.

Open to UK and EU applicants, this four-year course includes a Foundation Year (known as Year Zero) which is delivered by our Essex Pathways Department, followed by a further three years of study in our Department of Psychology.

During Year Zero you will study on our Psychology Pathway which will cover topics such as Introduction to Psychology, and Statistics for Psychology. At the end of Year Zero all students who pass the Psychology Pathway will progress onto BSc Psychology.

In Year One, you will study modules that address major challenges that society faces today. You will learn psychology from the start, and we will give you the skillset you need to be successful. We embed key skills such as research methods and statistics into topics you'll be interested in. You'll be taught topics one-by-one in blocks which allows you to consolidate your knowledge.

You will continue to develop these skills during your second year. In your third year you will specialise in areas that really interest you. This will allow you to excel at studying psychology. You will also have the opportunity to take one or more of our applied modules across your three years with us in the areas of health, global challenges, self improvement, sustainability, the criminal mind and more, developing your knowledge of real-world psychology.

You learn from our researchers and can work alongside them via our Research Experience Scheme (RES) which gives you the opportunity to work one-on-one with a psychologist as their research assistant. SHOUT scheme allows you to use your skills and creativity to make our department a better place and promote what we do beyond Essex, through social media, activities and events.

Our expert staff

Our Essex Pathways Department is a gateway to the University of Essex, helping students without standard entry requirements to grow in confidence, unlock their potential, and nurture their ambitions so they can progress in academic study.

Our psychology lecturers include award-winning teachers and prize-winning researchers who are international experts in their own research areas.

Our staff carry out research into diverse areas of psychology. Our departmental mission is to 'Understand our place in the world', meaning that all of our research aims to make meaningful contributions to society. At Essex, our research explores how we think about, interact with, and experience the world, offering fresh insights into the human mind and behaviour from every angle.

This dynamic, multi-perspective approach lets you learn to investigate the full spectrum of psychological experience in meaningful, real-world ways. Our holistic approach also helps tie your knowledge together, as the lenses we employ directly feed into our modules, where you can study how we remember things, what captures our attention, how relationships work, what our emotions do with us, or the impact of culture on ourselves and others.

Specialist facilities

During Year Zero, you will have access to all of the facilities that the University of Essex has to offer, as well as those provided by our Essex Pathways Department to support you, such as:

• We provide computer labs for internet research; classrooms with access to PowerPoint facilities for student presentations; AV facilities for teaching and access to web-based learning materials
• Our new Student Services Hub will support you and provide information for all your needs as a student
• Our social space is stocked with magazines and newspaper, and provides an informal setting to meet your lecturers, tutors and friends

We are committed to giving you access to state-of-the-art facilities in higher education, housed entirely within our purpose-built psychology building on our Colchester Campus:

• dedicated laboratories to employ a range of cutting-edge methodologies when carrying out your research projects
• specialist areas to study visual and auditory perception, developmental psychology, and social psychology
• a virtual reality suite and an observation suite
• our Babylab, the leading infant lab in the East of England that explores perceptual, emotional, and cognitive processes in infants
• our multimillion-pound Centre for Brain Science (CBS), which allows staff and students to investigate brain activity (including electrophysiology (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)) and houses a range of facilities to measure eye movements and physiological responses (such as heart rate and skin conductance)

Your future

A psychology degree - especially one accredited by the British Psychology Society - provides you with the foundations needed to specialise in diverse areas, including clinical and educational psychology.

Many of our psychology graduates choose careers outside traditional psychology fields. The skills you learn during your degree will open doors to careers in market research, human resources, and people-focused careers such as a high-intensity therapist or special educational needs.

Our psychology graduates have progressed in diverse careers across the public, private and third sectors, including working for:

• Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust
• Prison and Probation Service
• MIND
• BBC
• University of Oxford

We also work with our University's Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.

"I am a trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner, working with people with mild or moderate anxiety and depression by using evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) interventions. I hope to qualify and work towards becoming a CBT therapist or go down the clinical doctorate route. My placement year was one of the most beneficial things I did at Essex. It helped shape my views of mental health services in this country and understand my different options in working in that space. It also helped me understand what life after university would be like. I enjoyed the fact that our lecturers were working on research related to what we were studying. It made the topics more engaging. I particularly enjoyed lectures on relationships, cultural, and positive psychology."

Janelle Chisholm, BSc Psychology, 2020

Clearing entry requirements

We currently have places available in Clearing across a range of our courses with most offers at BBC-CCD (112 – 88 UCAS tariff points) or equivalent. We consider each application individually and requirements may be lower for some of our courses, so please get in touch if your grades are below those outlined here.

English language requirements

English language requirements for applicants whose first language is not English: IELTS 5.5 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in each component, or specified score in another equivalent test that we accept.

Details of English language requirements, including component scores, and the tests we accept for applicants who require a Student visa (excluding Nationals of Majority English Speaking Countries) can be found here

If we accept the English component of an international qualification it will be included in the academic levels listed above for the relevant countries.

English language shelf-life

If you require a Student visa to study in the UK please see our immigration webpages for the latest Home Office guidance on English language qualifications.

Pre-sessional English courses

If you do not meet our IELTS requirements then you may be able to complete a pre-sessional English pathway that enables you to start your course without retaking IELTS.

Pending English language qualifications

You don’t need to achieve the required level before making your application, but it will be one of the conditions of your offer.

If you cannot find the qualification that you have achieved or are pending, then please email ugquery@essex.ac.uk.

Additional Notes

If you’re an international student, but do not meet the English language or academic requirements for direct admission to this degree, you could prepare and gain entry through a pathway course. Find out more about opportunities available to you at the University of Essex International College

Course structure

We offer a flexible course structure with a mixture of core/compulsory modules, and optional modules chosen from lists.

Our research-led teaching is continually evolving to address the latest challenges and breakthroughs in the field, therefore all modules listed as subject to change. To view the compulsory modules and full list of optional modules currently on offer, please view the programme specification via the link below.

We understand that deciding where and what to study is a very important decision for you. We'll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities as described on our website and in line with your contract with us. However, if we need to make material changes, for example due to significant disruption, we'll let our applicants and students know as soon as possible.

Teaching

• Undergraduate students in the Department of Psychology typically attend a two-hour lecture per week per module. Some modules have short lectures with additional seminars and/or lab classes, and others use a flipped classroom approach for further discussion.
• We combine small- and large-group teaching with regular laboratory-based research exercises.

Assessment

• Degrees are awarded on the results of your written essays, practical lab reports, and examinations.