I Couldn’t Miss the Opportunity to Learn from These People

The Master's Programme in Applied Social Psychology was launched in 2011, and in 2013 it signed a cooperation agreement with Tilburg University (the Netherlands). As part of this agreement, students on the programme can go to Tilburg for one year and get degrees from two of the leading universities in Russia and the Netherlands. Since 2014, the programme has been taught fully in English. Vladimir Ponizovsky, a student on the programme, told us about his choice of programme and the studies.

— Why did you apply to HSE and to this specific programme?

— I came to Moscow after graduating in psychology in Canada. I came here and started looking for a where I could continue studying at home. There were, in fact, not so many options, and all of them were well-known: MSU, RGGU, or HSE. I looked at them, went there, met people and saw what they were doing. At that time, I already knew what research I want to carry out for my master’s thesis, and was looking for a suitable programme. Firstly, it was important for me that the professors were part of the global academic community, that they read international journals in their areas, published their papers in such journals and knew what was going on in the world. HSE was the best fit in these terms: the lecturers on the programme are mostly young and educated, who are actively involved in research, but even the older members of the faculty understand very clearly what is going on in global science today. I believe that a university’s goal is to teach to learn and in order to do that, the professors should know how to learn and love learning themselves. These are the kind of people who teach on our programme, and it’s interesting to learn from them.

— What was the most memorable thing in your studies?

— The courses on modern statistical methods; they were deeper and more useful than those I studied in Canada. My academic supervisor was very supportive in terms of my research; she developed the themes together with me and helped me when I was ready to give up. Also, I should mention the invited lecturers and the seminars with renowned people in their areas, whose papers you read regularly and who are on the cutting edge of academic research.

— Why do you think it’s worth applying for the master's programme in Applied Social Psychology?

— I believe that one of the main advantages of the programme is that it gives you the skills necessary for high-quality research: from basic scientific methods, to specific statistical methods and the ability to critically evaluate the results of other people’s research. This doesn’t mean that graduates must become researchers, but I think without this knowledge you can’t be involved in anything related to academic psychology.

The skills and knowledge provided by our master’s programme are in demand all over the world: our students are taught to work in global research. The programme is lively and interesting, since it has been prepared by people interested in the field. The programme provides an opportunity to communicate with renowned social psychologists and learn from them. When I was choosing a master’s programme it turned out that two leading international authors in cross-cultural psychology read lectures on this programme. These are the kind of people where you don’t just read a couple of their papers, but are quoted by almost every paper on psychology and culture. And many others visit for seminars and conferences. It would be stupid to miss out on the opportunity to learn from these people.