TheCrow

I think a big part of it is whether the school will let you do a field placement at your current employer, because field placements are not usually available outside of work hours. This means, of course, that it's probably impossible to work full time while getting an MSW if you work somewhere completely unrelated to social services.

Columbia has traditionally used federal work-study to pay students for field placements, but there are some unresolved issues about whether CSWE's accreditation standard even allow for paid field placements (due to an overreaction CSWE had to a prior situation where students were placed in placements at for-profit places, and CSWE wants to be very clear that field placements aren't a job, as a result), so I'm not sure what's happening these days. Most other schools don't usually have paid field placements.

I would email them and indicate that XYZ school is your first choice, but Peer School offered you more, and ask them if they could match. Note that Columbia just doesn't grant that much financial aid for their MSW.

Columbia has a fairly high acceptance rate and doesn't grant much scholarship/grant funding at all.

What are your goals after your MSW? I was in the same boat. I went to UChicago, push hard to get out of the required research courses (such I could take more advanced courses in other parts of the university). Ultimately, I just didn't find that there was enough time in the day to do research, and there was basically only one available field placement that was real research. Honestly, I'm not sure that the PhD in social work is rigorous enough for real research in many cases. I published and got a research grant while in my MSW program, but only by working solely with faculty outside of social work. One recommendation I would have, as you think about your goals, is to separate what credentials you need from what skills you need. As a credential, UChicago is great and so is Columbia (which you can do online). Neither master's program is likely to teach you much about research, but you can also push for that training outside of the formal curriculum. If you do not need licensure in social work, it may also be prudent to consider other options. I think UPenn's social work school offers a non-MSW master's in social policy. I see you are in Ohio. I would make sure to also look at Case Western, since they seem to have more funding than many other schools and more research opportunities than many other programs. Another consideration is, again, your goals. A degree from a lot of top name schools can be very expensive, and may not be worth it if you're not interested to moving to somewhere like Chicago or DC.

Some public schools without a doctoral program will have "assistantships" that will cover some/all of tuition. You are unlikely to find these at top schools with doctoral programs. A lot of how much you get has more to do with the school than with your stats - my understanding is that UChicago gives out a lot of aid compared to Columbia and NYU, for example. Out of state public schools are also much less likely to give large amounts of money, with some exceptions (like Michigan, which is mostly run on private funds). Depending on your interests, other schools you might consider that might also have a good amount of money include WashU and Case Western. Another thing to consider is your goals and your ability to get a good job now. For example, you might actually be financially better off for attending a part-time program while working a good full-time job (even if you have to pay full tuition), than you are going full time with scholarships. Of course, often you need the degree to get the job, but just something to think about.

To clarify, I meant a PhD in a field other than social work. Going from a bachelor's degree to a PhD in social work is not really a thing in the US. There are also basically no MSW programs in the US with a thesis option, unlike Canada or other common wealth countries. I don't have much knowledge of these programs. However, I think it would be helpful to look into those options (and some are probably much cheaper than options in the US). The "typical route" seems dysfunctional to me and basically the cause of many of our current issues. In business, for example, most people do not get an MBA before getting a PhD becoming a tenure-track faculty member in business. The MBA is not intended for that purpose and does not provide training for that purpose (and is quite expensive). In social work, however, you need both. Basically no one who gets the master's degree is interested in research and the degree is not intended for that purpose. Virtually no one interested in the PhD in social work is really interested in the master's degree in social work, except to check that box. What it seems to me is that many of those who take the "typical route," have received the master's degree, work, get tired of the work (which does not reward them based on their own skills or abilities), and decide to go back for a PhD afterwards. I'm not sure that many people who go into a master's degree in social work thinking they'll want a PhD, and the few that do often know very little about what a PhD is or what the purpose of it is (other than they've heard "it's free" and would like the title of doctor). Then, when these students go back for a PhD, most lack significant research experience or training. So the PhD program pretends to teach them research methods and they pretend to learn them, which is also how many social science PhDs work.

