Counseling psychology programs focus on topics that include:. We focused on programs offered by regionally accredited schools that offer a comprehensive curriculum with experiential learning opportunities. Hands-on training is critical in counseling psychology training, and we noted those opportunities. We noted programs that have a curriculum that leads to licensure. We then applied our methodology to rank the best programs based on affordability and student to faculty ratio. Program Website.
The program is for students seeking limited licensure as a psychologist in Michigan. Required courses include:. Students complete a counseling practicum along with a clock hour field practicum which is supervised by a doctoral level psychologist. Two specialization options are available including:. The MFT option is for students who want to work with families and couples.
The combined degree program includes additional practicum training experience needed by professional clinical counselor trainees. Students benefit from four-week classes that promote a healthy work, life, and school balance. Online and on-campus courses are available. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Courses are offered in three, week terms using a combination of online and face-to-face delivery methods.
Core courses include:. Students complete a practicum and two internship experiences that prepare them for success in the field. Full-time students can complete their degree in about two years. Students can prepare for three different career paths including:.
Students have access to a variety of practicum sites in settings that include university counseling centers and community mental health clinics. Both full and part-time program options are available, and evening and weekend classes make the program accessible to working professionals.
The high-quality Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies is a unique program for students who appreciate a modern, holistic, and culturally sensitive approach to psychological healing.
Five concentration options are available including:. Students benefit from evidence-based didactic learning and rigorous experiential clinical training that includes external practicum placements. The top value Master of Science in Counseling Psychology from The University of Kansas is a flexible program for students planning a career in counseling or a related area as well as those planning to pursue doctoral study.
The program includes an embedded concentration in mental health counseling. Students complete core coursework in counseling psychology along with courses in areas like developmental psychology and psychopathology. Capstone options include a thesis, research project, or comprehensive exam. Applicants should have an undergraduate degree in:. The Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri offers an MEd in counseling psychology rooted in a scientist-practitioner model.
Students will develop their skills to work in a variety of academic and applied settings. The program places greater emphasis on research than most other programs and is designed for students planning to practice at the doctoral level.
Students complete core coursework in counseling psychology and a practicum experience which provides clinical training. Research training opportunities are available through faculty labs and research teams. Applicants should submit a resume and statement of purpose for consideration.
Students will learn to apply clinical training, spiritual integration, and biblical insight to their role as a counseling psychologist. Course offerings include:. All students complete a tomonth practicum and internship experience. Graduates are prepared for a variety of roles including Christian counselor and clinical therapist. Students are typically interested in professional careers or research related to psychology, mental health counseling, or school counseling.
Most students attend full-time, but university employees can attend part-time. The program is a hybrid of home-based learning and in-person experiences.
This CACREP-Accredited graduate school program is dedicated to inspiring mental health counselors to become more self-reflective in their work. Students interested in the program may want to transition into counseling from other fields or strengthen their qualifications within a specialized field of counseling.
Northwestern University boasts a high graduation rate, and students can choose between several completion tracks. The accelerated track speeds up the learning process, allowing students to graduate faster. The Bridge to Counseling Program is dedicated to students transitioning into counseling from other fields. Other options include the traditional track and the part-time track for working professionals.
The MPCAC-accredited graduate program includes 20 courses plus a minimum of hours of field work and a two-semester internship. Students typically work hours per week during the internship. Field work is often completed at the Community Voices Clinic with public school students, in college counseling centers, or in mental health clinics.
Some students also take advantage of research opportunities throughout the program and then continue to seek doctoral degrees.
Most students take four courses per semester, including summer, and complete the M. Graduates often accept jobs as counselors within hospitals or organizations. The M. Graduates often work in church counseling centers, hospitals, mental health facilities, universities, public or private schools, and addiction rehabilitation programs.
Some also move forward to doctoral studies or find positions in academics. It focuses on personal and spiritual development as well as professional skill development, research, clinical experience, and interpersonal communication. Students are required to complete 60 credit hours, which may take three years or longer. Students can specialize their coursework by selecting concentrations for deeper study and research.
