jamient

Thanks guys these are all great ideas!

See that's exactly what I've been trying to figure out--how much importance your concentration really has. I'm leaning more and more towards the Title IV. Thanks for the insight!

I completely understand your dilemma! Personally I think you should call or email some lower tuition schools and find out about their Alumni network, ask how their graduates are doing job wise and compare field assignments. If the the job statistics are the similar and the field work is the same, why play more money? From my understanding students at USC, UCLA, and CSULA all do the same fieldwork yet CSULA costs signaifcally less money. Also in my experience I've found state schools typically have professors who have actually worked in the field they are teaching, while more experience schools hired people right out their PHD programs and they focused more on theory and research and don't have as much real world experience. Personally I think it's unwise to leave school with 90K plus debt just to have a name brand college on your resume. I think you need to ask yourself are you planning to have kids? Do you want to buy a house one day? If so that much debt will make it hard to afford those things. However if you do decide to go a higher paying school keep in mind that some social workers are able to get debt forgiveness and you can join the military to have them pay some of that back.

Honestly I'm more interested in the family/child Title IV-E program, but I"m worried about job prospects with the State of California's never ending budget crisis. I emailed UC Berkeley's Title IV-E coordinator and she admitted that 2008 graduates had trouble getting jobs but it's been slowly improving. Obviously you don't go into Social Work to make a ton of money, but I don't want to go into debt and then not be able to get a decent job. I feel like Mental Health has more job opportunities, practically in hospital settings or with the VA, but my heart is more towards child welfare, so I'm still debating. My first choice is Berkeley which requires you to declare your concentration when applying, but maybe I should look into UCLA. Thanks!

Hi, I'm a junior in college and am have decided I would like to be a social worker. What type of volunteer work should I do? I've currently been volunteering at Habitat for Humanity and as an Office Assistant for at risk youth organization. Also is volunteer work enough, or should I work for a year or two before applying?

Hi, I'm planning to apply to grad school next year for a MSW, but I'm still deciding between the Mental Health concentration or the Family/Child concentration. So I'm just curious what are you planning to concentrate in or what are you concentrating in if you're already in Grad school? Thanks.