My own experience is that MSW programs in the US are not research oriented in the least, and there is very little time for you to do real research, since you are so busy with your field placements (which do not, at all, do research, even if they claim to do so). Classes are not research oriented and give you no time to do research, not to mention that faculty at top schools are often uninterested in master's students who want to do research. I think one big question to ask yourself is whether you need the MSW. There are options to get a PhD directly (which is intended to teach you to do research and is funded), rather than getting what is usually quite an expensive MSW that does not prepare you for research. Of course, the trade offs are that other master's or doctoral degrees may not lead directly to employment or licensure. If you do decide to get an MSW with the intention of doing research, you are going to have to advocate for yourself vigorously to have a radically different program of study than most students because your goals are different. This means pushing to do PhD courses in research design and methods (such as statistics and qualitative methods), because it is hard to be useful to faculty members are learn how to be a researcher without these skills. Asking to do a second year field placement as a research assistant to a faculty member. I published during my master's program and actually got a rather large research grant, but no one in my highly ranked program wanted to work with master's students (beyond having them basically do data entry as their research assistantships), and I had to work with a faculty member in the medical school. To be honest, however, I would not have been a position to get the grant or do the research if I had not had a quantitative undergrad and had not taken classes in other divisions of the University during my master's.

I am a UChicago alum and I disagree with listing an MSW behind your name if that's not the name of the degree you actually received (and we're not the only ones - Columbia and Case Western grant theirs as an MS). However, you will be eligible for licensure, and that will make it clear to people inside and outside the discipline. It seems extremely ridiculous to me that in many states one would be something like CashewGuy, MSW, LMSW. We get it. You have a master's degree in social work, and you're licensed. One thing I would also caution people on is to think about what their goals are. Chicago is a politics city, not a policy city, for example. If you want to work to impact change in the city after graduation, I'm not sure policy skills or degree prestige are actually valued as much as people think. But if you want to do policy at the federal level, which is where a lot of the policy work really is, prestige really helps. Also, there are a lot of federal agencies in Chicago, and I was able to work at one for both years of my time at SSA (and I work at one now that I've graduated). It's a difficult trade off because there's often not a clear choice. It doesn't make sense for someone who wants to be a therapist to go 100k in debt for an MSW. But prestige may be important in certain career paths, particularly policy. But you're going to need to aim for a certain subset of jobs to justify the cost. I will also warn you that my experience was that the UChicago name opens doors, but the SSA degree does not necessarily teach you what you need to get a particular policy/administrative job or to do it well. You have to make sure you're in the driver's seat of your own career path, rather than just sort of showing up and hoping someone hires you afterwards. I think this is grad school in generally, but it's especially true for fields where the labor market isn't as directly organized as something like nursing or computer science. Some advice I heard about the JD/MSW is that you're either going to be hired as a lawyer or as a social worker, but not as both at the same time. And unfortunately, the law path requires a lot more debt (and is much more prestige obsessed) than social work. Law school admissions is also basically 100% your LSAT and undergraduate GPA, and nothing else. Going to a top 10-14 law school is really difficult and expensive, but is one of the clearest paths to well-paid policy work with real impact. If you're not able to get into one of those programs, you're almost definitely better off going to a night or weekend JD while working full-time. And unless you actually plan on practicing law, you're probably better off getting a different degree from a higher status school if you want to get into policy. Just my two cents.

Do you mean it's not regionally accredited, or it's not CSWE accredited?

Doctor of Social Work

Was anyone else admitted to USC's DSW program?

I would think about where you want to work after graduation, since social work students seem more likely to stay in the region of their graduate school than other grad students. Ironically, the Dean of UChicago's SSA just left to become Dean of NYU's School of Social Work.

I haven't attended either institution, but what I've heard is that NYU and Columbia bury their MSWs in debt. There are no or very few graduate assistantships/fellowships at these schools that will pay all or even half of the tuition like are often available at regional public schools that don't have doctoral programs.

