Doctorate admission 2023 (Important dates)

Doctorate admission 2023

Application submission ends on September 8 (Friday) at 2:00 p.m..

Written exam*: September 12, 2023, 10:00 a.m., No. 37 Republicii Street, Cluj-Napoca

Interview* (research project presentation): September 12, 2023, starting at 12 p.m., No. 37 Republicii Street, Cluj-Napoca

*Foreign students will take the written exam and the interview in English.

Details on the exam topic and suggested reading can be found here.

PhD Admissions

News about PhD Admissions

Admission to the doctorate in the Doctoral School: Evidence-Based Assessment and Psychological Interventions is done through a competition organized annually, in September. The exam consists of (1) taking a written exam based on the bibliography displayed on the website of the Doctoral School and (2) presenting a research project to the admission committee.

MANDATORY SUBJECTS AND SUGGESTED READING

Mandatory subjects

Attention and Sensory Processes
Mnesic systems
Language, Thinking, and Problem Solving
Decision
Creativity
Motivation and Affective Processes
Unconscious information processing
Stages of cognitive development in children; Fundamentals of developmental psychology
Personality and personality disorders
Social psychology – social cognition, social representations, and attitudes
Paradigms of contemporary psychology
Epistemological foundations of scientific research
Rhetoric and theory of argumentation
Paradigms of scientific research
Principles of construction and validation of assessment instruments in psychology
Research design and hypothesis testing in psychology
The experimental plan and its variants; sampling and analysis schemes
Correlation, Regression, Analysis of Variance, Factor Analysis, and Meta-Analysis
The Case Study and the Single Subject Experimental Design
Randomized controlled trial
Fundamentals of clinical assessment and diagnosis, psychopathology, and evidence-based psychological interventions


Suggested reading

  1. Anastasi, A. & Urbina, S. (2009). Psychological testing (7th ed) New York: Prentice Hall.
  2. Beck, A. T., Davis, D. D., & Freeman, A. (Eds.). (2015). Cognitive therapy of personality disorders. Guilford Publications.
  3. Branscombe, N. R., & Baron, R. A. (2016). Social Psychology (14th edition). Pearson.
  4. Cuijpers, P. (2016). Meta-analyses in mental health research. A practical guide. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Pim Cuijpers Uitgeverij.
  5. David, D., Lynn, S. J., & Ellis, A. (2009). Rational and irrational beliefs: Research, theory, and clinical practice. Oxford University Press.
  6. David, D., Lynn, S. J., & Montgomery, G. H. (Eds.). (2018). Evidence-based psychotherapy: The state of the science and practice.
  7. Eysenck, M.W., & Keane, M.T. (2020). Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook (8th ed.). Psychology Press.
  8. Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics. Sage.
  9. Goodwin, K. A., & Goodwin, C. J. (2016). Research in psychology: Methods and design. John Wiley & Sons.
  10. Matthews, G., Deary, I., & Whiteman, M. (2003). Personality Traits (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  11. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Hilgard, E. R., Atkinson, R. L., & Atkinson, R. C. (2014). Atkinson & Hilgard’s introduction to psychology.
  12. Zelazo, Philip David (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology, Vol 1 & 2. (2013; online edn, Oxford Academic, 16 Dec. 2013).

Babes-Bolyai University and its International Institute for the Advanced Study of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health honor Professor Aaron T. Beck on his 95th birthday!

beckProfessor Aaron T. Beck has turned 95 on the 18th of July 2016! In 2012, Professor Beck received the highest distinction of our university – Doctor Honoris Causa of Babes-Bolyai University – becoming part of our academic community (see here). Our university also holds an Aaron T. Beck Professorship position, in recognition of the scientific stature of Aaron T. Beck and of his contribution to the development of the clinical and psychotherapy program at Babes-Bolyai University.

As we all know, Professor Beck, now emeritus professor of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, USA, is recognized world-wide for his “cognitive revolution” in the mental health field, which has changed the face of clinical science and clinical practice. He has influenced a huge number of scientists in the academic field, and millions of people all over the world have benefitted from this innovative treatment (i.e., cognitive therapy). Over the years, he has received many awards and distinctions for his tremendous contributions to clinical science and practice. For example, when he was awarded the Lasker Award, considered by many “the American Nobel in Medicine”, Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, the chairman of the Lasker committee, said: “…Cognitive therapy is one of the most important advances — if not the most important advance — in the treatment of mental diseases in the last 50 years.”

In our view, Professor Beck set the stage for “modern psychotherapy” in the history of the field, radically changing the way we see and practice psychotherapy. Before him, we had mainly “grand theories”, associated to various more or less charismatic founders. He is a charismatic scientist, who has changed the paradigm and has taken psychotherapy as a science into the evidence-based field. It is our strong belief that we owe it mainly to Professor Beck that psychotherapy is well-integrated today in the evidence-based movement in mental health and that it has a strong scientific profile!

Thank you and Happy Birthday, dear professor and colleague!

Professor, Ph.D., Daniel David
Director of the International Institute
Vice-rector for research, competitiveness-excellence, and scientific publications of Babes-Bolyai University