Clinical vs. Counseling vs. School

[psychphddreams]

I'm currently in the midst of some soul searching as I try to figure out if I'm best suited for a clinical, counseling, or school psych PhD program. Pertaining to those programs, I would love to know as much as possible regarding the differences in research experience, job opportunity, annual salary, program structure, clinical training, acceptance difficulty...anything and everything! I'm very conflicted right now so any personal experience, or knowledge anyone has would be infinitely appreciated!

[sassyyetclassy]

from my experience, the main difference between clinical and counseling is that clinical programs focus more on concerns related to psychopathology and direct treatment of DSM disorders. counseling is more related to vocational concerns, university counseling, or brief counseling sessions related to things such as identity concerns, interpersonal relationships, or overall psychosocial health. however, the main thing to recognize is that there are individual differences between programs. you could very well still find a clinical program that is more concerned with social justice and identity and you can very well find a counseling program that is more geared towards assessment and treatment of psychopathology. however, both are scientist-practitioner based which means you will get training in both research and practice and you will do an internship and complete a masters thesis and dissertation as well as publications/presentations for both. 

clinical programs also tend to be more CBT oriented (though not all) and you are typically working with clients in various age ranges (adults, children, seniors, and some programs even offer specialized tracks for each). counseling program practicums are usually at university counseling or career centers so you are likely working with college students. however, there are also external practicum opportunities in counseling programs where you can work with a wide range of clients, it just varies via program. counseling programs also usually ingrain social justice and multiculturalism throughout the curriculum, whereas you may only have one course on such in a clinical program. 

ultimately, acceptance is more related to individual fit with faculty member research interests as well as fit with the program training, rather than a question of which one is "easier" than the other because that is subjective and in my opinion not the right question you should be asking to determine your potential career path. 

i don't know much about school psychology unfortunately. 

i would say the main questions you should ask yourself are:

what type of populations do i want to work with and research?

what type of training am i looking for in terms of theoretical orientation with regards to treatment and assessments?

what type of research do i want to conduct?

 

remember, grad school is a long commitment, so it is good that you are doing your research now to figure out the differences between each! i wish i could be more helpful, but hopefully this helps a little

 

[RTIAssessmentsandIEPsOhmy]

I’ll try to speak a bit about School Psych. I am in the final stages on my EdS in school psych. 

 

School psychology involves primarily assessing students for disability areas determined by the state. You can work as a school psych with just an EdS (in between masters and PhD). With just an EdS you generally just work in school systems. Most school districts have 10.5 and/or 12 month contracts, you can expect to make about $50,000 to $60,000 when starting depending on your contract length. There is also a shortage of school psychs. 

With a PhD you can go private practice, work in hospitals, or academia. 

Thats a rough explanation from a presentation I gave undergrads about school psych last year. PM and I can give you more info or research NASP (national association of school psychology)! 

 

Good luck! 

[Fi19]

As for acceptance difficulty, I really don't think there's a difference between clinical psychology and counseling programs because of the clinical vs counseling per se. I applied to both types and thought counseling programs were easier to get into. But in the end, I received more interviews from clinical programs and were accepted into more clinical programs. There are a lot of factors going into acceptance difficulty obviously, but in my case, I believe it's about the research fit with my mentor and program fit with my career goals. 

It'd be great if anyone could provide insight on my situation as well:

The counseling program I was accepted into provides one course on psychopathology and has practicum sites at community mental health clinics and hospitals. I really like this program and my advisor, but I do want to work with clinical population in the future. In my case, can I worry less about the counseling vs clinical difference? Thank you!!

[Keyz]

3 hours ago, Fi19 said:

As for acceptance difficulty, I really don't think there's a difference between clinical psychology and counseling programs because of the clinical vs counseling per se. I applied to both types and thought counseling programs were easier to get into. But in the end, I received more interviews from clinical programs and were accepted into more clinical programs. There are a lot of factors going into acceptance difficulty obviously, but in my case, I believe it's about the research fit with my mentor and program fit with my career goals. 

It'd be great if anyone could provide insight on my situation as well:

The counseling program I was accepted into provides one course on psychopathology and has practicum sites at community mental health clinics and hospitals. I really like this program and my advisor, but I do want to work with clinical population in the future. In my case, can I worry less about the counseling vs clinical difference? Thank you!!

Honestly, whether you get a degree in clinical/counseling is less important than if you become a licensed psychologist. Now, that being said, there will be differences that @sassyyetclassyhas mentioned, but that's not to say that you can't work with the clinical population in the future. Practicum sites and internships for clinical also tend to be at community mental health clinics and hospitals, as well as places like VAs, and counseling centers at other universities.

Edit: I should mention that you can usually find these internship sites and whatnot on the Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data PDFs of different programs (for example, UNL has their clinical psych internship sites baked into it from 2010-2018.)

Edited February 24, 2019 by Keyz

[dancedementia]

3 hours ago, Fi19 said:

 The counseling program I was accepted into provides one course on psychopathology and has practicum sites at community mental health clinics and hospitals. I really like this program and my advisor, but I do want to work with clinical population in the future. In my case, can I worry less about the counseling vs clinical difference? Thank you!!

