Psychology Student Resume Example

A psychology student resume has to work for two readers at once: a lab director and a clinic manager. Both want proof you can follow a protocol and stay calm. The lab director is deciding who gets a research assistant seat; the clinic or nonprofit manager is hiring a behavioral health technician or intake worker, and both read for accurate documentation.

The Sample resume below is a third-year psychology major in Atlanta who runs participants in a memory lab, takes overnight shifts on a crisis line and spent a summer doing intakes at a counseling practice. The research line carries the numbers a graduate program wants (participants run, a poster, the statistics software); the crisis line and intake work carry what an employer wants (calls handled, documentation, de-escalation). The same page can be sent to both, with the summary rewritten for each.

If you are earlier than this candidate, the college student example shows how to fill a page from coursework and campus jobs alone. If you have decided on the clinical route, the social work student example shows how field hours are presented. The Campus template keeps research, volunteering and education readable on one page.

Updated . The person and employers in this Sample resume are fictional.

Psychology Student sample resume

Tessa Lindqvist

Psychology Major, Class of 2027 | Research Assistant and Crisis Line Volunteer

Atlanta, GAtessa.lindqvist@example.com(404) 555-0121

Summary

Third-year psychology major at Peachtree State University (BA expected May 2027, GPA 3.7) with three semesters as a research assistant in a cognition and memory lab and 400 hours on a 24-hour crisis line. Completed a summer intake internship at an outpatient counseling practice, screening new clients and documenting histories in an electronic record. Preparing for either a clinical psychology PhD application in fall 2026 or a behavioral health technician role after graduation.

Experience

Undergraduate Research Assistant, Cognition and Memory Lab, Peachtree State University Department of Psychology

– Present

Atlanta, GA

  • Run two to four participants per week through a 90-minute eye-tracking and recall protocol, with 212 sessions completed and a 3 percent exclusion rate for protocol errors across the lab's three assistants.
  • Clean and score response data in SPSS and R, and built the lab's scoring template that cut data entry for each session from 40 minutes to 15.
  • Second author on a poster presented at a regional undergraduate research symposium on retrieval practice and false recall.
  • Trained three incoming assistants on consent procedures, IRB requirements and the eye tracker calibration checklist.
Crisis Line Volunteer, Chattahoochee Crisis Line

– Present

Atlanta, GA

  • Completed 60 hours of training in active listening, suicide risk assessment and warm handoffs, then logged 400 overnight shift hours answering an average of nine calls and texts per shift.
  • Conducted risk assessments on every contact and escalated 14 imminent-risk calls to mobile crisis teams following the line's protocol.
  • Selected as a shift mentor after eight months, reviewing call notes with newer volunteers and modeling calls during their first three shifts.
Intake Intern, Lenox Road Counseling Associates

–

Atlanta, GA

  • Completed phone and in-person intake screenings for 85 new clients, recording presenting concerns, history and insurance details in the practice's electronic health record.
  • Administered and scored the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 at intake and flagged scores above the practice threshold for same-day clinician review.
  • Rewrote the intake packet into plain language after noticing that a third of forms came back incomplete; incomplete forms fell to a handful per week.

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, minor in Statistics (expected May 2027)

Peachtree State University, Atlanta, GA

GPA 3.7, Dean's List four semesters. Coursework: Research Methods, Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Abnormal Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology, Developmental Psychology. Psychology Honors Program; thesis proposal on retrieval practice approved spring 2026.

Skills

  • SPSS
  • R (tidyverse, basic regression)
  • Qualtrics survey design
  • Eye-tracking data collection
  • IRB protocols and informed consent
  • PHQ-9 and GAD-7 administration
  • Suicide risk assessment
  • Active listening and de-escalation
  • Clinical intake documentation
  • Literature search (PsycINFO)
  • APA style writing
  • Spanish (intermediate)

Certifications

  • CITI Human Subjects Research Training, CITI Program,
  • Crisis Line Responder Certification, Chattahoochee Crisis Line,
  • Mental Health First Aid, National Council for Mental Wellbeing,

Start yours from this example

Opens this sample in the editor, in one of the templates below. Swap in your details, then tailor it to each posting in about two minutes.

Use this example

Templates for the psychology student resume

All templates

How the resume changes with experience

The same psychology student resume, written at three levels: a summary and three bullets for each.

Entry level

Zero to two years, or a first role in the title

First-year psychology major with a strong start in Introduction to Psychology and Statistics, a part-time job at the campus recreation center and a completed Mental Health First Aid course. Seeking a volunteer research assistant position to learn lab procedures.

  • Earned an A in Research Methods while working 15 hours a week at the campus recreation desk.
  • Completed the eight-hour Mental Health First Aid course and the university's peer listening workshop in the first semester.
  • Applied to labs whose work matched the Cognitive Neuroscience lecture that interested me most, rather than emailing every professor in the department.

Mid level

Three to seven years, owns a process or a workload

Third-year psychology major with three semesters as a paid research assistant, 400 crisis line hours and a summer intake internship, applying for a behavioral health technician position and preparing graduate school applications.

