Any Good

[dewisant]

https://psydp.org/

MA and PhD, but is this any good?

[ss20ts]

Looks like a fake website. It's not accredited. There's no address on the website. Looks like a website a teenager made for fun.

Google The American Positive Psychology Association and see that nothing comes up except an inactive Facebook page with 10 likes from years ago. I would keep looking for a school that is accredited and can provide licensing. At least have an address on their website!

[jsd]

"Earn Your PhD in Positive Neuropsychology and Brand Yourself as a Clinical or Cognitive Neuroscientist! No State Licensing Required!"

wow.

Aside from that doozie, they're trying to imply they're NA or RA accredited (without actually lying and saying they are), being very misleading:

The Graduate University of America, New School of Positive Psychology follows the standards of the following accrediting bodies:

The Council for Adult Experiential Learning
The Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation
The American Council on Education
The Distance Education and Training Council

So they "follow the standards" of those bodies, but none of those bodies have actually accredited them. 

They do outright lie here, though, where they claim programmatic accreditation:

Degree and board certification programs are accredited by the Board of Standards of The American Positive Psychology Association (www.amppa.org).  The American Positive Psychology Association is recognized by the U. S. Department of Education.

Not only is American Positive Psychology Association not recognized by the USDoE, but the website they point to doesn't even exist.

[Flelm]

I'm going down a rabbit's hole...

Read the rambling rant on their accreditation page.
Look at their Dean's profile on Linkedin, especially the profile picture.
Google their phone number and look at the associated websites that pop up.
Read the sister forum's thread from 2009 (and 2012-2016, and 2022).

Then make your decision on if this is any good.

[jsd]

lol: https://dbs-edu.org/

i wonder how many "schools" they run.

[dewisant]

I found this advertised in Psychology Today.

[jsd]

Sadly that doesn't surprise me too much. Psychology Today is unfortunately full of quack and pop-psychology

---

There is certainly worthwhile stuff to be found within Psych Today as well, but sometimes you have to sift through some garbage.

[bjcheung77]

Great work! Lucky we have some awesome and quick sleuths on this board... There are so many of these type of sites nowadays preying on unsuspecting prospective students, a strategy they use is to setup .org sites to make it seem like a charitable institution or non-gov organization with some falsified "accreditation". Ouch! Most of these seem "real" until you dig into their details further and verify none or most of them are not valid... Don't fall for them, be diligent, find a program that has accreditation either at the NA or RA route and you'll be set.

[ss20ts]

I found this advertised in Psychology Today.

It was a paid ad. No one actually checks the validity of advertisers.