Course description
About the course
The Graduate Diploma in Psychology is designed for graduates in fields other than psychology who wish to pursue a career in psychology, giving them the opportunity to obtain the necessary accredited, undergraduate psychology major over two or three years of part-time study, usually by distance education.
The Graduate Diploma in Psychology is not a fourth year in Psychology.
As the Graduate Diploma in Psychology is available by distance education, it meets the needs of geographically isolated students, as well as those in full-time employment seeking a career change while remaining in their present occupation. It specifically enables school teachers seeking the necessary psychology major to enrol in the Postgraduate Diploma of Psychology in order to train as school counsellors. It also enables students with an outdated psychology major to update their qualifications.
Graduates who successfully complete this eight subject Graduate Diploma are eligible to apply for postgraduate courses offering a fourth year in psychology. Two courses on offer at Charles Sturt University are the Postgraduate Diploma of Psychology and the Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) (Honours), both of which are accredited as fourth year psychology courses by the Australian Psychological Society (APS).
It should be noted that completion of the Graduate Diploma in Psychology does not guarantee admission to either of these courses.
Credit
To conform to the Australian Psychological Society (APS) requirements, credit for psychology subjects taken at other institutions can only be granted for equivalent subjects in APS accredited courses.
a) Credit in the Graduate Diploma of Psychology will normally be given for any individual APS accredited psychology subjects studied within the last ten years that were part of any university undergraduate program. The maximum number of credits is four subjects. (Students should indicate which subjects they would like to receive credit for and provide a subject description from the handbook.)
b) Students whose major is more than 10 years old will normally meet prerequisites for entry only.
Where students did not receive grades of Credit or better in previously studied psychology subjects, careful consideration should be given to whether or not credit is applied for in those subjects as they may lower the overall GPA for entry to fourth year programs.
Also where a student’s PSY101 and PSY102 (or equivalent) is more than 10 years old students should obtain a recent copy of a first year psychology text and refamiliarise themselves with the basic principles of psychology.
Professional accreditation
This course is accredited by the Australian Psychological Society.
Summer sessions
A number of subjects are offered during the Summer session (December/January). The following subjects are offered every summer: PSY101 PSY102 PSY201 and one other Level 2 subject and one Level 3 subject. Please note that only students who are residing in Australia during the Summer Session are eligible to enrol in Summer session subject/s.
Residential schools
Students will receive comprehensive study material and will have access to teaching staff by telephone and email. Also, there are compulsory residential schools for some subjects. Residential schools are normally held on the Bathurst Campus, although some Summer session residential schools are held in Wagga Wagga.
Residential schools are held in the same week so students are encouraged to organise their program to take advantage of this by taking two subjects with residentials in the same session.
Residential schools are held in the same week in Autumn session for:
PSY201 and PSY204 and PSY301 and PSY308.
Residential schools for PSY303 and PSY304 are held in the same week in the Spring session.
