September 3, 2026
Disclaimer: This is specifically for the Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Cognitive Neuroscience Honors Students.
BDS students should check in with David Levari, who is the BDS concentration advisor as well as submit their application for honors, as you will also be required to take the 1960 class.
The CPSY Website's honors page is now updated with the requirements for the 2026-2027 academic year. I want to translate the page so that students (and faculty) know what's happening.
By this point, you should have an advisor and know a little about the program. Read this entry (Part 1) and this one, if you haven't gotten that far. Hopefully, you also have a topic and what your project will be about. So, what's next: You have to fill out an application for the honors program. For the 26-27 AY, that application is due on Wednesday, September 16, 2026.
The earliest you will be notified of the results of that application is Tuesday the 22nd. Please note, you will NOT be notified on Monday the 21st. Please do not email me on the 21st or over that weekend. I will not respond. I will not even read your email. Please respect this boundary.
So, you'll be notified on or around the 22nd.
After that, here are some expectations.
1) You should register for 1980 with your advisor (or 1960 if you are a BDS student). That Tuesday will be the last day to do so without a fee (so I'm really going to try to do it on the 22nd, but if not, I'm human). If your advisor already has a 1980 section number, you can do this ahead of time. If not, they will be given a section number on that Tuesday, so this is time sensitive.
2) The decision to conduct an independent research project is a significant commitment on the part of both the student and faculty sponsor. Students should be prepared to devote 10-20 hours/week to their independent research project in both semesters.
3) You should schedule a weekly meeting with your advisor throughout the Fall semester. That meeting should be used for project design and completion, as well as to help you write your literature review. Advisors, please remember that this is a necessary step - you should be meeting with your honors students regularly. And they should be meeting with you, not your graduate student or postdoc.
4) You should create a reading list of approximately 20 to 60 publications that you plan on reading throughout the academic year to help you situate the research that you're doing. Most of this reading will be done during the Fall semester. The literature review that you will write (due at the end of the Fall semester) should reflect mastery of the majority of the readings on that list.
5) At the end of the Fall semester, you should submit your literature review (plus anything else you have written) to your advisor and to the honors advisor (i.e., me). This is due on DATE TO BE DETERMINED. The hope is that during the intersession, you advisor will give you feedback, but that is not always possible, and sometimes will happen very early in the Spring semester. The honors advisor, however, will read this, and check in with you and your sponsor if a problem is detected.
OK. Don't panic. The bar here is pretty low. We want to see that you have made progress, and more importantly, that you have written things down in a coherent manner, so you can articulate what you are doing to a novel (and probably naive reader). Remember, in the Fall, your literature review is still a DRAFT - it is not the final document. It is going to be edited in the Spring semester. (In fact, editing is a requirement!). However, if you have not written anything down - and particularly words that begin to demonstrate that you understand what you are doing and why - you cannot be allowed to continue in the program. Think about it this way: 1980 in the Fall is a CLASS. Classes usually have finals or final papers. This is the final paper for that class. Would you write "chicken chicken chicken" 1000 times on a paper for a class and expect to pass the class? (Gosh, I hope not. Otherwise, what are we doing here?)
If there is a problem, you and your sponsor will be told as quickly as possible. If the problem is not resolved by early in the spring semester, then you might not be able to continue in the program.
Again, for BDS, there will be a little bit of a different process, which I'll discuss in a separate post.
6) In the Spring, we will ask you to present your research close to the end of the term. This will come in three forms.
a) Presenting a penultimate draft of your written thesis to your advisor, second reader, and the honors advisor, due on Monday April 5. You should receive feedback from your advisor and second reader by Friday, April 16 (but hopefully before that).
b) Presenting a poster at our honors poster session on Wednesday, April 14. More details on this later on.
c) Submitting the final version of your written thesis on Friday, April 23.
OK. for right now, that's the gist of it. Again, happy to talk about honors in office hours.