It's really a program by program difference. I can think of a few VERY highly regarded counseling programs that have practicum sites at community facilities and hospitals. Moreover, YOU have the choice of what practicum sites you apply to. So if you're in a counseling program but want to work with (for example) severe mental health... you can do that! Just apply to more acute sites. Most respectable programs have connections with most of the same sites as clinical programs in the same geographic area.

A few posters above mentioned that Clinical tends to be at hospitals and Counseling at UCCs, but this DEFINITELY varies by geographic location. In the cities I'm looking at (mainly Boston, NYC, and Philly), this is not the case at all. Counseling programs compete for the same sites as Clinical programs and are on equal footing.

THAT SAID. Some post-doc and post-grad opportunities may have a bias for one or the other. The one that quickly comes to mind is that UCCs tend to prefer hiring LCSWs or Counseling Psych grads, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule.

[Fi19]

9 hours ago, dancedementia said:

It's really a program by program difference. I can think of a few VERY highly regarded counseling programs that have practicum sites at community facilities and hospitals. Moreover, YOU have the choice of what practicum sites you apply to. So if you're in a counseling program but want to work with (for example) severe mental health... you can do that! Just apply to more acute sites. Most respectable programs have connections with most of the same sites as clinical programs in the same geographic area.

A few posters above mentioned that Clinical tends to be at hospitals and Counseling at UCCs, but this DEFINITELY varies by geographic location. In the cities I'm looking at (mainly Boston, NYC, and Philly), this is not the case at all. Counseling programs compete for the same sites as Clinical programs and are on equal footing.

THAT SAID. Some post-doc and post-grad opportunities may have a bias for one or the other. The one that quickly comes to mind is that UCCs tend to prefer hiring LCSWs or Counseling Psych grads, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule.

Thanks so much for this! Super helpful!

[Marginally Significant]

@sassyyetclassy already touched on the multiculturalism point a bit, but I'll go more in-depth about it as someone that applied to both clinical and counseling programs with a focus on multiculturalism in research and practice. While there are clinical faculty members/labs that addresses cultural/diversity issues in their research, the researchers that address these topics are more often in counseling programs because counseling psychology has a longer history of addressing multiculturalism whereas clinical psychology is beginning to take the steps to address it more seriously. You'll also find counseling programs to be more critical in how multiculturalism is defined/addressed in research (e.g., you'll receive more flak if you consider a study with sufficient sample sizes of ethnic minorities as an adequate approach to providing support for culturally adapted/appropriate treatment in counseling programs in comparison to clinical programs that would say that it's sufficient support if there's no group differences in treatment outcomes). It's actually quite interesting because a graduate student asked everyone in one of my interviews why they applied to a counseling psychology program instead of a clinical psychology program, and everyone had a "Ah... Yeah..." response when someone immediately responded with "You know, the typical reason" (And it was clear everyone understood that it was about insufficient focus on multiculturalism in clinical psychology). From a research point of view, both programs are fine, but you're probably going to apply to more programs in counseling psychology than clinical psychology if multicultural research is your topic. Personally, I applied to three counseling programs for every clinical program simply due to better research fit.

Deviating from multiculturalism, but other research topics also follow a trend of counseling psychology producing more research on the issue. Although there are mental health stigma researchers in clinical psychology as well, I also noticed that counseling psychology and social work also tends to do research on that topic more often than clinical psychology. I think it ultimately ties back to the history of the two fields and their emphasis when they first started out. While there are obviously individual differences in that it depends on the program fit, I did notice that mental health research questions/topics that does not address psychopathology directly (e.g., stigma, help seeking behavior) are more common among counseling psychology. Conversely, I also noticed less opportunities to work with child/adolescent populations and more opportunities to work with college populations in a counseling program in research and practice (But again, there are individual program differences). My mentor in the masters program I'm in more-or-less said that there's little difference between clinical and counseling psychology in terms of what one field can and cannot do because the lines/boundaries between clinical/counseling/school psychologists have been increasingly blurred for the past few decades, and it's more about program fit and how clinical/counseling psychology programs stack on the areas most important to you. Therefore, her advice is to apply to both clinical and counseling (And school for your case) as long as there's a good program fit.

However, one thing you may want to prep if you apply to counseling psychology programs is that they love asking these two questions: 1) Why are you applying to a counseling psychology program as opposed to a clinical psychology program/Do you lean more towards clinical or counseling psychology programs? and 2) How will you/do you support multiculturalism? These two questions (Thematically, not necessarily that exact question) popped up in every interview with a counseling program) popped up in every single counseling psychology interview I had, whereas all of the clinical interviews I had did not ask about counseling psychology and only one clinical program addressed multiculturalism as a program-wide concern during the application process (But this is due to the UC system requiring a diversity statement for any graduate applicant rather than the clinical program specifically asking about it). Therefore, if you are not comfortable with answering how multiculturalism is relevant to you and/or applying to counseling psychology programs for the sake of applying to more doctoral programs, you may be coming into interviews at a disadvantage.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Marginally Significant