General MEd Info | For Prospective MEd Students | For Current MEd Students
Information on Master’s Degree for Prospective Students
How to Apply? -- Graduate Division and Departmental Requirements
To be considered complete, applications for graduate study must include
- Both Graduate Division and Department of Educational Psychology application forms. Application for Admission
- Three recommendation forms attesting to academic and professional strengths. Academic recommendations preferred.
- Transcript(s) of all prior undergraduate and graduate course work.
- For non-native speakers of English, a minimum TOEFL score of 600/250 unless waived in accordance with Graduate Division guidelines.
[NOTE: Applications for admission to the MEd program must be received by February 1 (applications from international students are due January 15) for the fall semester, and by September 1 (applications from international students are due August 1) for the spring semester.]
Why Choose Educational Psychology? -- From MEd Students
Lauren Mark (Current MEd): I genuinely liked the courses that were offered and I enjoyed what I was learning. The course material was/is very interesting and it is so great to be able to put theory to practice in real educational settings. I also really like the faculty very much and feel a sense of community among the students and professors. The professors are always available to help students.
Kristen Swope (Current MEd): I chose Educational Psychology because I am a kindergarten teacher and I wanted to discover more about how children learn in order to become a better teacher. I enjoyed learning about the various learning styles, theories, and perspectives. Most importantly to me, I learned how to create meaningful assessments that match the Hawaii Content Standard Benchmarks. I learned not only how to create assessments, but how to evaluate them and use the information from the assessments to improve my instruction and student learning. I feel that through the Educational Psychology program I have gained knowledge that has improved my teaching and I have been able to share what I have learned to other teachers and have helped them as well.
Nara Takakawa (MEd Graduate): I applied to the master's program in Educational Psychology to study teaching, learning, development, and assessment. My academic interest was (and still is) identifying if an English language learner has a learning disability, and I thought that Ed. Psych. was where I could get my questions answered. In my studies, I concluded that traditional forms of testing and assessment were not appropriate for these learners, so I switched fields and am now in a Ph.D. program in Multicultural Special Education at another university. However, I have found that my Ed. Psych. degree prepared me well for my Ph.D. program for several reasons. First, I came to my new program with a fairly sophisticated understanding of learning theory. I had already been exposed to many of the concepts, such as zone of proximal development, mediated learning, and distributed cognition that were new to most of my classmates. Second, my statistics classes provided an excellent foundation for the courses that I now have to take. Finally, I appreciated the flexibility of the degree, which allowed me to take courses in Counseling and Special Education. Those extra, non-EDEP courses enabled me to transition to Special Education quite easily. Looking back, I am glad I studied Educational Psychology at UHM.