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Fully Funded PhD Programs in Clinical Psychology

Last updated November June 22, 2023

As part of our series  How to Fully Fund Your PhD , here is a list of universities that offer fully funded PhD programs in Clinical Psychology. A PhD in Clinical Psychology opens the door to many opportunities, leading to careers in academia, private practice, and medicine.

Fully funded PhD programs in Clinical Psychology are those that offer a financial aid package for full-time students that provides full-tuition remission in addition to an annual stipend or salary for the duration of the program, which is usually 3-6 years. Full funding usually comes in the form of a graduate assistantship, with the expectation that students will teach or complete research in their field of study. Not all Clinical Psychology PhD programs offer full funding to their doctoral students, which is why researching the financial aid offerings of many different programs, including small and lesser-known schools both in the U.S. and abroad, is essential.

In addition to listing fully funded PhD and Master’s programs, the ProFellow database also includes external funding opportunities for graduate school, dissertation research, fieldwork, language study, study abroad, summer work experiences, and professional development.

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1. Arizona State University

(Tempe, Arizona):  The Arizona State University Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. Full-time doctoral students, in good standing, receive a 20-hour-per-week graduate teaching or research assistantship, full-tuition, and a stipend of $18,564 for nine months (pre-masters) and $19,064 for nine months (post-masters). The program prepares students for professional careers in research, teaching, or clinical supervision, through high-quality, science-based training. The goal of the program is to train students for careers in academia and research institutes to conduct research to advance clinical science and to teach future generations of clinical scientists.

2. Fordham University

(New York, NY):  The Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program (CPDP), within the Psychology department at Fordham University, offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. The program offers all admitted doctoral students, who remain in good standing, 4 years of tuition remission and a stipend for each academic year. The goal of the program is to prepare students for careers in research and teaching and to provide students with the scientific background and clinical skills necessary to engage in clinical practice. The program challenges students to integrate their scientific research with clinical work and to study areas in clinical psychology, including Child and Adolescent, Clinical Neuropsychology, Forensic, and Health specialties.

3. Harvard University

(Cambridge, MA): The Harvard University Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students receive fellowship packages with up to 6 years of tuition, 3 years of 10-month support, 4 summers of research fellowships, and the guarantee of a Teaching Fellowship for the 3rd and 4th years. The Clinical Psychology Program trains clinical psychologists to conduct research using evidence-based methods of assessment and clinical intervention to advance scientific knowledge of psychopathology and its treatment, especially in severe psychopathology.

4. Louisiana State University

(Baton Rouge, LA): The Lousiana State University (LSU) Department of Psychology’s Clinical Psychology Training Program (CPTP) offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students receive a full-tuition waiver, a stipend of approximately $15,050 per year, and a graduate assistantship. The CPTP program is didactic and experiential. Students complete coursework, attend practicum supervision meetings, shadow senior graduate student therapists, and gain direct supervised clinical experience through their practica. After students complete a minimum of 24 credit hours practicum, they are required to complete a formal, one-year, full-time pre-doctoral internship at an APA-accredited internship program.

5. Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

(Chicago, IL): The Northwestern University Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students receive a Research Assistant Scholarship, or equivalent award, that provides full-tuition remission, health insurance, and a monthly stipend. The goal of the program is to educate and train students for clinical and research positions in academic medical centers and related healthcare settings. Students receive intensive research training, and in addition to coursework, students complete research apprenticeships within their primary mentor’s lab.

6. Rutgers University

(New Brunswick, NJ): The Rutgers University Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students are guaranteed 5 years of funding, provided they remain in good standing, which includes full-tuition, a 10-month stipend or salary, and health benefits. Additional funding summer funding is also available. The Clinical Psychology program is designed for students who want to conduct clinical research and become a practicing health service psychologist. Upon completion of the required coursework, research, and clinical training, PhD students complete their clinical requirements with a one-year psychological residency.

7. University of Liverpool

(Liverpool, UK): Available to EU citizens only, the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology is a 3-year full-time programme fully funded by the National Health Service (NHS). Trainees are registered postgraduate students in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences and employed within Mersey Care NHS Trust.

8. University of Maryland

(College Park, MD): The University of Maryland Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students are provided tuition remission of up to 10 credits per semester and financial aid in the form of a fellowship or graduate assistantship for the first 5 years. The Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program seeks to understand human behavior across the lifespan and provides clinical training in both child and adult assessment and intervention. The program uses a mentorship model to provide rigorous research training that emphasizes the use of research findings to further understand clinical phenomena and develop clinical interventions.

9. University of Michigan

(Ann Arbor, MI):  The University of Michigan Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students receive a financial aid package that combines Research Fellowships and Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) positions for a total of 5 years of full-tuition support. The Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program aims to advance scientific research in all aspects of clinical psychology. Research areas currently include cognitive and affective neuroscience, behavioral endocrinology, developmental psychopathology, risk and resilience, violence and trauma, and cross-cultural investigations of clinical problems and these approaches span traditional diagnoses including addictive, affective, psychotic, anxiety, traumatic, and disruptive behavior.

10. University of Minnesota

( Minneapolis ,  MN):  The University of Minnesota Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted doctoral students, who remain in good standing, are guaranteed 5 years of financial support, including full-tuition, subsidized health insurance, and a 9-month stipend. The Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research (CSPR) program trains students to become academic clinical psychologists or research scientists. The program combines rigorous research training in psychopathology and clinical assessment and intervention. CSPR consists of an “adult” track and a “developmental” track.

11. University of Southern Mississippi

(Hattiesburg, MS): The University of Southern Mississippi Department of Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. Students receive a graduate assistantship that provides a full-tuition scholarship and a 9-12 month stipend, and include teaching and research assistantships, and paid clinical externship positions. The program trains evidence-based approaches to the assessment and therapy of clinical problems, through small cohorts that allow for individualized training, with an emphasis on cognitive and behavioral orientations.

12. University of Vermont

(Burlington, VT): The University of Vermont Department of Psychological Science offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. The Clinical Training PhD Program provides funding for every PhD student, each year that he or she is in the program and on campus. The program seeks to produce clinical psychologists who are trained to generate research, work with patients, and teach psychological material from a scientist-practitioner perspective. It is a mentor-based training model that stresses early and ongoing placement on a clinical practicum team, simultaneous research training relevant to clinical problems, rigorous course work, and selected teaching experiences.

13. Vanderbilt University

(Nashville, TN):  The Clinical Science Program in Psychological Sciences at Vanderbilt University offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. All admitted PhD students receive funding for up to 5 years of study, including full-tuition, a competitive monthly stipend, and health insurance. The goal of the program is to train clinical scientists. It enables students to concentrate their training and develop specialized expertise in areas such as psychopathology, developmental psychopathology, adult psychopathology. In addition, a select group of qualified students is nominated for additional honor scholarships and fellowships awarded by both the college and the graduate school.

14. Yale University

(New Haven, CT): The Yale Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology offers a fully funded PhD in Clinical Psychology. The program provides all admitted graduate students, who remain in good standing, full-tuition and a stipend (including summer funding) for up to 5 years. The program is primarily research-based. Students are expected to develop independent research under the supervision of faculty. This program is ideal for students who desire to begin an independent, structured program of clinical science research and are likely to emerge as leaders in the study of psychopathology and its treatment. The program is not a fit for students primarily interested in clinical practice.

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Related Posts:

• Fully Funded PhD Programs in Psychology
• Fully Funded Master's Programs in Psychology
• Fully Funded PhD Programs in the United Kingdom
• Fully Funded PhD Programs in School Psychology
• Fully Funded Master's Programs in School Psychology

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Best Doctoral Programs in Counseling Psychology

Applicants to doctoral programs (PhD, PsyD, or EdD) in counseling psychology often want to know what “the best” counseling psychology doctoral programs are.  However, there is no good one-size-fits-all method to rank these programs accurately.  What makes a program “the best” depends on that student’s career goals .

Therefore, instead of giving you a misleading list of “the best’ doctoral programs, I’m going to tell you about the program characteristics that I think define the best programs.  Below is a clickable table of contents for this page.

Characteristics Important to Everyone

Apa-accredited, full funding, high apa-accredited internship placement rate, low student attrition, high job placement rate, low student to faculty ratio, great fit with faculty advisor, cultural diversity of students and faculty, good program location, characteristics important to future clinicians, short time to degree, practicum site variety & quality, characteristics important to future faculty.

• Faculty Publish
• Faculty Seek Extramural Research Grant Funding
• Students Can Teach
• Students Can Provide Clinical Supervision

Characteristics You Don’t Need to Worry About

Institutional prestige, core course offerings, a warning about internet lists of “the best” programs.

There are several online “best programs” lists published by for-profit companies that have no expertise in counseling psychology.  I encourage you to take the information they provide with a truckload of salt because they are often more interested in making money from your website visit (e.g., by referring you to the websites of unaccredited online degree programs) than giving you valid information.  For example, one popular website uses “percentage of recent program graduates who are licensed” to rank counseling psychology doctoral programs.  Why is it a bad idea to rank programs based on this one characteristic?   Because not all graduates from counseling psychology programs need to get licensed to do the type of job they want to do, such as becoming a counseling psychology professor who does research and teaches non-practicum classes, working in certain industries and administrative roles, etc.  Thus, those programs that are great at training students who get these kinds of jobs may get unfairly ranked because some of their students won’t need to get licensed to pursue their chosen career path.  (You only need to get licensed if you are going to provide clinical services or supervise those who are providing those services.)  For example, some of the programs that have the strongest track record of producing future counseling psychology professors are poorly ranked on this list.  It’s frustrating to me that applicants are led astray by flawed ranking lists like this.

Some Essential Background Info

Please note that I have picked these characteristics based on my professional judgment; I respect that some counseling psychology faculty may have different opinions than mine and thus encourage you to consult with multiple mentors.

Some of these characteristics (e.g., low student to faculty ratio) are going to favor PhD programs over PsyD programs.  Therefore, it may be fairer to use these criteria to compare programs of the same type, i.e., compare PhD to PhD, PsyD to PsyD, but not PhD programs to PsyD programs.

These program characteristics are also relevant to identifying the best clinical psychology doctoral programs and some of these characteristics are relevant to identifying the best counseling psychology master’s programs .  For example, the best counseling psychology master’s programs: have a significant percentage of students who get funding, matriculate into doctoral programs or obtain gainful employment soon after graduation, offer master’s students interested in applying to PhD programs the opportunity to get mentored research experience, and provide assistance in obtaining practicum placements.

Before learning about the program characteristics, you need to know about the typical structure of doctoral counseling psychology programs.  Typically, you will complete two to four years of heavy coursework and you’ll have to complete one or more projects and/or comprehensive exams before you can start on your dissertation.  All of this is done “in residence,” meaning that you are physically attending classes on that institution’s campus.  Once you are done with most of the coursework and projects/exams, you’ll be able to propose a dissertation project to your advisory committee, which you then must complete and defend.  Once your dissertation is proposed, you’ll be eligible to apply for predoctoral psychology internship in the fall.  Applying for predoctoral internship means submitting applications to about 12 mental health agencies around the country in the fall, interviewing at some of those agencies in the winter, and then being matched to one of those agencies in early spring.  You will then complete your 12 month predoctoral psychology internship at that agency, starting that summer through the following summer.  Ideally, students will defend their dissertation before starting internship, though some students will defend their dissertation sometime during their year on internship.  For example, at our program the typical plan of study is as follows:

• Year 1: Full course load, provide clinical services to clients as a supervised practicum student.
• Year 2: Full course load, complete a Research Portfolio, provide clinical services to clients as a supervised practicum student.
• Year 3: Course load starts to lighten, Qualifying Exams are completed, Dissertation project is proposed, provide clinical services to clients as a supervised practicum student.
• Year 4: Apply for predoctoral psychology internship, complete dissertation, optional opportunity to provide clinical services to clients as a supervised practicum student.
• Year 5: Work full-time as a predoctoral psychology intern at a mental health agency for 12 months.  Once internship and dissertation are complete the student graduates with their PhD.

Most students enter a doctoral program after completing a two- or three-year master’s degree in counseling psychology, clinical psychology, counseling, social work, marriage and family therapy, rehabilitation counseling, or a related mental health degree.  These students may be able to count some of their master’s courses toward the requirements of the doctoral degree, especially if the courses were earned from a counseling psychology master’s program that also housed a counseling psychology doctoral program.  Students with strong resumes may have the opportunity to enter a doctoral program immediately after completing their bachelor’s degree.  We call these students “post-bac” students.  Post-bac students will have to take the basic master’s-level coursework before they can start on the doctoral-level coursework, which tends to add about 3 semesters of additional coursework to the doctoral program of study, which means it will take one or two more years to earn their PhD.  Often, these post-bac students earn a master’s in counseling psychology along the way to their PhD. Before we jump to the characteristics, I have a final warning : this page is very detailed (can you tell I’m a perfectionist?) and has more information than you’ll be able to fully digest at this point in your professional development.  Please don’t get bogged down in the tiny details.  Just get a general sense of the key program characteristics you should be considering and use that to inform your upcoming application decisions.

