Counseling Psychology: Helping Others

Among the many branches of psychology, counseling is likely the one that feels most familiar to the average person. Picture a client sitting across from a counselor or psychologist, working through something together. People tend to mix it up with clinical psychology, and that's an easy mistake to make, but the two fields come with separate training paths and separate aims. Counseling focuses on people who aren't dealing with severe conditions like bipolar disorder. The settings run wide: schools and universities, consulting roles for government bodies and hospitals, even administrative posts such as serving as the dean of a college.

If you want to study it, two main routes exist. One is a master's degree (the MA), and the other is a doctorate (the PhD). Each carries its own advantages and limits, and the right pick really comes down to where you see yourself ending up professionally. The MA tends to be the faster and more affordable option, usually two to three years of study, and graduates often find a solid number of openings because hiring someone with a master's costs an employer less than hiring a PhD. There's a catch worth checking before you commit: an MA doesn't always satisfy the licensing rules in every state. Where you live, or where you plan to practice, may force you back into the classroom to cover what's missing.

The PhD asks for more, roughly five years of study, with heavier emphasis on clinical work and research than you'd get at the master's level. Funding is common at most universities, though don't expect it to stretch far. The stipends tend to land somewhere around $6,000 to $8,000 a year. What you gain in exchange is the top credential your field offers. That opens up a wider set of positions and pushes your earning potential higher.

Plenty of people are drawn to counseling psychology because the work itself matches whatever pulled them toward the program to begin with. Both degrees can lead to a career in the field. Which one fits you is a personal calculation. Think carefully about where you want to land, in school and on the job, and set the trade-offs of each path against one another before you decide.