PSYC 5720

Difficult class for undergraduates. It is doable but the reading for the weekly quizzes is a lot and quite dense if you have no prior experience with the subject. The quizzes and assignments are not too difficult but can be overwhelming, with little breaks.

This course is hard. The only prerequisite for undergraduate students is Research Methods and Data Analysis II, which I did not personally find to be very helpful in understanding the material in this course. There were some minor overlaps, but this is for the most part a very advanced psychometrics course. The readings can be dense and will probably take you a long time, so you have to stay on top of them every week. There are typically 2 chapters and homework assigned every week. The majority of these homework assignments took 1-2 hours to do, and were sometimes very involved, so you have to pay full attention during class or else you will not understand the homework. It is helpful to make friends in your class and work with a group. I did this and found that I understood the material much better over time.

Professor Schmidt is a fantastic professor, and I would not have wanted anyone else to teach this course. She had multiple opportunities for office hours throughout the week and was ALWAYS willing to work with you if you could not make it to one of her scheduled office hours. She stayed an hour or more after her scheduled office hours multiple times to help me personally with homework or projects, and was always understanding if I did not understand something. This material is very advanced and she knows that her students will not fully grasp everything immediately, so she works her hardest to personally help anybody who needs extra explanation. I cannot recommend her enough.

If you are interested in psychometrics or data analysis, I would absolutely recommend this class. It is very useful to improve your data analysis skills and increase the quality of your research.