The following program characteristics can be used by all students to identify the best counseling psychology programs:  APA-accredited, full funding, high APA-accredited internship placement rate, low student attrition, high job placement rate, low student to faculty ratio, great fit with faculty advisor, cultural diversity of students and faculty, and good program location.

Doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association are held accountable to providing high quality training to their students.  It’s hard to get an APA-accredited internship if you don’t go to an APA-accredited doctoral program.  It’s harder to get a job if you don’t go to an APA-accredited doctoral program and complete your internship at an APA-accredited internship agency.  For these reasons, I recommend applying only to APA-accredited doctoral programs.  There can be good programs that are not accredited, but you take a risk if you enter one.  Here’s the Society of Counseling Psychology’s List of Accredited Counseling Psychology PhD and PsyD Programs , which has handy links to each program. You can also search the clunkier  official list on APA’s website .

It is common for counseling psychology doctoral students who get PhD’s to be “fully funded” during their time in the program.  Traditionally, fully funded means that the student:

• Please note that, even if tuition is waived, most programs will require that students pay the university/institution mandatory fees for graduate students.  You can find out the fees for the first year of study (fall semester and spring semester combined) by looking at the program’s “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” table called “Program Costs”.  You can always find the link to a given program’s “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” tables by going to their program’s main webpage and looking for the hyperlink that says “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” table.
• will receive a monthly stipend to help defray the cost of living expenses such as housing rental and food.  The amount of this monthly stipend can vary depending on how the student is funded.  A higher stipend is better, but more important is how far that stipend will go, given the cost of living in that town.  For example, a $1000/mo stipend will pay the rent in Lexington, KY but not in Washington, DC.
• will not have to pay monthly premiums (or you’ll pay reduced premiums) for the health insurance offered to that university’s graduate students.  This benefit varies from institution to institution though, so don’t assume that just because you are being offered funding that you will get free health insurance.

There are three main ways to be funded: assistantships, fellowships/scholarships, or a combination of the two.

Fellowships/scholarships typically mean that the student gets free money without having to do work, but this is not always the case.  Fellowships can be merit-based, identity-based (e.g., funding for racial minority students), need-based, or a combination.

Assistantships typically mean that the student must do work in exchange for the tuition waiver and monthly stipend.  This work can be as a graduate assistant (GA), a teaching assistant (TA), or a research assistant (RA).  It’s best when your assistantships require you to use skills relevant to your future career (e.g., conducting mental health workshops, teaching psychology courses to undergraduates, doing program evaluation research).  Fully funded students typically must do 20 hours of work a week to earn the funding, which can be called a “20/hr/wk assistantship” or a “.50 FTE assistantship” or a “half-time assistantship” depending on the institution.

However, it is also possible for students to be “partially funded” via an assistantship that requires them to do 10 hours of work a week to earn the partial funding, which can be called a “10/hr/wk assistantship” or a “.25 FTE assistantship” or a “quarter-time assistantship”.  Traditionally, partially funded means that the student will have half of their tuition waived and will receive half of the monthly stipend.  However, the tuition waiver aspect can vary across programs, such that a partially funded student may not get any tuition waived or may get all of their tuition waived, though these two variations are less common.

It can be confusing and anxiety-provoking to figure this stuff out.  However, it is super important to know the funding situation at the programs you are considering. as this can have a huge impact on your quality of life and future financial well-being.

If you are going to get a PhD in counseling psychology (see last paragraph of this section for info about PsyD’s), ideally you will go to a program where you will be fully funded during those “in residence” years before you go off on predoctoral psychology internship.  Full funding means less student loan debt.  It is most important to be fully funded during the early years when you are taking the most course credits (i.e., when tuition would be highest).  It is less important to be fully funded during the later years prior to predoctoral psychology internship when you are not taking many (or any) courses, but it’s still worthwhile because of the monthly stipend and insurance premium waiver.  Most APA-accredited internships are paid internships, so you will not need funding from your program during that internship year.

Therefore, I recommend applying to PhD programs whose students have full funding during their “in residence” years.  Ideally, that full funding will be “guaranteed up front” if and when you are made an offer to join the program.  However, very few counseling psychology programs are able to guarantee funding up front because of how the financial structure works at most departments that house these counseling psychology programs.

Therefore, it is best to try to learn what percentage of “in residence” doctoral students who wanted full-time funding have gotten that full-time funding the last few years.  A history of successful full funding of all “in residence” doctoral students is not a guarantee  that you would be fully funded as a future doctoral student, but it is the best predictor of whether or not you would be fully funded.  Please note that some programs make this percentage available on their website and some do not; some programs can provide this information if you tactfully inquire about it, some may only have an approximate percentage, and some may not have this information.  If you can get this information, you should, as it will dictate how much student loan debt you’re likely to accrue over the course of your doctoral studies.

Most PsyD programs cannot fully fund their students.  When considering a PsyD program, make sure you know what percentage of students are fully and partially funded, what that funding looks like (tuition, stipend, health insurance), and how much you’ll likely pay in tuition each year of the program.  Make informed decisions based on this information.  The Psychology Graduate School website has thoughtful information regarding the difference between PhD and PsyD programs as it relates to student loan debt, so I won’t repeat it here. I should also mention “research funding” and “travel funding” while we’re at it. The best programs offer their students access to (often a small) amount of travel funding that they can use to defray the expense of attending professional conference such as the American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention.  Plane tickets to national conferences often costs $300 to $600 round trip, hotel is often $100 per person per night, conference registration can be $40 to $100, plus daily meal and local transportation costs.  International conferences cost even more in airfare.  Graduate students with limited financial means really benefit from having the department help out with the cost.  So, try to find out how much travel funding is available from the program’s department (and sometimes the larger college, graduate school, or university) per year.  For example, our program offers students $500 a year in conference travel funding.  Likewise, some programs make a pool of research funds available that student can competitively apply for to help pay for research expenses such as participant incentives.  Such research/travel funding is nice, but also not nearly as essential as fellowship/assistantship funding and the accompanying tuition remission.

Lastly, let’s talk about summer funding.  Summer funding is nice.  Most assistantships/fellowships only cover you for the 9 month academic year (fall and spring semesters), but not for the summer months.  This means that, if you want a stream of income during the summer months (to pay for non-school expenses like rent and food), you need to think about how you’ll get that money.  Are you going to take a summer job unaffiliated with the program?  Will you just count on student loans to cover your summer expenses? Do the assistantships that students get allow you to work and get the stipend during the summer months?  These questions take on particular urgency if you will be taking summer classes.  Some programs require students to take courses during the summer, some offer optional summer courses, and some offer no summer courses.  If you are going to attend a program where you’re likely to take summer courses, then it’s important to determine if summer funding is available so that you can get a waiver on that summer course tuition.

You must complete an internship if you want to graduate from an APA-accredited counseling psychology doctoral program, regardless of what career path you want to take after graduation.  Most internships are one year full-time (12 full months) and a few are two year part-time (24 months).  There are both APA-accredited internships and internships that are not accredited by APA.  You will have fewer job options if you complete an internship that is not accredited, which is why all APA-accredited counseling psychology programs strongly encourage their students to only apply to APA-accredited internship sites.

Nationwide, there are more applicants than there are APA-accredited internship slots.  This imbalance means that students are at risk for not getting an APA-accredited internship, which puts them in a bad situation that can delay their degree or send them to a non-accredited internship that may hamper their future career.

Therefore, it is best to go to a counseling psychology doctoral program that has an excellent track record of helping their students get matched to APA-accredited internships that are paid.

To discover each program’s track record, look at the program’s “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” tables called “Internship Placement”.  Examine the last few years (the far right columns) to see how well their students have been placing lately.  There are at least 2 things you should examine.

In Table 1, look at the first row called “Students who obtained APA/CPA-accredited internships.”  Ideally, 100% of their students during each year of application will have matched to an accredited internship.  If less than 100% of their students have been matching to accredited internships in the last few years, then that means you may also have trouble matching to an accredited internship if you attend that program.  Of course, every student has a unique circumstance and it is mostly up to the student, rather than the program, whether or not they will match to an accredited internship.  However, programs differ in how much support and guidance they provide to students during this process, and that support can make a difference in how effectively students approach the internship application process.  In other words, the best programs have a stronger track record (i.e., close to 100%) of placing students in accredited internships, but even the best programs may occasionally have a student (or a few, if we’re talking very large cohorts) that do not match to an accredited internship. In Table 2, look at the second row called “Students who obtained paid internships.”  Ideally, 100% of their students during each year of application will have obtained paid internships.  Because you won’t be getting funding from your home institution while away on internship, you need to make sure you’ll be paid by the internship site so that you can cover cost of living expenses.  Annual pay varies from site to site, with a typical dollar amount of 20k to 30k for the 12 months.  Most APA-accredited internships are paid.

By the way, APAGS has helpful resources related to internship  that you can peruse.

Not everyone who starts a doctoral program finishes it.  Dropping out (i.e., student attrition) after putting in a few years of time, effort, and money into pursuing a doctorate is inefficient and something to be avoided.  There are many reasons that students drop out of a doctoral program.  Some are purely personal (e.g., medical or family issues, desire to pursue different career path), some are purely about the program (e.g., a hostile interpersonal culture among students and faculty), and some are a mix (e.g., difficulty coping with the stress of overly-intensive doctoral program requirements).  Like I said with internship placement rate in the previous section, just because some students drop out of a given doctoral program over the years does not necessarily mean that the program has problems, but when there is a clear pattern of attrition over the years this may suggest the program needs to be doing something different.  When there is a pattern, this is more suggestive that the program itself has some problems; when there is no pattern, this is suggestive that the occasional student dropping out may or may not be more about those students’ personal situations.  It’s a little more complicated than this, but I think this is reasonable general advice.

To discover each program’s rate of attrition, look at the program’s “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” table called “Attrition”.  Look at the row called “Students no longer enrolled for any reason other than conferral of doctoral degree” to see how many students from that cohort (i.e., that group of students who entered the program in that same year listed at the top of the column) have dropped out.  Compare this number to the number of “Students whose doctoral degrees were conferred on their transcript” for those cohorts that entered long enough ago that they have had a chance to complete all program requirement and graduate (i.e., cohorts who entered the program about 6+ years ago).  Cohorts from the last few years will not have any students who have graduated, so you’re mostly comparing the number of students who attritioned to the number of “Students still enrolled in the program”.  Ideally, most students will either be still enrolled (the last 5 or 6 years worth of cohorts) or will have earned their doctoral degree, while a minimum number will have attritioned.  Again, look for patterns that might raise questions.  Perhaps during interviews you can tactfully ask the more advanced graduate students in that program about what may have led to those students who attritioned to drop out when they did.  This may help you get a sense of the degree to which that attrition is due to program-specific factor versus personal factors.  For example, in our program, we had some students attrition because they discovered that they were more interested in other professional degrees that better aligned with their career goals.  However, just looking at the numbers in the Attrition table would not reveal that information; it would have to be gleaned through conversations with folks in the program. To add some further nuance: it can be valuable to know the kinds of students who tend to attrition from the program to see if there is a pattern there.  Each university, geographic community in which the university is situated, department, and program have their own interpersonal and cultural climate.  For example, some environments are more hostile to members of minority groups (e.g., people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants and international students, those with worldviews other than Christianity) than other environments.  Therefore, some programs may demonstrate a pattern where minority students tend to be the ones that attrition while privileged students do not.  This is important information for minority applicants to doctoral programs.  If people who share your cultural identities are more likely to attrition from a given program, you may want to think twice about applying or accepting an offer to that program.  Of course, the names and personal identities of those who drop out of a given program is protected by FERPA law, so it can be hard to get a sense for the cultural identities of those students who have attritioned from the program in recent years.  My advice is to have a tactful conversation with graduate students currently enrolled in that program that share your salient cultural identities to ask them what the climate has felt like to them.  This may help shed light on whether that program’s attrition may or may not be related to cultural climate. In summary, the best programs have low attrition.  Look for patterns of attrition.  When such patterns exist, use tactful inquiries with current graduate students (this is easier during interviews when you have some face-time and rapport built with the current graduate students) to gather additional context.  If the program (or larger department, etc.) seems to be doing something to create a less supportive educational environment for students, or certain groups of students, take that into consideration.

