Students are encouraged to take courses outside of their major while studying abroad; courses for the major should be taken at Amherst College, to ensure adequate preparation for upper level courses. However, Psychology “study-away” or “study-abroad” courses may be counted as elective credit in the Psychology major. Please consult with your advisor if you would like to try to count a study-abroad course as an elective course within your Psychology major.
Some Psychology study-abroad courses may be accepted to count towards a distribution requirement (area 1: biological, area 2: cognitive/developmental, or area 3: clinical/social/personality). This is more likely to be the case when the course is taught in a language you are already fluent in (note that courses not taken in English may not be accepted for some post-graduation programs such as medical school), has the same or similar course title to the distribution course we offer, and covers similar content as our distribution course. Furthermore, distribution courses taken abroad may not cover all content that prepares students for our upper-level seminars in the same area. Therefore, in some cases, students who have taken distribution courses abroad may not be able to satisfy a seminar pre-requisite. Please consult with your advisor to determine whether a particular study-abroad course can be counted as a distribution course.
Students are rarely able to fulfill the research methods/lab requirement with study-abroad courses, but should consult with their advisor.
Students cannot fulfill seminar requirements with study-abroad courses.