Masters in Psychology: Taking Your Education One Step Further

Earned a bachelor's degree in psychology already? Then a graduate program might be the right move. A master's in psychology is the natural next rung, and it readies you for work across the many branches of the field that exist now. Whatever pulled you toward psychology in the first place, a master's lets you build deeper expertise in one particular area.

A master's will sharpen your preparation for psychology work, but on its own it usually will not qualify you for licensure as a psychologist or psychiatrist. For anyone aiming at that, the master's is still a required stop on the road, since you need it before entering a doctoral program. Where a master's does open real doors, though, is in school-based work as a counselor or psychologist. If that sounds like the direction you want, three careers in particular call for the degree.

One is educational psychology. People in this area try to understand how learning actually happens and then design teaching methods that help students absorb material more fully. Most of them work for colleges and universities. Another is school counseling. Counselors tend to be placed in elementary, middle, or high schools, where they help young people work through everything from difficulties at home to friction with peers. They assist with learning difficulties too, and they support kids who are struggling under pressures like bullying or the pull of their classmates. The third is school psychology. What the job looks like depends on the school doing the hiring, but these professionals also generally land at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Testing is the task that comes up most often for a school psychologist, and they partner with teachers to build interventions for individual students. Keep one thing in mind about all three: working inside a school requires a degree in education. And these are hardly the only paths a master's can lead to. They are simply the ones people pursue most.

"Masters in psychology" covers a lot of ground. Like most graduate programs, its point is to let you carve out a more focused area of study within a field you care about. It also sits in the middle, between the bachelor's degree behind you and a PhD further ahead. If any psychology career appeals to you, the master's moves you solidly toward it.