APA-accredited programs are required to track their program alumni after graduation to see when and if they obtain gainful employment (i.e., getting a steady paying job in the occupation for which a program was designed).  A strong job placement rate (close to 100%) is a marker of a high-quality program.  However, this information is not often posted directly on the program’s website, so you may need to obtain this information via other tactful means.  This information can also be obtained from APA’s Graduate Study in Psychology book, though the information for each program may not always been updated for that publication year.

One wrinkle you should know about: after graduation, some counseling psychology doctoral graduates will go on to complete a “ post-doc ” to help them accrue additional training that will make them competitive for entry-level positions in our field.  For example, this is quite common when seeking university counseling center staff psychologist positions.  Often, post-docs are to help people prepare for practice careers, but sometimes counseling psychologists will do a post-doc to become more competitive for academic/faculty careers.

Program faculty are busy people.  The more students they are responsible for providing academic advising, research mentoring, classroom instruction, and/or clinical supervision, the less time and effort they can spend on each student.  The less time and effort the faculty can spend on you, the slower your professional development will be.

Therefore, I recommend looking for programs with a lower student to faculty ratio.  In other words, programs with 5 students per faculty member (5:1) afford more personalized attention per student than programs with 10 students per faculty member (10:1).  You will be able to find out how many faculty there are in the program by looking at the program’s faculty page and you can find out how many students there are by looking at the program’s “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” tables.  Scroll down to the “Attrition” table and count the number of “Students still enrolled in the program” in the third row of the table across all columns.  Then, go on the program website and count how many faculty (ideally, core faculty… see definition below) are associated with the program.  Lastly, divide the number of students by the number of faculty to get the ratio.  Some programs list their student:faculty ratio to their website.

It’s important for me to acknowledge at this point that PsyD programs tend to have larger cohorts while PhD programs tend to have small cohorts.  Thus, as I noted above, it may be fairer to use this ratio to compare PhD programs to other PhD programs, and PsyD programs to other PSyD programs, rather than PhD programs to PsyD programs.

Many counseling psychology doctoral programs use an apprenticeship model of mentorship.  This means that doctoral students apply to work under a specific core faculty member in that program.  When I say “core” I mean that the faculty member is responsible for providing primary research mentoring and academic advising to a group of students.  Core faculty are different from “Clinical” or “Lecturer” or “Adjunct” faculty who may teaches classes or run a clinic but typically do not provide primary mentoring/advising to doctoral students.

For example, our program has 5 core faculty members, each with their own research team/lab that is composed of the doctoral students they advise, and sometimes interested master’s students and undergraduate students.  When people apply to our doctoral program, they must articulate in their Statement of Purpose/Cover Letter how their research interests/experience is a good fit for the research focus of one (possibly two) faculty member.  This helps the core faculty make a judgment about which of the many well-qualified applicants has the best alignment with their program of research.  For example, I do help-seeking research (i.e., what helps/stops people from getting talk therapy when they need it) among other topics, so I only seriously consider those applicants to our program that provide convincing evidence in their application that they have a genuine interest in (and, ideally, experience with) help-seeking research.  In short, we want to work with doctoral students who love to study what we love to study.  We’re going to be spending 4+ years working side by side with this student on research, so we need to make sure we’ll be a good fit.

Therefore, when applying to programs that use the apprenticeship model, you’ll need to be ready to articulate how your research interests match up with one ( maybe two) of the core faculty members at the program.  This brings up a larger question: what are your research interests?  You need to know what your research interests are in order to determine which apprenticeship-model-using programs are worth applying to… if your research interests don’t match up well with the core faculty a given program, you are not going to have a realistic chance of getting into that program, so it’s not even worth applying to it.  Even if we could find a magic criteria to determine the #1 best counseling psychology program in the universe, this does not matter at all if your research interests don’t match up with any of the faculty at that program!

This is why fit with advisor is such a powerful factor when considering doctoral programs.  However, because every applicant has different research interests, your “top 10 best counseling psychology doctoral programs” is going to look different than most other applicants.  It’s tricky like that.

Here’s a big caveat: not all counseling psychology programs use an apprenticeship model of mentorship.  Some programs do not require that applicants articulate a research interest fit with one faculty member in their program because they instead look to recruit a strong cohort of students who, once they have spent some time in the program, can pick one of the faculty members whose research and style they like the most to be their faculty advisor and research mentor.  For programs like these, it’s less about fit with a single faculty member and more about how much you like the core faculty as a whole (and how much they like you). At this point, I want to broaden the definition of “fit with advisor” beyond just fit with their research interests.  Fit can also include things like mentoring style (e.g., flexible vs. structured, autonomous vs. close hand-holding), personality (business-like vs. warm and process oriented, type-A vs. relaxed), and performance expectations (e.g., moderate vs. intense).  You may or may not be able to get a sense of a given faculty member’s style during the application stage (some may have a website where they talk about their work and style), but you certainly will be able to get a sense of their style if you attend an interview at the program and get to experience their style first hand.

Ethical counseling psychologists possess the ability to work effectively with clients and colleagues from cultural backgrounds different than their own.  Working effectively requires knowing about the historical and modern experiences of different cultural groups (e.g., racial/ethnic, LGBTQIA+,  rurality) as well as how privilege, discrimination, and disenfranchisement operate in the United States and abroad.  It requires becoming aware of the privileges you may hold, the marginalization you may experience, and the cultural biases you have internalized over time, due to certain facets of your cultural identity.  It requires learning cognitive and behavioral techniques that will help you reduce the influence of these socialized biases on how you interact with people who are in the same or a different social location than you.

You can receive effective training in these things in any counseling psychology doctoral program, regardless of the cultural background of the students and faculty in that program.  That being said, programs that have a culturally diverse body of students and faculty will be able to draw upon a rich array of personal and professional experience that can maximize the quality of the multicultural competence training that occurs in that program. Furthermore, it is nice when you can be part of a program where you can find community with people who share your cultural worldview.  Therefore, seek to determine if people from communities you identity with are represented among the students and faculty of that program.  It can also help when the program is located in a city where people from your communities work and live, as it’s important to be able to connect with people outside of your program.  The cultural makeup of the students and faculty can potentially have a strong influence on how safe and included you may feel if you go to that program.

Look at the program website to see if you can glean information about the demographic makeup of the student and faculty body.

While you will spend much of your time focused on your professional work, you also need to have a life outside of your program.  Work-life balance is essential to preventing burnout and your own potential attrition from the program.  Thus, it is preferable when the program is located in an area where you would enjoy living.  Think about what your needs are.

Do you need the amenities a big city offers?  How do you feel about gridlock traffic?  Would you be depressed if your town was surrounded by miles of cornfields?  Do you want to live in a place where the cost of living is low and, therefore, you won’t have to go into as much student loan debt as you might otherwise?  As noted above, are there people from my cultural communities that I’ll be able to connect with in this locale?  Is there a sizable population of young educated professionals in this place?  Do I plan to raise a family here and what would that be like?  Are there enough craft breweries to satisfy my thirst for highbrow libations? Write down your “musts” and your “prefers” and give each program a grade based on its geographic livability.  Like the characteristics of “fit with advisor” and “cultural diversity”, when it comes to ranking programs based on “geographic livability”, your list of top counseling psychology doctoral programs is going to be different than other applicants.

If your goal is to become a licensed psychologist who primarily provides clinical services (e.g., treatment, assessment, consultation, clinical supervision, prevention) to clients (e.g., individuals, couples, families, groups, or organizations), then you will care most about those program characteristics that impact the quality of your clinical training.

Time is money.  The sooner you can graduate and get your desired job, the sooner you can get on with your life and start to make money.  Therefore, a shorter time to degree is preferable for those who want to go into practice (i.e., spend most of their professional working hours providing clinical services). Shorter time to degree is not listed in the “universally-important characteristics” section because students who want to get a faculty job at a high-research productivity university (e.g., University of Kentucky, University of Missouri, Virginia Commonwealth University) must publish a lot of peer-reviewed journal articles before they graduate if they want to be competitive for these kinds of research-heavy faculty positions.  If you accelerate your program schedule and zip through graduate school, leaving yourself with less time to develop your program of research, you may come to regret that decision.

Time to degree can be determined by looking at the program’s “Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data” table called “Time to Completion for all students entering the program.”  Bear in mind that this table does not differentiate between time to degree for students entering with a completed master’s degree versus those who are coming in post-bac, so try to get a sense of the percentage of students in that program who are post-masters vs post-bac and interpret these Time to Completion table results with that context in mind.

After learning the basic therapy skills in class, doctoral counseling psychology students will start to do clinical practica.  A clinical practicum involves providing clinical services to clients at an agency for typically 10 to 20 hours each week for a semester/year.  You will receive weekly clinical supervision from a licensed mental health professional who works at that agency (typically) and, at least in the first few years of doctoral training, you will attend weekly program faculty-taught practicum classes with the other students in your cohort.  Practica is the primary way students gain clinical experience; you learn to do therapy by doing therapy under careful supervision from experienced professionals.

The best programs will provide students the opportunity to do practica at a variety of practicum sites, including university counseling centers, community mental health agencies, in-house department clinics, Veteran Administration (VA) Medical Centers, Hospitals, Prisons, etc.  Having a variety of practicum sites that you can apply to do practica is helpful for several reasons:

• it will help you maximize the breadth of your experience, which can be attractive to some predoctoral internship agencies and future employers
• it will give you exposure to a variety of treatment environments, training modalities, and client presenting concerns / mental illness, which will broaden your skill set and help you develop informed preferences regarding the kinds of treatment settings that you might like to work in after graduation
• it is a sign that the program has strong partnerships with agencies in the surrounding community, which can help programs adapt to sudden changes (e.g., certain practicum sites closing down will not put some students at risk for not getting a practicum site)

In addition to the benefits of practicum site variety, the quality of the sites matters a great deal.  Unfortunately, this can be harder to determine prior to going on an interview, where you’ll get to ask current students their opinions about the sites they have been to.  Quality indicators include:

• some sites intentionally give practicum students few clients and then balance this by providing in-depth supervision around those few clients
• sites focused on assessment, rather than talk therapy, often involve fewer hours face to face with clients and more hours spend analyzing and writing up assessment results and integrated reports
• the opportunity to get reliable weekly supervision from an on-site supervisor who works at the agency and is licensed as a psychologist or other doctoral-level mental health professional.  Being supervised by master’s-level clinicians is less valuable and APA-accreditation requires that a critical mass of students’ supervision be provided by doctoral level psychologists.  Some sites are structured in such a way that students’ weekly supervision meetings often get cancelled or cut short, which may limit student’s ability to get quality one on one supervision time (a key factor that helps students grow clinically).

The characteristics that are important to students who want to become future faculty members (i.e., “go into academia”) vary depending on the type of institution you want to work at.  There are different ways to classify the types of programs that counseling psychologists may find jobs in, but for simplicity I’ll put programs in three categories: research-intensive programs , training-intensive programs, and teaching-intensive programs.

Research-Intensive Programs

Research-intensive programs require their faculty to publish lots of peer-reviewed journal articles and seek grant funding for their research in order to get tenure .  These programs are typically housed in “high research productivity” (often called “R1”) universities such as the University of Kentucky.  The intensity of these requirements varies from institution to institution.  For example, as of 2018, a common tenure benchmark includes:

• 2 first-author publications (plus a few supporting-author publications) per year in good peer-reviewed journals relevant to your field of study
• evidence of seeking external funding (e.g., applying for a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health) by the time you go up for tenure around the start of your sixth year on faculty
• evidence of good teaching, based on teaching evaluation scores and peer review of your teaching etc.

