Make your move: Apply for Psychology in Clearing

I am Dr. Jonathan Silas and I'm a senior lecturer at Middlesex University in the psychology department. We have research laboratories that are dedicated to running experimental psychology work, facilities for developmental psychology, non-invasive brain stimulation.

We can actually not just measure brain states, we can change the way that the brain is working using these specialised techniques. We run dissertation projects every year and one year we took a group of students and we got a residency at the Science Museum in London.

Being in the museum with the students when it's closed at the beginning so you get to kind of wander around a little bit, also just engaging the public in science and psychology was really exciting. You get to know every single one of the students and it's like group work all the time so you're switching partners on and on again and again so you know every single person you're familiar with them, you become friends with them, you know their stories, you support each other so that was the most favourite part for me. We were one of the first departments to have an academic employability officer.

Within the first year in the first time we begin to get them thinking about what their trajectory is out of the degree. We offer a sandwich year where students can take a year out fee free and go on a placement and develop in-work employability skills.

We also have a in-year placement option as well. As soon as you leave here you're ready to go into further education or ready to step into the workplace. What I found special about Middlesex University is the course that they offered which is psychology and counselling skills.

I think having a basis in psychology is super helpful if you want to go down a more clinical route but the counselling skills aspect of it is really nice for somebody like myself who wants to go down the psychotherapist route because it kind of gives you a bit of an opening into therapeutic approaches, counselling, different ways that you can help other people.

So many students come to study psychology because they have a vested interest, something that they feel about themselves or their life or the peoples in their life that they feel they want to know more about. So psychology is just so fascinating because that's what the students are bringing part of themselves to the table and that's what makes it exciting.