Graduate Training
UC Merced offers graduate training in Psychological Sciences, culminating in the Ph.D. Our faculty specialize in three areas of Psychology:
Applications in any of these three areas, as well as the affiliated Public Health program, are welcome. The Psychological Sciences Ph.D. program emphasizes a strong base of coursework, including methods, statistics and a one year professional seminar covering the breadth of psychology; this base is then supplemented by more specialized work in one or more of these three areas: developmental psychology, health psychology and quantitative psychology. Students are actively engaged in research from the start of their graduate training through to the end of their doctoral work. This research emphasizes close work with a faculty mentor, with increasing independence over the years of training.
UC Merced does not currently offer training in clinical psychology or related fields such as counseling or school psychology. We also do not offer masters-only training; we only admit doctoral students who typically take about 5 years from their bachelor’s degree to complete their degree. The doctoral program is for full-time students only.
We encourage you to explore our web site. If you are interested in applying for doctoral study with us, please visit the graduate school web site at graduatedivision.ucmerced.edu, where more information about application procedures is available.
Our PhD program (technically called a Graduate Group in the University of California system) in Psychological Sciences is fully approved by the UC Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs (CCGA) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Psychological Sciences was one of the first PhD programs that was approved at UC Merced and is currently one of its largest.
Here is recent story about our graduate program highlighting two of our advanced students.