Thus, if you want to be a viable candidate for a faculty job at a research-intensive program, you need to publish a lot of peer-reviewed journal articles, get experience applying for research funding, and get teaching experience, all when you are still a graduate student.  Doing this will be easier at some doctoral counseling psychology programs than others because the resources, opportunities, and mentoring will vary from program to program.  Therefore, the “best” counseling psychology doctoral programs for people who want to find employment in research-intensive programs will have the following:

• Look at the faculty member’s CV to see if they are publishing at a sufficient rate in good journals.  Productivity can ebb and flow depending on what stage of professional life the faculty member is in, so pay attention to their productivity from the last three years, as this will be a better predictor of their future productivity than what they were doing 5 or 10 years ago.
• Look at the faculty member’s CV and see if their students are publishing a lot of papers with them.  Generally, students start off by being supporting authors on the faculty member’s papers, then, as they get more experienced over time, those students start to be first authors while the faculty member is a supporting author.  Just because a given professor is productive does NOT mean their students are also productive.  This can be for different reasons.  On one hand, if a given professor’s students tend to be focused on pursuing practice careers, they may be less interested in publishing papers.  On the other hand, the professor and/or program may not be providing the resources, incentives, or supports that help students publish.  It is also possible that the professor’s students tend to be publish with other faculty members or students inside or outside of the department, so it’s even better if you can track down the CVs of that professor’s students.  For example, half of my publications during graduate school were with a team of social scientists unaffiliated with my program and advisor, so looking at my advisor’s CV would make you think I was only half as productive as I actually was.
• How many publications should you have by the time you are applying for this kind of faculty job?  The bar for “publishing enough” keeps getting higher every year.  As of Fall of 2018, my informal conversations with faculty colleagues at counseling psychology programs across the country suggest that 12 publications (with 4+ of those being first author, majority in good journals published by recognized publishers with impact factors greater than 1.00) is a solid minimum that applicants should strive to meet by the time they apply.  There are plenty of folks who get jobs with fewer publications, especially if those publications are high quality or in top tier journals.  Given this, try to find the CV’s of graduating students who are seeking R1 faculty jobs who worked with the faculty member you are interested in– were they meeting this 12 pub threshold?
• Look at the faculty member’s CV to see if they have applied for (and ideally received) funding.  Often, professor will seek internal funding from their institution, which helps them collect initial pilot data that serves as the basis for seeking larger extramural funding.  Evidence of seeking internal funding is good, but not as compelling as evidence of seeking external funding.
• Look at the CVs of that faculty member’s students (if available) to see if they have shown evidence of seeking funding for their own research.  Because they are students, it is more likely their efforts have only involved seeking internal funding or small amounts of external funding.  Sometimes this funding can come in the form of fellowships or training grants rather than traditional research grants.  Professors are often very involved in helping their students get such fellowships, and it’s a good sign that you may be eligible to pursue such funding with their help if you enter that program.
• Look for evidence that students have been involved in that faculty member’s pursuit of grant funding.  Students can often help the professor out with literature reviews or helping to draft certain portions of the funding proposal.  This sort of exposure to the process of seeking funding is valuable experience that can help students later pursue their own funding.
• Look at the program’s website, handbook, or current students’ CVs to see if there is evidence that students get the opportunity to teach.  Teaching experience comes in many forms, with some forms being more valuable than others.
• It is most valuable when you can teach an official university credit-bearing course as the “instructor of record” (meaning that you are the person primarily responsible for the teaching of the course).  Because faculty members in research-intensive programs often teach graduate counseling psychology courses and sometimes undergraduate psychology courses, it is ideal if you get the opportunity to teach graduate students and undergraduate students.  However, it is common to only have the opportunity to teach undergraduate students (only some universities allow doctoral students to teach master’s students, for example), so don’t be too worried if this is the case.  As the instructor of record, you are ideally responsible for creating the lesson plan, teaching the curriculum yourself, grading coursework, and responsible for the logistics (e.g., managing student behavior).  By getting experiences with all of these aspects of the teaching role, you will be in a better position as a job applicant to make the case that you will be ready to handle your future teaching responsibilities.  Also, by teaching an official course, you will get teaching evaluations from your students, which puts you in a position to offer empirical data to prospective employers about the quality of your teaching (as perceived by your students, at least).
• The second most valuable type of experience is being a Teaching Assistant (TA).  As a TA, you may only have to do the grading, teach a lab section, and/or guest lecture a few times.  The more of these tasks you can be responsible for the better (the closer the experience is to being an instructor of record), in terms of building your resume.
• Likewise, it can be valuable to teach or facilitate an unofficial course or didactic experience (e.g., teaching helping skills or cultural competence skills to a group of people).  These sorts of “teaching-ish” experiences can help you learn many of the same skills as you would if you were an instructor of record or TA, even though they won’t necessarily sound as substantial to job search committee members reviewing your faculty job application.
• Lastly, some programs may allow certain doctoral students to guest lecture in faculty member’s graduate courses, especially when the topic for that week is an area of strength/expertise for the doctoral student.  This is a great way to get some initial teaching experience and/or get some practice with teaching graduate students, which often requires a different style than teaching undergraduates.

Training-Intensive Programs

Training-intensive programs are those that offer a counseling psychology PsyD degree or a counseling psychology/counseling master’s degree (but no PhD degree).  Faculty in these programs may or may not teach undergraduate students, but they do teach and train graduate students how to become good clinicians.   Training-intensive programs typically do not require their faculty to publish lots of peer-reviewed journal articles or seek grant funding for their research.  These activities are appreciated but not strongly incentivized.  Rather, faculty are expected to some light to moderate publishing/presenting of work (perhaps one supporting-author manuscript a year or a few first-author symposium presentations or poster presentation at a conference) but are primarily judged on the quality of their instruction.  Excellent teaching and light to moderate publication/presentation will earn them tenure.  Teaching may include instruction of traditional courses but also providing clinical supervision of graduate students.

Thus, if you want to be a viable candidate for a faculty job at a training-intensive program, you need to publish/present a light to moderate amount and gain substantial teaching/training/supervision experience while you are still a graduate student.  Doing this will be easier at some doctoral counseling psychology programs than others because the resources, opportunities, and mentoring will vary from program to program.  Therefore, the “best” counseling psychology doctoral programs for people who want to find employment in training-intensive programs will have the following:

• A faculty member who shares your research interest that publishes some, and has current doctoral advisees who publish/present some.  More than just “some” is great, but not required, in this case.  If the faculty member also has some experience with seeking/obtaining funding, that’s great to.
• Opportunities to teach while a doctoral student: see the description in the research-intensive programs section… it all applies equally here.  If anything, because of the training-intensive programs’ focus on teaching and training graduate students, there can be an even stronger incentive for job applicants to have had some experience teaching graduate students, not just undergraduates.
• Opportunities to clinically supervise and train graduate student clinicians: because of training-intensive programs focus on training graduate students to become clinicians, it is ideal if you can gain experience training graduate student clinicians while still a graduate student yourself.  This is most commonly achieved by advanced doctoral students providing clinical supervision to masters students.  For example, in my doctoral program, I was able to provide weekly individual supervision to first year graduate students who were providing therapy to volunteer clients.  I was also able to teach an undergraduate course that allowed me to teach, train, and supervise the students around basic counseling skills.  I also provided clinical supervision to undergraduate paraprofessionals who were providing basic career counseling.  These are just some of the many forms that “getting experience providing clinical supervision” can take.  Bottom line is that you want to engage in activities, whether paid or not, where you get to coach people on therapy-related skills.  The closer the clinical supervision experience you are getting is to bona fide clinical supervision of students with actual clients, the better.

Teaching-Intensive Programs

Teaching-intensive programs are typically found at Small Liberal Arts Colleges (SLACs).  Faculty in these programs typically do not teach graduate students.  Rather, they typically only teach undergraduate students, most often in that institution’s Psychology Department. Teaching-intensive programs typically do not require their faculty to publish lots of peer-reviewed journal articles or seek grant funding for their research.  These activities are appreciated but not strongly incentivized.  Rather, faculty are expected to some light to moderate publishing/presenting of work (perhaps one supporting-author manuscript a year or a few first-author symposium presentations or poster presentation at a conference) but are primarily judged on the quality of their instruction and mentoring of undergraduate students.  Excellent teaching/mentoring and light to moderate publication/presentation will earn them tenure.

Counseling Psychologists who become faculty in such departments are typically the only counseling psychologist on faculty.  There may be one other counseling psychologist and typically two to four clinical psychologists, plus a smattering of social/personality, cognitive, experimental, neuro, industrial/organizational, etc. psychologists.  Together, these faculty from various specialties of psychology are responsible for teaching the core psychology courses (Psych 101, Research Methods, Research Lab) plus specialty courses tied to their area of expertise.  Thus, as a counseling psychologist, you would like be responsible for teaching courses like abnormal psychology, multicultural psychology, theories of counseling, basic counseling techniques, introduction to psychological assessment and measurement, introduction to counseling psychology, and perhaps a course related to your research interests such as psychology of religion and spirituality or psychology of gender.

Thus, if you want to be a viable candidate for a faculty job at a teaching-intensive program, you need to publish/present a light to moderate amount and gain substantial undergraduate teaching experience while you are still a graduate student.  Doing this will be easier at some doctoral counseling psychology programs than others because the resources, opportunities, and mentoring will vary from program to program.  Therefore, the “best” counseling psychology doctoral programs for people who want to find employment in teaching-intensive programs will have the following:

• A faculty member who shares your research interest that publishes some, and has current doctoral advisees who publish/present some.  More than just “some” is great, but not required, in this case.  If the faculty member also has some experience with seeking/obtaining funding, that’s great to.
• Opportunities to teach undergraduate students while a doctoral student: see the description in the research-intensive programs section… it all applies equally here.  If anything, because of the teaching-intensive programs’ focus on teaching and mentoring undergraduate students, it is most important to get experience teaching undergraduate students.  It is also helpful if you can be in a faculty member’s research lab that hires undergraduate research assistants, so that you try to get experience managing the work of these undergraduate RA’s.  In my doctoral program, I was a sort of lab manager for our team of undergraduate RA’s in the lab, and this experience was valuable in helping me learn how to guide undergraduates in the research process.  Some SLAC programs will really appreciate faculty candidates who have had not only classroom teaching experience, but also research mentoring experience with undergraduates.

The quality of counseling psychology doctoral programs is not judged by the same criteria used to judge other kinds of graduate or undergraduate programs.  However, many applicants don’t realize this.  Heck, many organizations that create “best programs” lists don’t realize or don’t care about this either (see my soapbox rant at the top of this page).  So, let’s set the record straight.  Here are some characteristics that, in my reasonably-informed opinion, you do NOT need to worry about because they are not likely to substantially impact the quality of your educational experience or your job prospects after graduation.  Like with many things, there may be some exceptions where some of these characteristics would end up being important, but those would be exceptions rather than the rule.

Ask counseling psychologists if they think institutional prestige is a key factor that students should use when selecting which doctoral programs to apply to.  I think you will find that the overwhelming response is “No.”  Counseling Psychology program are not MBAs or Medical Schools, where there is dominant and fairly well-accepted metric that can be used to rank programs. Instead of Prestige, we talk about more direct measures of quality such as those listed above.

All APA-accredited programs are required to offer core courses in 10 “Discipline-Specific Knowledge” areas and 9 “Profession-Wide Competencies” that our profession has deemed essential for all health service psychologists to be competent in by the time they graduate with their doctorate.  The courses that cover these 19 areas are quite similar across all counseling psychology doctoral programs, so this is not a useful characteristic by which to judge the quality of programs.  Certainly the manner in which these courses are taught will vary program to program and faculty member to faculty member, but such differences will likely be hard to determine prior to submitting applications and even after interviews.  It’s typically not something we focus a great deal on in our discussions with applicants, as programs tend to be more similar than different when it comes to these core course offering.

That being said, courses on topics  beyond the 19 required areas may differ from program to program.  Thus, if you are really interested in, for example, family therapy or substance abuse counseling or sex therapy or LBGTQ psychology or some other topic, then you can check to see if a given program offers coursework in those areas or not.  Bear in mind that you are going to be up to your eyeballs in academic, clinical, and research work your entire time in graduate school, so you won’t have the luxury on loading up on a bunch of extra non-required courses… so don’t undue emphasis on this piece of the puzzle.

After reading this page, you’re probably feeling anxious.  That’s a healthy emotional reaction to being presented with so much complex information.  You came to this page wanting and expecting to see a list of the top counseling psychology programs and all you got was coaching on what characteristics define the best programs, some of which are dependent on one’s career aspirations.  But this is how (I think) reality is when it comes to applying to counseling psychology doctoral programs.  Reality is messy and nuanced and individually subjective.  I do hope that you’ve learned some new things that you didn’t know before, and encourage you to share this page with other prospective applicants.

Be sure to check out my other Psych Grad School  resources using the menu above, such as  Graduate School Advice ,  Counseling Psychology Faculty Research Interests List , , and  What the Ideal Graduate School Applicant Looks Like .  I also recommend completing the  Mental Health Professions Career Test , which will give you interest scores on 21 different mental health occupations, including counseling psychology and clinical psychology. If you’re wondering how these two psychology specialty areas are different from each other, check out my counseling psychology vs. clinical psychology page.  Consider applying for my Social Justice Advocacy Internship . Finally, if you have any suggestions for edits or additions to this page, contact me .

