Graduate School for Psychology

[mizzourah2006]

Originally Posted by marie5v

Can I please make a suggestion? You are about to make another bad life choice. The job market in psychology is awful. It is one of the top unemployed majors, and getting a graduate degree will NOT change that. A phd will not change it, either. Unless you are top of your field at a top school (and you're not), this is a poor choice if you hope to be able to support your children and not be homeless again. Consider instead a graduate program in counseling or social work - these are more employable variants of psychology. As far as your gpa, psychology graduate students are a dime a dozen - if you can graduate, you can go to grad school. You just shouldn't - at least not in psychology.

Just saw the post that you are actually going for counseling - that's good. I don't think you'll have a problem finding a graduate school. The problem is finding one that will give you some money. You can contact the schools ahead of time and ask them - the department chairs - what they think your chances are. If you were homeless, that is a pretty good explanation, although there is always the concern that you will fail out again due to financial reasons, so you want to make sure it's clear that that's behind you.

Finally - why a Phd? You can work with a Master's degree and a PhD could make you overqualified for a lot of jobs. What are you planning to do with that phd?

To be fair let's not generalize the entire field of psychology based upon clinical. I/O has an amazing job market.

and the posters that are saying a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist are two different things are absolutely correct. It's not semantics, one is an MD the other is a PhD/PsyD. Two very different things.

[CMMom]

To the OP,

Are you independently wealthy? If not, do you mind accruing six figures in school loan debt? If the answer to that question is yes, then I would rethink the Psy.D. Very few of those programs provide stipend support as Ph.D. programs generally do. A large entering class in a reputable Ph.D. program in Clinical Psych would be on the order of 6-10 students, and each would have high GPA, high GRE's, clinical and/or research experience (it's not uncommon for first year students to have previously presented research at a conference or even to have published). Your chances of getting into a Ph.D. program are not great based upon what you listed in your OP.

Now, you may be able to get into a Psy.D. program. They often admit classes of 50 or more, but are quite expensive. If clinical work is your goal, I would suggest switching gears and going for a Social Work degree. It takes less time and costs less. Reimbursement rates are lower, but not so much lower that you can't make a good living.

Yes, psychiatrists get M.D.'s and psychologists get Ph.D.'s or Psy.D.'s. In most states, you can't practice independently with only a Master's in psychology.

[Coney]

I would also suggest going for a LCMSW. You can still be a clinical counselor and even have your own private practice eventually. Entrance into a reputable PhD pysch. program is extremely competitive. Unless your goal is to be a researcher, you may find that the social work degree to be as equally gratifying. It's just that your billing will be lower.

To the poster confused about psychiatry. A psychiatrist goes to medical school and goes through the same internship rotation, including internal medicine, obstetrics, emergency medicine, etc. They learn how to stitch wounds, set fractures. A psychologist does not do that, nor would be taught such skills.