  • Collected and scored data for 212 lab sessions and co-authored a regional symposium poster.
  • Rewrote the counseling practice's intake packet, which dropped incomplete forms to a handful per week.
  • Chose overnight crisis line shifts over daytime ones to protect lab hours and class attendance.

Senior

Eight years or more, leads people, budgets or programs

Graduating psychology major with an honors thesis, two years in a cognition lab and 700 crisis line hours, starting as a behavioral health technician at a psychiatric hospital while applying to clinical psychology doctoral programs.

  • Defended an honors thesis on retrieval practice with 96 participants, analyzed in R with a mixed-effects model.
  • Mentored six crisis line volunteers through their first month; all six completed their one-year commitment.
  • Took a full-time technician job for the gap year rather than an unpaid lab position, to bring direct patient hours to the doctoral application.

Skills to put on the psychology student resume

Hard skills

Statistical software (SPSS, R)
Lab directors and graduate committees assume you can clean and analyze data; naming the software and the tests you have run proves it.
Research protocol and IRB experience
A student who has run participants and holds CITI training can be trusted with a study on day one.
Screening instruments (PHQ-9, GAD-7)
Clinics hire technicians and intake staff who already know how to administer and score the common measures.
Crisis and risk assessment
Behavioral health employers want evidence you can stay calm and follow an escalation protocol with someone in danger.
Clinical documentation
Intake notes and session records are the bulk of an entry-level behavioral health job, and sloppy notes are the fastest way to lose one.
Qualtrics and survey design
Most undergraduate studies run on it, and a student who can build a clean survey saves the lab weeks.
APA style and literature search
Writing samples and poster abstracts are judged on it, and graduate programs read your resume for signs you can write.

Soft skills

Confidentiality
Every role on this page involves protected information, and employers want evidence you have handled it before.
Composure with distressed people
Crisis line hours and intake work show you can listen without flinching, which no course grade can show.
Attention to procedure
Research validity and clinical safety both depend on doing the same thing the same way every time.
Teaching others
Training new assistants or mentoring volunteers signals that you understood the work well enough to explain it.

Mistakes that cost psychology student interviews

  1. Listing the lab without saying what you did in it

    Research Assistant, Smith Lab tells a reader nothing. State the protocol, how many participants or sessions you ran, the software you used to analyze the data and any poster or paper your name is on.

  2. Burying crisis line or volunteer hours

    Students often place volunteering in a one-line section at the bottom. If you completed 60 hours of training and took hundreds of calls, that is experience. Give it a full entry with the training, the hours and how escalations were handled.

  3. Writing one resume for both graduate school and jobs

    The same experience should be ordered differently. A graduate application leads with research, the thesis and the poster; a technician application leads with intake, screening instruments and crisis hours. Keep two versions of the summary and swap the order of entries.

  4. Claiming clinical skills you have not practiced

    A course in Abnormal Psychology does not make you able to diagnose, and reviewers know it. Describe what you actually did: administered and scored a PHQ-9, documented presenting concerns, escalated per protocol.

  5. Leaving the statistics minor or coursework implicit

    Quantitative preparation is a tiebreaker for both lab seats and PhD programs. Name the statistics courses and the software, and mention a statistics or data science minor in the degree line.

Questions about the psychology student resume

What goes on a psychology student resume if I have never worked in a lab?

Lead with coursework that involved data: Research Methods and Statistics, with a sentence on a project you ran or analyzed. Add any helping role, such as peer tutoring, residence life or a hotline, and list software you have used in class, even if only in one course. Then apply to labs; most take students with exactly this background.

How many research hours do graduate programs expect to see?

There is no fixed number, but committees look for at least a year in one lab, with increasing responsibility. Show the progression on the page: participant running first, then data analysis, then a poster or thesis. One lab for two years reads better than four labs for one semester each.

Should I put my thesis on the resume before it is finished?

Yes. Add it under education as Honors Thesis (in progress) with the title or topic, the advisor's lab and the methods. Update the line when you defend.

Does crisis line volunteering count as clinical experience?

For technician, case aide and intake jobs, and for most master's programs in counseling and social work, it does. For clinical psychology doctoral programs it counts as clinical exposure rather than research, so pair it with lab work. Either way, list the training hours and the number of contacts handled.

Which psychology jobs can I get with a bachelor's degree, and what should the resume emphasize?

Behavioral health technician, psychiatric technician, research coordinator, case aide, ABA therapist and human resources assistant are the common ones. For each, move the matching experience to the top and name the instruments, record systems or populations the posting mentions.

How long should a psychology undergraduate's resume be?

One page for jobs and most master's applications. Doctoral programs that ask for a CV will accept two pages with presentations, posters and research experience described in full; label it CV and keep the resume version separate.

Related resume examples

All examples

Every application goes out fitting the job.

Paste a posting, get a resume written for it in two minutes.

Tailor your resume — free

Free to start. No card. Same price on web, iOS and Android.