Doctoral students are required to complete 95 points of academic credit during at least four years of residence at Teachers College.

Financial aid––a “Doctoral Fellowship”––is typically provided through college scholarship funds. Whereas in recent years, the college has fully funded (tuition + $25,000 stipend) incoming doctoral students (“Doc Fellows”) for three years, beginning with those students admitted in academic year 2020, financial aid packages will continue through students’ fourth year.  Because students should have completed all academic coursework by the end of their third year, financial aid for students’ fourth year is in the form of a $25,000 stipend. As part of the award, Doctoral Fellowship recipients may be expected to serve as a graduate teaching and/or research assistant.

The funds for financial aid packages derive from multiple sources. These include three college-based sources of funds: A General Fund, a Minority Student Scholarship Fund, and an International Student Scholarship Fund. In addition, the program draws upon several endowed scholarship funds dedicated exclusively to doctoral students in our program, including the Jodi Lane Scholarship Fund (reserved for students focusing on children and adolescents), the Beatrice Lane Fund, The Gladys Schweisinger Fund, and the Tishman Scholarship Fund. Since 1993, the program has also used scholarship monies available via the James S. Scappaticcio Fellowship for "self-identified gay clinical doctoral students"; this Fellowship also provides small grant-in-aids for research on topics "relevant to homosexuality, including psychological and/or psychosocial aspects of AIDS or HIV treatment." Faculty grants may also be used as part of a student’s financial aid package.  

While most students receive financial packages as described above, some admitted students are financially supported through funding provided by the governments of countries in which they are residents. Admission to our doctoral program is entirely need-blind, i.e., not affected by students’ financial needs.

Students may contact the  Office of Financial Aid  for more information. For current tuition rates, please visit Tuition & Fees .

Teachers College, Columbia University 328 Horace Mann

Contact Person: Rebecca Shulevitz

Phone: (212) 678-3267 Fax: (212) 678-8235

Email: shulevitz@tc.columbia.edu

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Ph.D. Program in Counseling Psychology

Our counseling psychology doctoral (PhD) program is APA-accredited. Our program follows the Boulder model for preparing scientist-practitioners, with an emphasis on social justice issues.

Introduction to UK Counseling Psychology Ph.D. Program (Video)

The program requires full-time study (9-12 credits per fall/spring semester) and residence in Lexington.  Like all counseling psychology PhD programs, our program includes the completion of a dissertation and a one-year, full-time internship at an APA accredited site, which usually requires relocation to another state.  As is typical for counseling psychology PhD programs, our program takes most post-master’s students (who enter the program with an applied mental health master’s degree) five years to complete and most pre-master’s students seven years to complete.

A majority of our program graduates ( click here to Meet our Alumni ) gain employment in mental health agencies (e.g., medical centers, community agencies, group practices), university counseling centers, or federal facilities (e.g., VA’s, prisons). Some graduates engage in private practice. Other graduates pursue research or teaching positions in institutions of higher education. The first employment setting is typically closely related to the specialized type of experience gained from the student’s pre-doctoral APPIC internship year. Many graduates have been able to move to the director/manager levels of those health delivery systems within three to seven years of graduation.  Please review our PhD Program’s Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data summary (see side menu) for information about time to completion, internship placement, retention, and licensure.

Check out our videos, in which we  answer students’ questions about Counseling Psychology and our programs  and our  doctoral students talk about their experience  with the UK Counseling Psychology PhD program.  Learn more about the  awards and accomplishments  and  professional background and interests of our current students .  If you have questions about the program that you would like to ask a current student, email Melanie Miller ( [email protected] ).

Top 12 Reasons to Join Our Program

• 100% of our  alumni  achieved gainful  employment  after graduation
• 100% of our students obtain  practicum  placements in a variety of desirable settings such as VA Medical Centers, Hospitals, Prisons, University Counseling Centers, and Community Mental Health Agencies
• 99% of students who wanted full-time (20/hrs/wk, includes tuition waiver and medical insurance coverage)  funding  in the last 3 years received it in the form of assistantships   or fellowships
• 98% of our students who applied for pre-doctoral  internship  in the last ten years received an APA-accredited and fully funded internship
• Our students received 49  awards  in 2020-2022
• Our students were first authors on 27  publications  and 52  presentations  at professional conferences in 2020-2022
• We have a  6:1  student to  faculty  ratio   that facilitates close mentoring in research and personal attention in the classroom
• We have a  diverse  student  body and  faculty  in the program
• Program faculty are successful in obtaining  extramural grant funding  to support their research (e.g., our department had $1,104,364 in primary and $11,428,625 in collaboration sponsored project grants and contracts for Academic FY 2022)
• The opportunity to conduct  multidisciplinary research : our faculty and students publish with scholars from Behavioral Science, Engineering, Public Health, Political Science, Sociology, Social Work, Gender and Women’s Studies, Education, and many other  departments on the UK campus .
• Social justice  research, training, and advocacy opportunities (e.g., EDP Social Justice Scholarship Series, EDP Ally Development Workshop,  Center for Equality and Social Justice )
• Lexington  is ranked as one of the Top 35 places to live in the USA by  U.S. News & World Report , which described our city as a good place for young professionals to live given the constant influx of young, highly educated people, plus the temperate climate, outdoor recreation, and low cost of living.

*List last updated in Fall 2022.

Program Philosophy and Social Justice Statement

The philosophy of the program is rooted in the values and goals of a socially just society. A socially just society is contingent on the optimal health and well-being of all persons in that society. The health and well-being of persons is contingent on access to healthy environments that support healthy development and functioning. We seek to train counseling psychologists who are competent  health service psychologists  (HSPs) that facilitate optimal well-being and the transformation of unhealthy and oppressive societal structures through engagement with science and practice.

Program Mission and Aims

Our mission is to train  skilled and ethical scientist-practitioners  who use their  counseling psychology professional identity  to competently address the evolving needs of a diverse society.  Learn more about the ten competencies and ten knowledge areas that underlie our program’s dual aims by examining the CP PhD Program Aims file available via our Handbooks and Forms webpage .

Program Training Model

We use a competency-based approach to training. We endorse the pedagogical principles for  Preparing Professional Psychologists to Serve a Diverse Public  and the  Counseling Psychology Model Training Values Statement Addressing Diversity . We also embrace the following APA aspirational practice guidelines , among others: Multicultural Guidelines: An Ecological Approach to Context, Identity, and Intersectionality; Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Girls and Women; Professional Practice Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Older Adults; and Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Sexual Minority Persons; Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People; Guidelines for Psychological Practice for People with Low-Income and Economic Marginalization, and Guidelines for Assessment of and Intervention with Persons with Disabilities.  Our students completed clinical practica in a variety of settings in and around Lexington, including university counseling centers, community mental health agencies, private practices, assessment clinics, psychiatric hospitals, Veterans Health Administration medical centers (VA’s), correctional facilities, and specialty mental health clinics.

For in-depth information about all facets of the program, download the Doctoral Program Handbook and Program of Study from the  Handbooks and Forms  page.

Students who are looking for a program that will prepare them to be competitive for a career in academia will be delighted to learn that our program faculty ( click here to Meet the Faculty ) are some of the most productive, cited, and awarded in counseling psychology.

Academic Preparation for the Doctoral Program

Generally, students who enter the doctoral program have completed the master’s degree in psychology or counseling. We may accept strong applicants who have completed an undergraduate degree in psychology or a related discipline (e.g., sociology, pre-med), but do not have a master’s degree; these students are expected to complete our master’s level coursework and practica prior to beginning the doctoral coursework and practica. Students negotiate a specific program of study with their advisory committee. Students can often waive out of doctoral courses when they completed an equivalent course during their master’s program.

How Students are Selected for Admission

The annual PhD program application deadline ( click here to Apply ) is  December 1 .

Drs. McCubbin, Hammer,  and Stevens-Watkins will be taking doctoral students for Fall 2024 start. GRE scores are optional (unless the applicant wishes to work with Dr. Stevens-Watkins, in which case reporting GRE scores is required). There is no minimum GRE score requirement or cut-off.

Applications for admission are evaluated by the program faculty who carefully review the applicant’s (a) GPA; (b) GRE scores, when provided; (c) letters of recommendation addressing academic, research, and counseling experiences and interpersonal skills; (d) match with faculty research interests; (e) Statement of Purpose outlining professional goals (i.e., is it commensurate with our training model and social justice values, and does it demonstrate excellence in written communication); (f) writing sample demonstrating excellence in written communication; and (g) contribution to diversity, broadly defined to include individual social identities and background experiences. The program faculty  holistically  considers the entire application of a prospective student and makes decisions based not only on numerical criteria but also on perceived fit with program goals, needs, and values. Therefore, a low score in one area can be off-set by professional strengths in another area. Minimum GPA is >2.75 for undergraduate and >3.00 for graduate. Minimum TOEFL score is 79. It is  crucial  that students articulate in their Statement of Purpose how their specific research interests match the research program of one or two of the counseling psychology faculty members.

See the  Apply webpage  for information on what date  doctoral interview day  will be held via Zoom .

This interview process helps the program faculty and prospective students further assess fit with the program and intended faculty adviser. After the interview day, the program faculty meet to review, discuss, and make final decisions about admission offers.

Accreditation

The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in Counseling Psychology has been APA-accredited since November 9, 1983.

Questions related to the program’s accredited status should be directed to the Commission on Accreditation:

Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation American Psychological Association 750 1st Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002 Phone: (202) 336-5979 Email:  [email protected] Web:  www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/

For specific questions about the Program, please contact:

Joseph H. Hammer, PhD Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Training 243 Dickey Hall University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0017 Email: [email protected] Phone: (859) 257-4158

We encourage prospective students to read the webpages mentioned above as well as the  Handbook and Program of Study  before emailing the Director of Training, as most questions are answered by these resources.  Dr. Hammer’s website  also provides in-depth advice on applying to counseling psychology PhD programs.

Counseling Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Advance Your Career

The Counseling Psychology program is committed to the scientist-practitioner model of training wherein professional psychologists are prepared to integrate theory, research, and practice in their practice as agents of knowledge development and change in a diverse society. The program prioritizes research, with students obtaining research, presentation, and publication experiences. The program incorporates diversity, focusing on contextually relevant skills in assessment and intervention with multicultural populations. The program also emphasizes an energetic and collaborative learning atmosphere.

Applications must be fully complete and submitted (including all required materials) and all application fees paid prior to the deadline in order for applications to be considered and reviewed. For a list of all required materials for this program application, please see the “ Admissions ” tab.

December 1 is the deadline for admission consideration.

*Those applicants interested in being considered for any available PhD funding should submit completed applications by December 1 for the following Fall semester.

Program at a Glance

• Major/Department: Educational Studies
• Research Area: Counseling Psychology
• Degree Objective: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
• Program Delivery: Residential
• Licensure: *Read Disclosure
• Application Deadline: December 1

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The counseling psychology program offers ONLY the Ph.D. as a terminal degree. A master’s degree is awarded en route to the Ph.D. for students entering the program with a bachelor’s degree, but this degree does not prepare graduates for licensure as a practicing counselor. Students who are unsure that they can or will complete a doctoral program should apply to a master’s program or to a doctoral program that awards a master’s degree as a part of the doctoral requirements.

Tentative Plan of Study

• EDPS 50500: Career Development and Assessment
• EDPS 53100: Introduction to Measurement and Evaluation
• EDPS 60000: Counseling Theory and Techniques
• EDPS 60100: Counseling Theory and Techniques Lab
• EDPS 60400: Advanced Counseling Theory and Intervention
• EDPS 61400: Advanced Counseling Practicum (On-site)
• EDPS 61700: Professional Issues, Ethics, and History of CPSY
• EDPS 61801: Intellectual & Neuropsychological Assessment
• EDPS 62200: Systems Concepts in Counseling and Development
• EDPS 62400: Advanced Counseling Practicum and Supervision (Off-site)
• PSY 64000: Survey of Social Psychology
• PSY 67300: Psychology of Behavior Disorders
• Required elective course in research methods
• EDPS 69600: Internship in CPSY
• EDPS 69900: Research PhD Thesis
• EDPS 50000: Group Counseling Theories and Techniques
• EDPS 50700: Counseling Multicultural & Diverse Populations
• EDPS 53300: Instructional Educational Research I Method
• EDPS 61900: Counseling Psychology Research Practicum
• EDPS 62100: Advanced Multicultural Counseling Theory and Practice
• EDPS 62300: Personality Assessment
• EDPS 63000: Research Procedures in Education
• PSY 69200: Affective/Cognitive Bases of Behavior
• PSY 69200: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience
• EDPS 55600: Introduction to Quantitative Data Analysis Methods in Education I
• EDPS 55700: Introduction to Quantitative Data Analysis Methods in Education II

Supplemental Information

Practicum Placements

Students begin the application process to off-site practicum sites following consultation with their advisor the academic year prior to starting off-site. Often this is during student’s 2nd and 3rd years. In the spring semester, the program’s Off-Site Practicum Coordinator hosts a practicum fair for students to learn more about practicum partnerships in the community. After the attending the practicum fair, students contact practicum sites they are most interested in to set up an interview. Students should not contact sites directly before the practicum fair. Below are select examples of off-site practicum locations where our students receive training.