They may also gain experience in multiple professional settings by completing field work in different clinics throughout the program. Students in this graduate program are required to complete experiential learning in real-world settings. Other clinics are available, depending on the professional interests of the student. Northeastern University has a high graduation rate and accepts about 20 students into the Science in Counseling Psychology program each year.
Most students complete the degree in two years, but part-time students may take longer. The school has a high graduation rate and low student-to-faculty ratio. New students can begin the program each fall and are permitted to attend full- or part-time. An online study option is provided, and international students are encouraged to apply.
Each year reduced is advantageous for getting into the field faster and saving educational costs. Students can reduce the cost by attending in-state schools and using community colleges for the first two years of study.
Most professionals specialize in one or more fields of counseling. High school students can prepare for counseling in college by taking biology, communications, and statistics. Counseling is a helpful major for future counselors. Other useful majors that can prepare students for counseling careers are psychology, education, sociology, and social work. The national trend is towards five to six years. Accreditation is an essential question for students to ask when selecting a counseling program.
Federal student aid can only go to accredited institutions. Regional accreditation assesses the entire institution, and this is an important guarantee of quality education. In the field of counseling, program accreditation is also important. Counseling will use computer skills, research skills, and communications.
Professional counseling involves tracking events, patient issues, questions, and progress reports. In an organization, counselors must meet requirements for reports and records. Patient privacy is also a constant concern and counselors must use due care to protect sensitive information.
Counseling requires extensive record-keeping. Counselors develop notes of sessions, research, and updates. They must often prepare records for review by other professionals including referrals to specialists or other resources. Professional counselors and therapists must keep careful accounts of time and effort needed to work with patients or groups.
Enterprise software or other types of software can assist in keeping appointments, notes, and communications. Counselors must be able to quickly adapt to software systems and to improvements or adjustments over time.
Essay competition for academic program in counseling, psychology, marriage and family therapy, or other studies on treatment of mental health, drug addiction, and substance abuse disorders. The Brehm scholarships are highly competitive; eligible students must be enrolled in psychology at an accredited school and have a 3. Scholarship can cover direct costs such as tuition, books, and fees. For program purposes, minorities include members of racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups.
Eligible diverse groups also include those based on gender, sexual orientation, rural residence, and military groups. CACREP is the leading accreditation agency for online, hybrid, and in-person counseling degree and certificate programs. It is a global organization promoting quality education standards. Accreditation is a guarantee that a counseling degree or certificate program meets a high standard of quality education.
Accreditation reviews examine the quality of resources, instruction, and student academic support systems. Employers and educational institutions rely upon accreditation as evidence of quality education at accredited institutions. There are two types of accreditation: regional accreditation and program accreditation. Regional accreditation examines the overall college or university and award approval for all educational programs. Programmatic accreditation looks specifically at the counseling departments.
This specialized accreditation is valuable for endorsing the quality of counseling education. Accreditation is essential for recognition by employers, educational institutions, and the federal government.
For example, federal student loan programs work with accredited institutions. Students have many options when selecting the type of learning that works best for them. Schools offer counseling degree programs online, in-person, and in a combination called hybrid. Students can get maximum benefit ion either of the three formats. The benefit of remote learning can help students get counseling degrees that might otherwise not have an opportunity for an in-person degree program.
In-person learning is fully on campus. Students attend at designated times and places. When learning in a group- or synchronous learning, students can interact with the teacher and other students. The online type can be synchronous or asynchronous.
Students can attend online at the same time or use classroom content at their convenience individually. Synchronous online learning can support interaction with teachers and students. Perhaps during interviews you can tactfully ask the more advanced graduate students in that program about what may have led to those students who attritioned to drop out when they did. This may help you get a sense of the degree to which that attrition is due to program-specific factor versus personal factors.
For example, in our program, we had some students attrition because they discovered that they were more interested in other professional degrees that better aligned with their career goals. However, just looking at the numbers in the Attrition table would not reveal that information; it would have to be gleaned through conversations with folks in the program.
