Transitional Equivalency (TEQ)

What is the TEQ Program?

Until now, if you didn’t have a traditional four-year honours undergraduate degree in psychology or if you’d earned an undergraduate degree in another discipline and had taken only a few or no psychology courses in your undergrad, you could not gain admission into a masters level graduate degree in psychology that also leads to registration with the College of Psychologists as a Psychological Associate.

Our unique, custom-designed Transitional Equivalency Program (TEQ) in Psychology gives you the opportunity to bridge the gap between whatever your current academic qualifications are and those required by both our Master of Psychology (MPsy) degree and the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO).
In a nutshell, ADLER’s TEQ program offers you many of the courses in psychology you would have taken if you’d majored in psychology! Furthermore, this program also ensures that you have the undergraduate courses you need prior to gaining admission to your MPsy studies to apply for registration with the Ontario College of Psychologists.

Determining the Undergrad Psychology Courses You Need

Registration in Ontario as a psychologist (Doctoral level) or as a Psychological Associate (Masters level) the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) requires the equivalent of eight full undergraduate credits in psychology or, 576 hours of instruction in psychology.

Where does the 576 hour requirement come from? Among most universities a so-called full credit course gives 72 hours of instruction, and on transcripts is signified as either a 1.0 or 6.0. The latter can be a little confusing, but 6.0 simply stands for the fact that, in Ontario (and most other) universities, the smallest creditable unit of instruction is 12 hours and that 6.0 units of instruction make up a 72-hour, full-credit course. Eight (8) full credits x 72 hours = 576.

As it happens, most undergraduate courses in most universities are half credit courses, reflecting 36 hours of instruction, and on transcripts are signified with either a .5 or 3.0. If all the psychology courses you took, or were to take, were half credit courses, then you’d need to take 16 of them to receive a total of 576 hours of instruction.

What we and the CPO require is that your undergraduate education in psychology be made up of at least one introductory course in psychology (full or half credit), plus courses that at a minimum, cover the following four areas of foundational knowledge in psychology (referred to as the four pillars by the CPO):
1. Cognitive Affective Bases of Behaviour – which includes such courses as: Learning, Thinking,
Motivation, Emotion, Cognition
2. Biological Bases of Behaviour – which Includes such courses as: Physiological psychology, Comparative
Psychology, Neuropsychology, Sensation & Perception, Psychopharmacology
3. Social Bases of Behaviour – which Includes such courses as: Social Psychology, Group Processes,
Organizational Psychology, Community Psychology, Environmental Psychology, Cultural Issues
4. Psychology of the Individual – which Includes such Includes such courses as: Personality Theory,
Human Development, Abnormal Psychology, Psychopathology, Individual Differences

TEQ and MPsy Enrollment
When you apply to our MPsy program all your transcripts are reviewed. Once accepted into the MPsy, if you require one or more undergraduate courses to meet CPO’s undergraduate requirement, you’ll be automatically referred to the Director of the TEQ Program. Your course gaps are assessed, and, together with the Director, a study plan is created.
Your letter of acceptance to our M.Psy. program will state how many and which courses in the TQ program are required in order to gain full admission into the MPsy. Most of the credits you will need to fulfil the program are available at ADLER, but you may want or need to take some courses at another university.

If you opt to take some courses outside of AGPS, that’s fine with us, but you’ll need to consult with the Director of the TQ program to have your proposed courses approved. It may take you anywhere from 3 to 18 months, to complete the TEQ program depending on your individual schedule, as well as the number of courses you need to take.