I'm a recent alum who did the social administration path. The degree got me a great job I definitely would not have had otherwise and got me access to amazing resources at the university, none of which had anything to do with SSA itself. To be fair, others I've talked to (such as a colleague with a PhD who returned to another of the US news top 3 for an MSW), these problems seem to be common across MSW programs. In other words, I'm not sure to what extent issues at SSA are unique to SSA or could be avoided by going to other MSW programs. To give another example, at admitted students day at UNC, the PhD student they put in charge of the macro presentation could not describe what macro was at all. And several of the other admitted students had a lively discussion on what they saw as the underappreciated magical properties of healing crystals. Even outside of social work, many graduate programs are shocking ineffective and full of BS. My advice is to be pragmatic about what you want and what degree will help you get there. Part of that is the signaling (what does the degree mean to potential employers in your intended field) and part of it is substance (about half of which is coursework, and about half of which is field placement).

FAFSA is for government aid. Generally speaking, there is no grant-based need/scholarships from the government for graduate school. I would think about your professional goals. 55k/year is more than most social workers make. By returning for a full-time program, you're not likely to end the program with a job that pays substantially more. Also, not only do you have to pay for the MSW program, but you're actually giving up 110k+ in wages you could be making, experience you could be gaining, not to mention retirement contributions/social security contributions. I think some of the schools that give the most merit aid are Case Western, UChicago, UMich, and WUSTL. If your current job will work with your on field placements, I would consider looking at USC or Columbia's online MSWs. Even with paying tuition to these programs, the total "cost" to you (including the $110k you could have made, health insurance would have to pay in a full-time program) is probably less than even getting a full-ride to a full-time program.

I don't think the previous post takes into account the required field placement for an MSW. I don't think it's possible to work full-time for an MSW and attend full-time, although you may work full-time and attend an MSW program part-time.

I'm assuming the OP is referring to transferring master's programs, which is very different than transferring PhD programs. Social work and law are probably two of the few graduate programs where there is a set transfer process. Only one person I knew at my master's program transferred. The big issues seem to be 1. Social work programs generally are not as diverse or anti-oppressive as many expect. This was a common issue at my program (UChicago). 2. Hiring, outside, of clinical, has basically nothing to do with what you learned during the master's program, and school name may be more important than learning anything, and 3. Other master's programs are unlikely to offer much (if any) financial support to transfer students.

There are probably not many alternative placements that would allow you to keep working full time. I would think about what your goals are here - pragmatically, you probably just want to finish the degree. Just make sure that you can get your supervisor to articulate some goals that will be used to assess you (or is just going to check off that you're doing fine).

It also depends on where you're applying, and what level of position you're applying for. Government positions may have a very different timeline than nonprofits. More senior position (like if you went back for a degree after a lot of experience) may have a longer hiring time than entry level positions.

Yes, my degree was an MSW. Higher education financing is complicated and based on my experience, people in this forum seem to make blanket assumptions (like public schools are always more expensive). Columbia and USC seem to bury everyone in debt, but some of the other schools do have more money than they might admit. I got about 2/3rds from the school, and then I covered the rest with my research grant from my second year. I would apply to a number of fields and programs and see what the outcomes are. Also consider that you may be able to ask for more money at private schools based on other offers. I didn't realize your interests were clinical - economics and political science certainly make no sense then. I don't have any knowledge to comment on clinical psych hiring. I would be surprised if the market were worse for them, although I'm sure admissions is much more competitive. There's another thread somewhere hard about "Insights from a professor" that may address many of your questions, and that faculty member suggests going somewhere that's affordable even if it's not brand name. One of the caveats though is that even though you might be able to get a PhD in social work without a master's in social work, it will make it very, very difficult to get a faculty position because you won't meet CSWE's requirement to teach the practices courses (which is a master's in social work and two years of post-MSW experience). I would consider applying to other relevant field's PhD and integrating the MSW into the degree during your studies on a part-time or extended basis. If you go for an MSW first, you may find the debt and pay elsewhere to keep you from continuing along your path and the MSW will probably not be relevant to a PhD.

I also realized I didn't answer part of your question. MSW/PhD programs, for the most part, basically exist for a very small number of midcareer professionals in related fields with a master's in a related field.