University Counseling Centers

• Purdue University, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) – West Lafayette, IN
• Indiana State University Student Counseling Services – Terre Haute, IN
• IUPUI Counseling & Psychological Services – Indianapolis, IN
• Butler University – Indianapolis, IN
• DePauw University – Greencastle, IN

Veteran’s Hospitals

• VA Illiana Health Care System – Danville, IL
• Richard L Roudebush VA Medical Center – Indianapolis, IN

Community Mental Health Centers

• Indiana Women’s Prison – Indianapolis, IN
• Willowstone Family Services, Inc – Lafayette, IN
• Wabash Valley Hospital, Inc., Outpatient – Lafayette, IN
• Four County Counseling Center – Logansport, IN
• Wabash Valley / River Bend Hospital – West Lafayette, IN
• Logansport State Hospital – Logansport, IN

Please note: students may need to satisfy certain eligibility requirements (e.g., background check, drug screening) for some site placements. The placements change regularly as the program adds new sites and other sites become unavailable. Some sites accept only advanced students.

Funding Opportunities

Funding for Counseling Psychology doctoral students is complex and comes from multiple sources. First, students find assistantships in offices across campus, including the Academic Success Center, the Military Family Research Institute, and the Center for Career Opportunities. Students must apply and interview for these positions. Faculty and peers are supportive in filtering assistantship information to students, and faculty assist students in preparing their application materials. Nonetheless, the student is responsible for following up with the information and securing the assistantship. Although our students are very competitive for these positions, the process can be stressful.

Second, students may have opportunities to teach sections of undergraduate courses. These include EPDS 105: Academic and Career Planning, EPDS 315: Collaborative Leadership – Listening, EPDS 316: Collaborative Leadership – Cross-Cultural Settings, and EPDS 317: Collaborative Leadership – Mentoring. Students have also secured teaching assistantships in the Department of Psychological Sciences.

Finally, some students obtain faculty-nominated fellowships, which guarantee funding but require 20 hours per week of work for our home department, Educational Studies. Only a few fellowships are available each year, and they are competitive.

Although funding can be stressful, all current students in the program who want funding have at least a .25 FTE appointment. Regardless, some students obtain federal or private loans to supplement their income.

Additional funding information can be found on through College of Education graduate funding .

In addition to a submitted application (and any applicable application fees paid), the following materials are required for admission consideration, and all completed materials must be submitted by the application deadline in order for an application to be considered complete and forwarded on to faculty and the Purdue Graduate School for review.

A completed master’s degree is not required for admission to this program.

Application Requirements

Here are the materials required for this application

• Transcripts (from all universities attended)
• Minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale
• 3 Recommendations
• Academic Statement of Purpose
• Personal History Statement
• International Applicants must meet English Proficiency Requirements set by the Purdue Graduate School

We encourage prospective students to submit an application early, even if not all required materials are uploaded. Applications are not forwarded on for faculty review until all required materials are uploaded.

How to Apply

When submitting your application for this program, please select the following options:

• Select a Campus: Purdue West Lafayette (PWL)
• Select your proposed graduate major: Educational Studies
• Please select an Area of Interest: Counseling Psychology
• Please select a Degree Objective: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
• Primary Course Delivery: Residential

The Ph.D. program in Counseling Psychology at Purdue prepares students for professional licensure as a psychologist in the state of Indiana. Contact Eric Deemer at [email protected] before continuing with program application if you have questions regarding licensure or contact your state psychology licensure board about how this program may translate to licensure in your state of residence.

This program does not lead to licensure in the state of Indiana or elsewhere.

Professional Licensure Disclosure Statement

The U.S. Department of Education requires institutions to publicly disclose to prospective and currently enrolled students whether certain programs meet the education requirements for licensure or certification in the state or territory in which they reside. “Programs Leading to Professional Licensure” is defined as programs represented to prepare students for an occupation for which, at completion of the program, a local, state or federal license, or nongovernmental certification is required (i) as a precondition for employment, (ii) to perform certain functions, or (iii) to meet additional conditions that are generally needed to secure employment.

The Ph.D. program in counseling psychology at Purdue prepares students for professional licensure as a psychologist in the state of Indiana. However, the program has not made a determination as to whether its training requirements meet licensure standards in the remaining 49 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and other specified territories. Current and prospective students are advised to contact the psychology licensure board in the jurisdiction in which they expect to practice to determine whether the program meets its licensure standards.

State by state psychology licensure requirements.

Currently Accepting Students: David Stanley, Eric Deemer, and Xiang Zhou.

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• Curriculum Studies
• Education for Work and Community
• Elementary Education
• English Education
• English Language Learning
• Learning Design and Technology
• Literacy and Language Education
• Mathematics Education
• Science Education
• Social Studies Education
• Applied Behavior Analysis
• Counseling and Development
• Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
• Educational Psychology and Research Methodology
• Gifted Education
• Special Education

Emily Boswell

Eric deemer, heather servaty-seib, david c. stanley , jr..

We embrace values of equity, social justice, and inclusiveness in all aspects of our training in the Counseling Psychology PhD program. These ideals are also reflected in the diverse backgrounds and cultural identities of faculty and students, which broadly reflect race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, physical ability, age, national origin, and religion. Consistent with the values of the field of counseling psychology, we strive to train students to advocate with and on behalf of people with marginalized identities to address sociocultural, political, and institutional factors that serve to perpetuate systems of oppression that undermine well-being. To this end, we believe that it is necessary for us all, faculty and students, to explore and reflect upon our own biases, privileges, and blind spots in all aspects of our roles in this program. This ongoing process of critical self-examination and self-awareness can often be an uncomfortable one, particularly as other program members may hold beliefs and values that differ from one’s own. However, we strive to navigate diverse individual and cultural perspectives together in a climate of trust, safety, and support.

Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the traditional homelands of the Indigenous People which Purdue University is built upon. We honor and appreciate the Bodéwadmik (Potawatomi), Lenape (Delaware), Myaamia (Miami), and Shawnee People who are the original Indigenous caretakers. See: https://www.purdue.edu/naecc/

Questions? Contact the Office of Graduate Studies at [email protected] .

College of Education

Counseling psychology doctoral program.

The University of Houston's Counseling Psychology doctoral program generates new knowledge and trains community-engaged change agents. We provide our students the tools they need to help others navigate the modern world. Our students have the opportunity to contribute to unique research opportunities in behavioral health, multiculturalism and social justice. Situated within one of the nation's most diverse cities, we have developed relationships with a variety of unique practicum locations, including several within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center.

• PHLS Directory
• Mission & Values
• Student Profiles
• Graduate Profiles

About the Program

The Counseling Psychology doctoral program trains psychologists to become health service psychologists and psychological researchers. Our nationally recognized and competitive program offers a challenging curriculum, a supportive student environment, student-faculty mentorship, excellent and diverse sites for clinical training, and multiple opportunities for research.

The following faculty are currently accepting new students:

Dr. blake allan, dr. virmarie correa-fernández, dr. marcel de dios, dr. robert h. mcpherson, dr. nathan grant smith, option: health psychology emphasis.

For those Counseling Psychology doctoral students who wish to add a Health Psychology Emphasis to their doctoral training, there is additional coursework that can be integrated into your program. This 15-hour minor includes three courses (two required and one elective) and two semesters of clinical health psychology practicum (which can be one of the practicum placements already included in the doctoral program). Hence, this is only an addition of nine credit hours. It is also possible to gain exposure to this topic by taking one or two courses. For more details on this option, please see pages 11-12 of the doctoral program handbook available on this website.

• Accredited American Psychological Association since 1987
• 5 - 6 years to complete the degree
• Counseling Psychology Student Handbook
• Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data
• UH Graduate School

What will I learn while attending the counseling psychology program?

Students develop professional leadership, ethical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills through:

• Candidacy research project
• Comprehensive exam
• Dissertation

Since degree plans change periodically, students will follow the degree plan that is in place at the time in which they complete an official, approved degree plan. Students enter the program with either a Master’s or Undergraduate degree. Please see page 13 of the Counseling Psychology Ph.D. Program Handbook for the most current sample degree plans.

What can I do with my degree?

The program offers the preparation necessary for students to apply for licensure as psychologists in Texas. Our graduates are employed in settings such as:

• Colleges and University Psychology Departments
• University and College Counseling Centers
• Community Agencies
• Private Practice
• K-12 schools

Important Counseling Psychology Documents and Resources

The following is a collection of important documents and other resources

• Resource Guide for Ethnic Minority Graduate Students
• A Guide for LGBT Students Navigating Graduate Training
• Evaluation of Practicum Student Competencies
• Sample Practicum Contract
• Supervisor Evaluation Form
• Practicum Hours Log

Counseling Psychology Faculty

The following is a list of current counseling psychology faculty:.

Counseling Psychology Program

Faculty Profile | Email

Dr. Consuelo Arbona

Dr. chakema carmack.

• PHLS Homepage
• Our Programs

The Counseling Psychology faculty's research ranges from stress and coping in the LGBTQ community and tobacco cessation to minority stress and health disparities. Visit the PHLS Research Portal to learn more about our diverse interests and discover faculty pursuing answers to the questions that matter to you.

Feel free to contact faculty directly to learn more about their research. You can find contact information in the Research Portal or by visiting the COE Faculty Directory .

• PHLS Research Portal

Financial Aid

All Counseling Psychology doctoral students are encouraged to apply for scholarships through the UH and the College of Education. To learn more about how to fund your graduate studies, visit the Graduate Funding page .

Graduate Tuition Fellowship

Graduate Tuition Fellowship (GTF) provides tuition remission for 9 credit hours, during the academic year, to students who enroll in at least 9 credit hours. During the summer term, GTFs are contingent upon available budget. Not all years in the graduate program may be covered by this program.

Assistantships

Graduate appointments are usually available to students during the first two years of graduate studies. The program doesn't cover mandatory fees or course fees. Not all years in the graduate program are covered by this program. 

To learn more about funding your education, contact the COE's College of Graduate Studies at  [email protected]  or call 713-743-7676.

• COE Financial Aid and Scholarships
• UH Graduate Funding
• UH Graduate Financial Information

Houston, Texas

Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States and one of the nation's most diverse cities. This fact benefits our students and faculty both personally and professionally. Home to more than 100 different nationalities and where more than 60 different languages are spoken, Houston is the perfect environment to practice what you're learning in the classroom. The city also boasts more than 12,000 theater seats and 11,000 diverse restaurants featuring cuisines from around the globe (Don't know where to start? Just ask a Houstonian, and they're sure to bombard you with at least a dozen places to eat.) 

Houston is bustling with culture, energy and offers something for everyone inside and outside the classroom.

(Background photo: “ Metropolis ” by eflon is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .)

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• Greater Houston Partnership - Welcome to Houston

Ready to Apply?

Are you ready to apply to the University of Houston Counseling Psychology doctoral program ? Yes? You can learn more about the application process by visiting the College of Education's Graduate Admissions page  or jump right into the application process by visiting the UH's How to Apply to Graduate School page .

If you need more information about the Counseling Psychology program, we are here to help. You can always contact the COE Office of Graduate Studies by phone at 713-743-7676  or by email .

The Counseling Psychology doctoral program is a member of UH's Psychological, Health, & Learning Sciences department .

Training and Program Director:  Dr. Consuelo Arbona

UH College of Education Stephen Power Farish Hall 3657 Cullen Blvd., Room 491 Houston, TX 77204-5023

Undergraduate: [email protected] or 713-743-5000 Graduate: [email protected] or 713-743-7676 General: [email protected] or 713-743-5010

*Questions related to the program’s accreditation status should be directed to:

The Commission on Accreditation: Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation American Psychological Association 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242 (202) 336-5979 [email protected] http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/

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How to apply phd, clinical/counseling psychology.

