On Thursday the 28 February, the L6 Psychology students travelled down to Regents University in London for the day to take a closer look at their excellent psychology department and the University.
The location of the University was in an excellent area, walking distance from Regents park, Marylebone station, and of course Oxford Street! Another great thing about the University is that it is very small with only around 5,000 students meaning that each student is assigned a personal tutor for however many years they spend at the University, meaning they like to keep their numbers down to keep it a small Uni. The University is very open to over-seas students, in fact only 20% of the students are from the UK and all the other students come from Europe, America and Asia, and it is also encouraged that you study abroad for a semester at the University.
Regents only offers a few courses (since it is such a small Uni) and we were lucky enough to have a better insight to their psychology department. Our itinerary for the day included a short tour of Regents, followed by a delicious lunch, and then two lectures from two different professors which were very interesting.
In the first lecture we were tested on our basic psychology knowledge, for example, the common phrase ‘opposites attract’ is actually false! The professor also spoke to us about what types of psychology there are, and which famous people took a degree in it. He then went on to talk about the famous polygraph, also known as the lie detector test, and if they really are that accurate. He showed us how one worked on a volunteer and we saw where the lie detector may have lacked validity, meaning, lying can still be very effective.
Our second lecture was from a female professor who focused mainly on criminal minds and, even if we have little evidence from a crime scene, we can immediately know something about a criminal. For example, if there was little evidence from a crime scene we know the criminal must have been a clever person, leading us to the idea he/she must have done well in school or if there were no trace marks on how he entered the house or left he/she may have known the victim. I’m sure we all found this very fascinating as we were able to see a different type of psychology.
Overall, the trip to Regents University was a fun and well-educating way to have a closer look into university life and psychology degrees in more detail.
Post by Liv M (L6)