A statistics PhD is for those who want to make original contributions to the field of statistics, such as developing new estimators and such. You will probably have a hard time convincing such programs that your research interests are a good fit. You might want to consider a PhD in economics, political science, or sociology depending on your research interests. Economics will certainly have the best chance at a good job and the best quantitative training, although it will have the most competitive admissions. Michigan has a joint PhD in social work and economics, but they are the only ones. I applied straight out of undergraduate and was not admitted to any joint MSW/PhD programs, although I attended a well-ranked master's program with a good amount of funding based on my research interests. What I realized was that there are vast epistemological differences across fields. Frankly, my experience was that certain fields like statistics and economics are based on quality of outcomes, while the individuals in those fields are more likely to have biases against traditionally disadvantaged groups. Fields like social work, education, and theology are basically about paying your dues, not making novel contributions. I don't think it's unfair to characterize my experience in my master's program as a bunch of busy work that constitutes a hazing process to make you feel like you got your money's worth and are part of the discipline. For the most part, it was going through the motions. There was very little opportunity to take advanced classes from other fields (apparently I was basically the first person to petition out of basic stats + basic research methods, and that was a real struggle by itself), and there was no time to devote to rigorous quantitative classes anyway. The classes we did take did not allow sufficient opportunity to integrate research. Outside of the top group of social work PhDs, it starts to look a lot like lower ranked programs in education and nursing that have begun to offer what can honestly be characterized as fake PhDs: programs that take your money in exchange for an inflated credential, while not actually teaching you to do research (which is the whole point of a PhD). This field, like education, basically requires a master's degree (read: debt) and having existed long enough in a related role to have paid your debts, regardless of whether you've learned anything. That means research ability is very unlikely to get you into an MSW/PhD program unless you have a master's (which, again, the master's in social work is not research focused). I was very clear when I came in that I was interested in policy and research. The faculty had not interest in what I was doing (many not being social workers and having been denied tenure from higher status fields, and others not having published in awhile). I ended up having to find a mentor outside of the program and was actually awarded an extraordinarily large research grant. This made some of the faculty in my program very jealous and upset. I left the program with several good publications - far exceeding the median number of peer-reviewed publications (roughly zero) of those who had finished their PhDs at this top-ranked programs. I realized that if I wanted to be the kind of scholar that I wanted to be, I would need to attend a PhD program in a different field. The opportunity cost of the PhD is very high, however, and there are increasingly fewer tenure-track positions. If you choose to pursue academia, remember that you don't need a PhD in social work (an MSW + a PhD in a field with better methodological training is probably preferable), and you don't need to be in a social work department to research social welfare or counseling. I finished the program and took a more quantitative public sector job with good work-life balance where I feel like I really get to have an impact on an everyday basis. Fairly soon my salary will exceed the average for associate professors at 4-year schools, and I plan to continue to publish without going back for the PhD. Really think about what your goals are and what you want to out of your career. (Disclaimer, of course, that I can't speak for other's experiences at my program or to what other programs are like.)

Honestly, you're probably better off getting a PhD in a different field and getting permission to earn the MSW as part of that PhD program.

I just graduated from a macro focused MSW program and had considered a joint MSW/MPA. For me, I already had many of the quantitative/technical skills that an MPP/MPA would teach from my undergraduate degree. I took mostly macro classes during my MSW and I didn't think they were very good because they assumed you knew so little. There's a big distinction between getting the skills you want, versus "signaling" to future employers that you're a good fit/part of the club for what they do. I took my MSW from a name-brand school and turned it into an amazing macro position. No one asked me anything about my degree during the interview and I couldn't have gotten the job if it wasn't for my undergraduate degree. On the other hand, you also have to balance those two factors with the cost. In my opinion, I think it might make sense to apply to a number of different types of programs so that you have many different options. My classes weren't the most relevant in my program, but the social work program at my school has infinitely more financial aid than our school of public policy. Especially if you are eligible for advance standing, that could be a great option to get the degree done (if you can do it in one year, you not only save a year of tuition, but gain back a whole additional year to make a salary). If you're comparing between programs are local, non-brand-name schools (which is a completely valid option!) I think I would definitely go with an MPA unless you want to manage direct service programs. Then they're might be an advantage to an MSW (since you can supervise students and eventually other social workers). I'm not convinced an MSW/MPA makes that much sense for many people - one master's is usually sufficient. The last comment I have is that I would give real consideration to evening or part-time programs in either vein that will let you keep working while you earn a degree. I think that doing that is definitely an underrated option and I wish I had been in a position to do it.