University of Bedfordshire
UCAS Code: C11F | Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BSc (Hons)
Entry requirements
A level
Successfully completed Access Diploma course
32 - 48 UCAS Tariff Points
UCAS Tariff
About this course
This course provides you with the experience, knowledge and skills to follow a wide range of careers where you can make a real difference to people’s lives. You explore the core areas of psychology, learning how it applies to everyday life, then choose from optional units in areas such as atypical child development; health psychology; counselling; criminal behaviour; and mental health. You also have the opportunity to gain workplace experience or to take a placement year.
**Foundation Year**
In the Foundation year you will study three days per week. The focus will be on academic writing skills and numeracy, plus subject-specific content to fully prepare you for entry to an Undergraduate degree. It provides a balance between content related to your chosen subject and the range of wider skills required for undergraduate study. This is an integrated four-year degree, with the foundation year as a key part of the course. You will be required to pass the foundation year in order to progress to the first year of your degree. This course is ideal for those who do not meet our standard entry requirements or those with a non-standard educational background. It will allow you to graduate with a full undergraduate degree in your chosen subject in four years.
**Course Accreditation/Industry Endorsement**
- This course is accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS). Graduating from a BPS-accredited degree with a 2nd-class Honours or above makes you eligible for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership (GBC) of the Society. It also enables you to enrol for Stage 1 postgraduate training.
**Facilities and Specialist Equipment**
You have access to specialist, industry-standard psychology laboratories and computing environments including:
- Cognitive neuropsychology lab
- Virtual reality lab
- Research cubicles
- Driving simulator
- Eyetrackers
- Physiological data-acquisition system
- EEG
- Podcasting equipment
- Data-analysis software
- Experiment and survey-building software
**Partnerships and Collaborations**
- Elements of the course, including assessment, have been developed working with psychology-related professionals from organisations such as the NHS; disaster recovery services; and digital application development. This ensures our teaching and your learning aligns with employer requirements.
**Your Student Experience**
- Benefit from friendly, approachable staff, small class sizes and easy access to academic support.
- Get to know your peers and academics well by taking part in the School’s many social events, which run throughout the academic year.
- Experience a wide variety of teaching methods including workshops; problem solving; virtual reality simulations; computer-based activities; and guided learning.
- Complete assessments designed to be authentic, reflecting workplace practice; you can choose how you present your work – for example, as a podcast, presentation or webpage.
- Take up field-trip opportunities including visits to relevant charities working with head injuries, pregnancy loss, neurodiversity and gendered violence.
- Develop your professional research skills working on cutting-edge research projects with our academic staff through our Research Assistant Scheme.
- Our research addresses real-life, day-to-day issues including reading development; cognitive function in long COVID; and prevention of gender-based violence.
- Present your supervised research to your peers and psychology professionals as part of our annual Student Research Conference.
- Hear from a variety of guest speakers who share their experience and expertise at special events and masterclasses run by the School of Psychology.
Modules
Areas of study include:
- Foundations to Psychology
- Introduction to Psychological Research Methods and Data Analysis
- Psychology in Every Day Life
- Health and Wellbeing Psychology
- Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy
- Psychology and Criminal Behaviour
- Biological and Cognitive Psychology
- Methods of Research in Psychology
- Psychology in Practice
- Social Processes and Lifespan Development
- Culture and Individual Differences
- Psychology Research Project
- Applied Health Psychology
- Atypical Child and Adolescent Development: Theories and Applications
- Coaching Psychology
- Cognitive Neuropsychology
- Critical Social Psychology
- Occupational and Organisational Psychology
- Problem Solving
- Psychology of Language and Vision
- Psychology of Mental Health
Every effort is made to ensure this information is accurate at the point of publication on the UCAS website. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to our website
Assessment methods
Throughout your degree in Psychology you will encounter a wide variety of assessment types collectively designed to suit the variety of individual learning styles. Feedback is given to students for each assessment point and it is expected that you will use this feedback for your own development and to inform your completion of future assessments. Examples of the range of assessment types include: Presentations, reports, essays, group-work related assessments, computer-based assessments, portfolios, reflective journals, exams and much more. Support is provided through statistics drop-in sessions as well as staff office hours where you can discuss the progress of your projects and any challenges that you may be encountering.
Every effort is made to ensure this information is accurate at the point of publication on the UCAS website. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to our website:
https://www.beds.ac.uk/howtoapply/courses/undergraduate/next-year/psychology/
What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Psychology (non-specific)
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Psychology (non-specific)
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
20 years ago, this was a specialist degree for would-be psychologists but now it is the model of a modern, flexible degree subject. One of the UK's fastest-growing subject at degree level, and the second most popular subject overall (it recently overtook business studies), one in 23 of all graduates last year had psychology degrees. As you'd expect with figures like that, jobs in psychology itself are incredibly competitive, so to stand a chance of securing one, you need to get a postgraduate qualification (probably a doctorate in most fields, especially clinical psychology) and some relevant work experience. But even though there are so many psychology graduates — far more than there are jobs in psychology, and over 13,800 in total last year — this degree has a lower unemployment rate than average because its grads are so flexible and well-regarded by business and other industries across the economy. Everywhere there are good jobs in the UK economy, you'll find psychology graduates - and it's hardly surprising as the course helps you gain a mix of good people skills and excellent number and data handling skills. A psychology degree ticks most employers' boxes — but we'd suggest you don't drop your maths modules.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Psychology (non-specific)
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£18k
£22k
£23k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):
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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).
This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.
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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.
You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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