This American Psychological Association–accredited doctoral program prepares you to work as a psychologist in colleges, community agencies, clinics, and hospitals. Graduates of this license-qualifying doctoral program are eligible to take the New York State Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology.

Official Degree Title

Application Deadline

Program Information

Admissions Information

Primary Research Mentors

The doctoral program in Clinical/Counseling psychology at NYU is a small, individualized scientist-practitioner training program; thus we pay close attention to the match between the candidate and the program’s faculty and resources. In particular, we seek to admit students whose professional interests align with the program as a whole and whose research interests are well-matched with those of one or more faculty member. Each new student will be matched with a primary research mentor and will also be supported by secondary faculty mentors in other research and clinical roles.

The faculty who are available to serve as primary research mentors for the Fall 2025 admission are:

• Anil Chacko
• Shabnam Javdani
• William Tsai
• A. Jordan Wright

Other faculty are pote ntially available to serve as secondary mentors, so we encourage you to write about your interests and experiences that demonstrate that you are a good match with the program as a whole as well as with your potential primary mentor.

Admissions Requirements

Candidates to this doctoral program require 18 prior credits (or 6 courses) in psychology, including at least one course in statistics.

How to Apply

These instructions and requirements are for all applicants. If you are not a citizen or a permanent resident of the United States, please read the  special instructions for international applicants .

Your application will require the following items. The following are acceptable document types for uploads: .pdf, .jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .tiff, .png, .doc, .docx, and bitmap.

1. Prepare Your Application

You are required to upload a copy of your most recent résumé or curriculum vitae as part of your application.

Statement of Purpose

We are looking for students who appreciate and desire a career that includes research and practice, integrating social justice and diversity in both areas. Please speak to this for your career trajectory in a typed - double spaced three to four page statement of purpose which you upload to your application.

Letters of Recommendation

Submit  three  letters of recommendation. Be sure to request them well in advance of the deadline. Read  detailed instructions .

Transcripts

Upload one official copy of transcripts from every postsecondary school you have attended or are attending. Make sure to request them in advance of the deadline.

If you completed or are completing a degree at an institution outside of the US or Canada, you are required to provide a WES or ECE evaluation. Please review our requirements for translation and a course-by-course evaluation of your transcripts.

See  detailed instructions on submitting transcripts .

Not required.

The GRE (both the general test and the GRE subject test) is not a requirement for applications to the Clinical/Counseling Psychology PhD program. Even if GREs are submitted, they will not be considered.

Proficiency in English

See  testing requirements .

Interview Date

The interview date for the 2025 cycle is TBD.

Application

Start your application now

After you fill in and upload the required information, you can submit your completed application.  Your application must be completed, dated, electronically signed, and submitted by 11:59 p.m. EST of the stated deadline.

Application Fee

You will be prompted to pay a $75 application fee, payable by major credit card only. After submitting your payment, you will see your application status change from “saved” to “submitted.” Please print this screen for your records, as it confirms that your application has been successfully sent to our school. If you have problems submitting your payment, please contact the Office of Graduate Admissions. Learn more about our  fee waiver policy .

Mailing Additional Items

If any application materials need to be mailed to our office, mail the materials to NYU Steinhardt, Office of Graduate Admissions, 82 Washington Square East, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10003-6680.  Please do not mail your materials in binders or folders. Any mailed materials must be  received by, not postmarked by, the stated deadline . Only completed applications will be considered and reviewed by the Admissions Committee. Due to high volume, we are unable to confirm receipt of mailed materials.

Application Policies

Application deadlines are "in-office" deadlines, not postmark deadlines.  It is your responsibility to ensure that all materials are in the Office of Graduate Admissions by the appropriate deadline, and we reserve the right to return any application that arrives after the deadline. Only completed applications will be considered. Should a deadline fall on a weekend, the in-office deadline will be the next business day. We advise you to apply early.

Please check the online system to confirm that you have successfully submitted your application.  Due to the volume of applications and related materials received, the Office of Graduate Admissions will only contact you if your application was successfully submitted and is deemed incomplete because of missing required materials. Otherwise, you will hear from us when the admissions committee has made its decision.

Deferral policy:  NYU Steinhardt does not allow deferrals. Applicants who wish to be considered for a future semester must reapply by submitting a new application with all supporting materials, including letters of recommendation, by the application deadline.

3. Receive Your Admission Decision

You will be notified about your decision by email. Typically, decisions will start going out in late March or early April for fall enrollment. You may learn of your decision before or after this timeline.

PhD Program Funding

Funding Guarantee

Students admitted to the PhD program in counseling psychology will receive a five-year guarantee of support.

Post-MA Students: Students admitted to the post-MA program are funded during their three years of required coursework, their dissertator year, and their final year in an APA-accredited internship. Funding usually comes from multiple sources during doctoral study, including fellowships and assistantships, and includes tuition remission (except for the final year in the APA-accredited internship) and health benefits, as well as providing valuable research/teaching/clinical experiences.

Post-BA Students: Students admitted to the post-BA program are funded during their four years of required coursework and their dissertator year. Tuition remission and health benefits are included as a part of the five years of the guarantee spanning through their dissertator year. The required predoctoral internship is a year-long salaried training experience in the sixth year that is funded by the internship site. Tuition remission is not included during the APA-accredited internship in the sixth year.

Funding is guaranteed at not less than a level of 50 percent for the duration of the guarantee, provided that the student remains in good standing in the program. A variety of funding sources can provide support for the student under the terms of the guarantee, including a fellowship (limited availability), a teaching assistantship (either from the Department of Counseling Psychology or from another department on campus), project assistantship, research assistantship, or a teaching assistant lectureship. All of the above types of support pay a stipend, provide tuition remission, and include health insurance eligibility. Funding from other sources on campus will count toward a student’s guarantee of support.

We encourage incoming and returning students to explore funding opportunities outside the department as well as within the department. Graduate assistantships in other departments and administrative bodies across campus value the professional and interpersonal skills that counseling psychology PhD students bring, and historically our students have been very successful in obtaining these. Available assistantships are listed on the Student Jobs website ; click on Graduate Student Jobs to view them.

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Fellowship awards

University Fellowship Competition : The department nominates one outstanding incoming student for the Two-Year Graduate School Fellowship in early spring. The fellowship provides support for the first academic (nine-month) year, and an additional academic year of support once the student reaches dissertator status. The fellowship includes a stipend, remission of tuition and segregated fees, plus health insurance benefits during each of the two years.

Education Graduate Research Scholars Fellowship : The department is able to nominate a limited number of incoming students for the School of Education Graduate Research Scholars (Ed-GRS) fellowship each year. To be eligible for Ed-GRS, an incoming student must be a U.S. citizen or U.S. Permanent Resident, admitted to or enrolled in a graduate department, with preference given to Wisconsin residents; and identify with one of the following groups: African American, Native American, Latinx: Mexican Americans, Chicano/as, Puerto Ricans, Southeast Asians: Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and  Vietnamese, OR McNair Students: students who participated in a McNair Program OR Wisconsin residents who are first generation to complete a bachelor’s degree and who participated in a TRIO Program (Upward Bound, Talent Search, Educational). 

The Graduate Research Scholars’ community and the School of Education partner to administer this fellowship.   Get more information about the Ed-GRS fellowship here .

Other fellowships : Occasionally, the department is able to secure other fellowship funding for an incoming student, including the Kemper Knapp University Fellowship .

Graduate assistantships

The Department of Counseling Psychology has a limited number of graduate teaching assistantships:

Teaching assistantships (TA) : The number of TAs that the department is able to employ each year depends on course offerings and enrollment. TA salary for 2023-2024,​ for a 50 percent appointment is approximately $23,227 for a nine-month appointment, and includes remission of tuition with benefits. Salary amounts for TA positions are not negotiable. Positions in the Department of Counseling Psychology are announced in late spring to entering and continuing doctoral students. Students may also contact other departments for positions within their programs.

Project and research assistantships (PAs and RAs) : Faculty in the Department of Counseling Psychology sometimes hold research grants that employ project assistants or research assistants. Availability of such positions are announced to doctoral students in late spring for the upcoming year. Salary and benefits for PAs and RAs are similar to that of TAs.

Additional information about tuition, stipends and funding

• Graduate school enrollment requirements, including those for graduate assistants
• Bursar’s Office tuition and fee rates (includes rate for segregated fees)

Education & Human Development

Educational psychology, how to apply.

The Department OF Educational Psychology

The Department of Educational Psychology (EPSY) is home to a variety of interrelated disciplines and degree options focused on human development and well-being in educational and community contexts. Our undergraduate programs prepare students to work with children and youth in a variety of community and school contexts. We also offer a range of professional master’s degrees geared towards professionals in schools, communities, and the corporate world. For those interested in doctoral studies we offer Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in Educational Psychology, Counseling Psychology, and School Psychology.

Program Areas to choose from

Educational psychology, us news & world report 2021, number of online courses available, former student highlight, michele sheppard.

“When I started at A&M, it was unlike any other, they push you to be your very best. Being a single mom and going back to school was not always easy but you can do it!”

Master’s →

Bachelor’s →

Certificates →

Emphasis Areas

Educational psychology programs.

UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES

EPSY offers a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Education and University Studies, with one of three focuses.

Undergraduate Studies

Graduate Programs

The department of Educational Psychology offers a range of professional graduate degree programs.

ONLINE EDUCATION

EPSY offers a wide variety of online programs and courses to many the diverse needs our students.

Online Education

Certificates

Undergraduate students have the opportunity to complete certificate programs while completing their degree requirements.

FROM OUR FORMER STUDENTS

“I came to the conclusion that being a special educator is less about whom you teach and more about what you teach.”

– Stephanie Haetchen ’12 Special Education Programs

Upcoming Events

View all upcoming EPSY events

Doctorate in:

Counseling psychology, ph.d. in counseling psychology.

Our Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology is designed to give candidates a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of their professional field and training in methods of research.

This degree is awarded based on a candidate’s grasp of the subject matter of a broad field of study and a demonstrated ability to do independent research. In addition, candidates must have acquired the ability to express thoughts clearly and forcefully in both oral and written languages.

This degree is not granted solely for the completion of coursework, residence and technical requirements, although these must be met.

• For a student who has completed a master’s degree, a DDS/DMD, DVM or MD at a U.S. institution, a minimum of 64 hours is required on the degree plan for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
• For a student who has completed a baccalaureate degree but not a master’s degree or a U.S. DDS/DMD, DVM or MD , a minimum of 96 hours is required on the degree plan for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Training Mission

The Texas A&M Counseling Psychology doctoral program has been accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1981 and is grounded in the scientist-practitioner model.

We train ethical and clinically competent counseling psychologists, commensurate with current expectations from the American Psychological Association Commission on Accreditation for health service psychology.

This mission is realized with a curriculum that provides sequential and cumulative training in the classroom, the clinic and in field experiences that facilitate professional development, appropriately graded in complexity to balance support and expectations for students. We embrace the traditional values associated with counseling psychology with its emphasis on the use of theoretically-based, empirically-informed services to enhance the health and well-being of individuals and communities.

Our program is explicitly attentive to multiculturalism, community engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration. The stated mission, themes and training sequence of the program is consonant with the strategic plan of Texas A&M University, reflecting its core values and mission to attain excellent in academic, research, service and teaching activities.

Where are our Graduates?

A recent evaluation of program graduates from the academic year 2008-2009 to 2017-2018 finds our graduates are currently in the following work settings:

Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data

Program information is provided in compliance with C-20 Disclosure of Education/Training Outcomes and Information Allowing for Informed Decision-Making to Prospective Doctoral Students. Domain G of the Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation of Programs in Professional Psychology (G&P) requires that doctoral graduate programs provide potential students, current students, and the public with accurate information on the program and with program expectations.

Learn more.

Admissions Deadlines

• Applications are currently open and will close on December 1st for fall 2025 admissions.
• To be admitted into the Counseling Psychology program, students must follow all  graduate admission requirements .
• Prior to registration each semester, students are required to meet with their advisor (temporary or permanent). The registration advising form should be completed and given to the advisor each semester.

The CPSY program allows up to 3 courses maximum (9 credit hours) from other institutions. Courses are restricted to the following:

• Group Counseling
• Lifespan Development
• Counseling Techniques (limited to post-masters students who have had a practicum; information on practicum/internship sites and supervisor(s) evaluations required).

Course waiver requests are reviewed only for students accepted into the program. Submission of a course waiver request does not guarantee course(s) will be waived. Evaluation is based on determination of course equivalence and APA accreditation requirements.

