What can you do with a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology?
My parents have been harrasing me about taking up psychology and I want to tell them straight up what I can do with a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology. I know I’ll need my master’s, so can you tell me about that, too?
michele said,
Wrote on April 5, 2010 @ 4:26 am
You can do very, very little in the field with a degree in psychology. The closest you’ll get is probably a “psych tech” in a hospital. They essentially end up charting behavior, running errands, and basically doing grunt work. On the other hand, with a degree in (insert random bachelor’s degree here), you can get your foot in the door in retail, sales, etc (any position where they basically want to know you have the wherewithal to complete a college degree).
With a master’s degree, your options are much more broad, as far as working in the field. At that level, you can be licensed as an independent practitioners (can hang your own shingle, so to speak).
~Dr. B.~
Singinganddancing said,
Wrote on April 5, 2010 @ 5:24 am
You can get a job working as a behavior specialist with developmentally disabled/mentally retarded individuals (but you will need to have taken a class or two in functional behavior analysis, usually offered through the education department) for high $20K to low $30Ks. You can work with behaviorally disordered adolescents in a residential setting for low $20K. You can work for child protective services, usually a civil service position, for mid-$30K and up (probably your best-paying option) as a case manager. You can do market research in business if you took advanced statistics/research and network well; that probably starts in the 20s to 30s but if you get into project management it could go to 6 figures.
A master’s won’t appreciably increase your options, except in a few cases (school psychologist… then you’ll wind up testing kids from dawn to dusk in a school for a very good pension and summers off); a Ph.D. is the way to go. You will need close to a 4.0 average to get into a good program that pays for it, and over 3.0 to get into any program and pay your own way (which will likely run close to another $100,000 for grad school).