To add some further nuance: it can be valuable to know the kinds of students who tend to attrition from the program to see if there is a pattern there. Each university, geographic community in which the university is situated, department, and program have their own interpersonal and cultural climate.
For example, some environments are more hostile to members of minority groups e. Therefore, some programs may demonstrate a pattern where minority students tend to be the ones that attrition while privileged students do not. This is important information for minority applicants to doctoral programs. If people who share your cultural identities are more likely to attrition from a given program, you may want to think twice about applying or accepting an offer to that program.
Of course, the names and personal identities of those who drop out of a given program is protected by FERPA law, so it can be hard to get a sense for the cultural identities of those students who have attritioned from the program in recent years.
My advice is to have a tactful conversation with graduate students currently enrolled in that program that share your salient cultural identities to ask them what the climate has felt like to them. In summary, the best programs have low attrition. Look for patterns of attrition. When such patterns exist, use tactful inquiries with current graduate students this is easier during interviews when you have some face-time and rapport built with the current graduate students to gather additional context.
If the program or larger department, etc. APA-accredited programs are required to track their program alumni after graduation to see when and if they obtain gainful employment i.
For example, this is quite common when seeking university counseling center staff psychologist positions. Program faculty are busy people. The less time and effort the faculty can spend on you, the slower your professional development will be. Therefore, I recommend looking for programs with a lower student to faculty ratio. In other words, programs with 5 students per faculty member afford more personalized attention per student than programs with 10 students per faculty member Then, go on the program website and count how many faculty ideally, core faculty… see definition below are associated with the program.
Lastly, divide the number of students by the number of faculty to get the ratio. Some programs list their student:faculty ratio to their website. Many counseling psychology doctoral programs use an apprenticeship model of mentorship. This means that doctoral students apply to work under a specific core faculty member in that program. This helps the core faculty make a judgment about which of the many well-qualified applicants has the best alignment with their program of research.
For example, I do help-seeking research i. In short, we want to work with doctoral students who love to study what we love to study. This brings up a larger question: what are your research interests? This is why fit with advisor is such a powerful factor when considering doctoral programs. Some programs do not require that applicants articulate a research interest fit with one faculty member in their program because they instead look to recruit a strong cohort of students who, once they have spent some time in the program, can pick one of the faculty members whose research and style they like the most to be their faculty advisor and research mentor.
Fit can also include things like mentoring style e. Ethical counseling psychologists possess the ability to work effectively with clients and colleagues from cultural backgrounds different than their own. Working effectively requires knowing about the historical and modern experiences of different cultural groups e. It requires becoming aware of the privileges you may hold, the marginalization you may experience, and the cultural biases you have internalized over time, due to certain facets of your cultural identity.
It requires learning cognitive and behavioral techniques that will help you reduce the influence of these socialized biases on how you interact with people who are in the same or a different social location than you. You can receive effective training in these things in any counseling psychology doctoral program, regardless of the cultural background of the students and faculty in that program. That being said, programs that have a culturally diverse body of students and faculty will be able to draw upon a rich array of personal and professional experience that can maximize the quality of the multicultural competence training that occurs in that program.
Furthermore, it is nice when you can be part of a program where you can find community with people who share your cultural worldview. Therefore, seek to determine if people from communities you identity with are represented among the students and faculty of that program. The cultural makeup of the students and faculty can potentially have a strong influence on how safe and included you may feel if you go to that program. Look at the program website to see if you can glean information about the demographic makeup of the student and faculty body.
While you will spend much of your time focused on your professional work, you also need to have a life outside of your program. Work-life balance is essential to preventing burnout and your own potential attrition from the program. Thus, it is preferable when the program is located in an area where you would enjoy living. Think about what your needs are. Do you need the amenities a big city offers?
How do you feel about gridlock traffic? Would you be depressed if your town was surrounded by miles of cornfields? Is there a sizable population of young educated professionals in this place? Do I plan to raise a family here and what would that be like?
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