There is no explicit rule on how much you need to get into these post-Bachelors education. However, I will try to give you an idea of what happening as you try to transition from Bachelors to Honours to Masters.

Most people who come into the area of psychology somehow will have a dream of being a psychologist, however let us be realistic and understand that it is not as easy as we think. Just the education part take about 6 years, and this is with the assumptions that you do not take any breaks in your studies to work and do other stuff, that you pass all your subjects in every semester successfully, and that you get accepted into the Honours and Masters program successfully.

This is a very competitive field and like any other area, in order to climb to the top, there will always be only a few “survivors” and a lot of “casualities” who do not make it. For those who are more visual, I would say it is like a pyramid, with a lot of people who may finish their Bachelors and may not be able to move up, followed by the top few who managed to go into Honours, followed by the cream of the crop moving up into Masters.

To give you a even better idea, let us assume there are about 100 students in your year / level doing psychology. I understand that there are definitely more but 100 is a nice number. Out of this 100, only about half make it in the Honours / PGD program. After that, out of that half, only about 10 make it into the Masters. so probably only that cream of the crop (5% -10%) of your year/level can make it to the finish line. There is also one more consideration. Your university is not the one offering psychology undergraduate studies, and hence competition may actually come from other universities as well. Please understand that this is not the exact percentage but more of a very very rough estimation. No, I am not trying to scare you but this is what is really happening. For the exact numbers, please check with the coordinators of your universities.

As this is happening, some people may also decide to move out of this climb to Masters or postgraduate studies and decide to go to work or study something else, hence sometimes the competition may not be as tough as it seems. This move to work will be covered further in future posts.