Recommended GRE/GPA Scores

• Combined Quantitative and Verbal score = 1000 (old scoring system)
• Undergraduate and/or graduate GPA indicative of academic ability required for a rigorous doctoral program.

Submission Criteria

• Relevance of previous education and work experience.
• Professional activities, memberships.
• Scholarly activities.
• Recommendation letters.
• Relevant experience and skills (e.g., bilingual status, experiences working with people with disabilities, with under-served groups).
• Essay conveying career interests, goals, skills.

Admission Interviews

• Application reviews begin in December. CPSY faculty and a student representative evaluate each application. Qualified applicants are identified and invitations are extended for an on-site interview conducted at the beginning of the Spring semester.
• Arrangements can be made for Zoom and/or telephone interviews for those unable to attend.
• Interviews provide information about the program, the department, CEHD and the university, as well as opportunities to interact with program faculty and students. On-site interviews also provide qualified applicants the opportunity to see unique program resources such as the Counseling and Assessment Clinic and the Texas A&M Telebehavioral Care .

Post-Interview Process

Following the on-site interview, program faculty and the student representative determine which applicants will receive formal invitations to enter the program in the upcoming fall semester. Admitted students must notify us in writing by April 15 of their intent to accept our offer. Admitted students are assigned a temporary advisor and ongoing correspondence with the Academic Advising office commences.

Accreditation

Inquiries about the accreditation status of the Counseling Psychology Program can be obtained from the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation (CoA). The CoA can be reached at:

American Psychological Association Office of Program Consultation & Accreditation 750 First Street NE Washington, DC 20002-4242 Phone: (202) 336-5979 Email: [email protected]

Accreditation Status: Accredited by the American Psychological Association.

Program Details

• Students who complete the program obtain a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology.
• Students entering the program with the baccalaureate degree may apply to receive the M.Ed. (non-thesis option) after completing the first 36 graduate credit hours required by the program.
• The doctoral degree plan includes a minimum of an additional 64 credits for all students, including the year-long internship. The program provides students with the training and education required by the states for eventual licensure as a psychologist.
• If you are seeking licensure verification of degree program through PsyPro, please indicate Dr. Kelly Lee ([email protected]) as the head of the degree program, as she is the current training director. Additionally, please send Dr. Lee an email so she can follow up with your request and gather additional information from you.

Degree: Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology Degrees Offered: Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Credit Hours: minimum 75 hours

Select College of Education and update credit hours.

Professional Licensure and Certification Disclosure Statements

Notice to students pursuing programs that may lead to a professional license or certification required for employment.

The following programs may lead to a professional license or certification that is required for employment. Professional licensure/certification requirements vary from state to state, which may affect a student’s ability to apply for a professional license/certification upon the completion of the program. The U.S. Department of Education regulation, 34 CFR 668.43 (a) (5) (v) , requires an institution to disclose whether the program will fulfill educational requirements for licensure or certification for each state. The administrative departments that offer the programs have made the following determination regarding their curriculum.

We recommend students contact the appropriate state licensing agency in their state or the state where they intend to work to seek the most up-to-date information about state licensure/certification requirements before beginning the program.

It is important to emphasize that the State Boards of Psychology typically require additional training requirements and examinations for licensure. For a fuller summary of the requirements for licensure in each state, please visit the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Board .

Program Handbooks

Program assessments, annual evaluation.

At the end of each Spring semester, program faculty evaluate each student to determine their timely progression through the program, as well as their progress in academic performance, clinical skills, and professional behavior. Faculty determine each student’s minimal level of achievement on each of the competencies expected of entry-level psychologists, as specified by the Commission on Accreditation.

Practicum Evaluation

Field supervisors evaluate a student’s performance during their field practicum on a form developed and used by the program faculty.

Peggy Brigman

Academic Advisor IV

View Directory Profile

Lizette Ojeda

Associate Professor

Linda Castillo

Timothy Elliott

Distinguished Professor

Charles (Chuck) Ridley

Carly McCord

Clinical Associate Professor

Clinical Assoc Professor

Timothy Lawrence

Assistant Professor

Frequently Asked Questions

• Doctoral 10

List of Bachelor Degree Equivalencies

Please view a brief  List of Bachelor Degree Equivalencies by Country . If you do not find your country listed and are unsure of your degree equivalency, please contact the Office of Admissions at  [email protected] .

Can my Application fee be waived?

Yes. This fee may be waived only in exceptional cases for low-income applicants and McNair Scholars. To receive the waiver, you must submit an awards letter from your current school’s financial aid office showing the award of a Pell Grant. Your Student Aid Report (SAR) from a current FAFSA can also be submitted to show financial need. McNair Scholars must submit a letter from their McNair Program Director verifying their status as a McNair Scholar in good standing to receive the fee waiver. Submit this information to the Academic Affairs Business Office and include your major of interest and term of application. Waiver of application fee is not available for international students.

Statement of Purpose Essay

All applicants must complete the Essay, Statement of Purpose and explain the following:

• Why you applied to this program
• Academic background and training
• Potential for graduate study
• Research experience
• Other relevant professional experiences

I want/need a Graduate Assistantship/Fellowship – how do I apply?

Please note that we cannot guarantee any financial assistance to any student. We will contact all admitted students about the process for applying for all available assistantships. This is a separate process from applying for admission. The department and programs will choose students to be nominated for Graduate Diversity or Graduate Merit fellowships. These fellowships are only open to U.S. citizens. Please do not ask to be nominated for one of these fellowships as the program will determine which students are competitive for these awards.

How do is submit my letters of Recommendation?

The  GraduateCAS  online application includes a Recommendations section where you must add your recommenders’ information. Once you have saved the recommendation requests, GraduateCAS will contact each recommender via email to request the completion of the recommendation form and letter of recommendation. We require three letters of recommendations and they must be submitted directly by recommenders through the electronic system.

Is there an admissions cycle for Spring semester?

No. For our Ph.D. programs we only have admissions in fall semesters.

What are the typical program costs?

Check out the cost of attendance estimator.

Please note, you must update the program hours.

For a better understanding of your total cost of attendance (COA), please visit our cost and tuition rates webpage ( https://aggie.tamu.edu/billing-and-payments/cost-and-tuition-rates ). This webpage will provide you with an opportunity to review estimated COA information for undergraduate, graduate and professional students, as well as other resources such as the tuition calculator and billing and fee explanations.

Can you guide me through the application process?

How to Apply: Master’s Application Information | Doctoral Application Information

I live out of state. Do you accept out-of-state applicants?

Yes, we accept in-state and out-of-state applicants.

Is there any opportunity for financial assistance?

Yes, there are opportunities for financial assistance through the following departments: Office of Graduate Studies Financial Aid

Request Information

Tuition & fees.

For a better understanding of your total cost of attendance (COA), please visit our cost and tuition rates webpage ( https://aggie.tamu.edu/billing-and-payments/cost-and-

tuition-rates). This webpage will provide you with an opportunity to review estimated COA information for undergraduate, graduate and professional students, as well as other resources such as the tuition calculator and billing and fee explanations.

Can't find what you are looking for?

APA-Accredited Programs

Find a program that's right for you., search for accredited programs.

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 SITE VISITS: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, site visits for the majority of programs scheduled to be visited in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 have been shifted. Please note that the “next site visit date” listed for each program does not represent an expiration of accreditation. It represents a timeline for a program’s next periodic review. The accreditation status of the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 programs will not be impacted by site visit delays. Cycle shifts are listed here . 

Other Accreditation Statuses

Accredited program lists, related pages.

Choosing a Program

Get Accredited

Why APA Accreditation Matters

Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation

750 first st, ne  washington, dc 20002-4242 [email protected], telephone: (202) 336-5979  tdd/tty: (202) 336-6123  fax: (202) 336-5978 .

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UMass Boston

• Counseling Psychology PhD

Preparing counseling psychologists for advanced careers as scholars and practitioners.

Accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association since 2015, UMass Boston's PhD in Counseling Psychology prepares doctoral-level professional counseling psychologists for careers as scholars, university faculty, and practitioners.

Our scientist-practitioner training model prepares students to:

• deliver high quality, evidence-based psychological services and interventions
• employ applied research skills to improve practice and explore social and psychological issues
• serve as effective instructors and teachers
• use innovative approaches to solve problems related to educational and mental health care disparities, improve services for underrepresented populations, and employ systems-level change strategies to advance local and global social justice

Why Apply to UMass Boston's Counseling Psychology PhD Program?

The UMass Boston Counseling Psychology program prepares the next generation of counseling psychology scholars, teachers, and social justice advocates. We believe in the benefits of working with a variety of research methods and theoretical approaches, receiving guidance from multiple mentors, and understanding how to think about human rights and social justice as they apply to local and transnational contexts.

Start Your Application

Plan Your Education

How to apply.

Applicants must meet general graduate admission requirements in addition to the following program-specific requirements:

• Test Scores: Effective 2021, GRE scores are no longer required for admission to the PhD program
• Letters of Recommendation: 3
• Writing Sample: Yes
• Applied master's degree required. We are accepting applications from candidates who will have completed an applied master's program with supervised clinical experience (e.g., Mental Health Counseling, School Psychology, School Counseling, Social Work, and other programs) prior to the Fall admission.
• Minimum of five social science classes (preferably psychology, human development, and statistics)
• Completed project or academic paper
• Statement of purpose: The Statement of Purpose is your opportunity to tell the faculty why you are interested in counseling psychology, to share the reasons why you are applying to UMass Boston in particular, and to describe your training and career goals, as well as how our program may support your progress toward those goals. Many people link their interest to specific faculty expertise as that helps us match applicants to specific faculty for interviews on the interview day.
• Transcripts
• Résumé/Curriculum Vitae

Deadlines & Cost

Deadline: December 1 for fall

Application Fee: The nonrefundable application fee is $75. UMass Boston alumni and current students that plan to complete degree requirements prior to graduate enrollment can submit the application without paying the application fee.

Program Cost Information: Bursar’s Website

Graduate training at the UMass Boston Counseling Psychology Program will prepare students for taking the EPPP (Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology); however, requirements for sitting for the EPPP vary by state licensing boards. The Counseling Psychology Program has reviewed the licensing requirements for all U.S. jurisdictions to determine eligibility (see below). Please note that not all graduates choose to take the EPPP.

U.S. Boards of Psychology in Which Graduates Would Be Eligible to Sit for the EPPP Upon Completion of the Doctoral Program

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia (DC), Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming

U.S. Boards of Psychology in Which Graduates Would NOT Be Eligible to Sit for the EPPP Upon Completion of the Doctoral Program Without Additional Coursework

• California: additional coursework in human sexuality; alcohol/chemical dependency detection and treatment; child abuse assessment; spousal/partner abuse assessment, detection, and intervention strategies; aging and long-term care; and suicide risk assessment and intervention is needed.
• Maine: additional coursework in family or intimate partner violence screening and referral and intervention strategies, including knowledge of community resources, cultural factors, evidence-based risk assessment, and same-gender abuse dynamics is needed.
• New York: Unable to determine if a graduate is eligible. The doctoral program must be registered by the New York Licensing Department as licensure qualifying or determined by the department to be the substantial equivalent in accordance with the Regulations of the Commissioner. Please contact the New York Office of the Professions for specific details on the licensure requirements. Note: We have many alumni who are licensed in NY but historically this state has had additional requirements.

The program is designed to take five years of full-time study, including a full-time internship. Students who enter with a master’s degree in counseling or another applied field will have a reduction in required course credits to the extent their master’s level courses match our required courses, however, it is required that students complete a minimum of three years on campus plus internship. The majority of students have completed the program with four years on campus plus one additional year of internship.

Foundational Courses (18 Credits)

• COUNSL 608 - Psychopathology and Diagnosis 3 Credit(s)
• COUNSL 620 - Life Span Human Development 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 641 - Cognitive and Affective Foundations 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 660 - Physiological Bases of Behavior 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 680 - History & Systems in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 705 - Social and Cultural Psychology 3 Credit(s)

Prevention, Assessment, and Intervention Courses (6 Credits)

• COUNSL 614 - Counseling Theory and Practice I 3 Credit(s)

Complete one of the following:

• COUNSL 613 - Vocational Development and Career Information 3 Credit(s)
• COUNSL 615 - Counseling Theory and Practice II 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 706 - Personality Assessment 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 713 - Advanced Career and Group Theory and Practice 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 717 - Advanced Theory and Practice in counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 752 - Health Psychology: Current Theory, Research, and Interventions 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 780 - Supervision and Training in Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 783 - Practicum in Counseling Psychology I 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 784 - Practicum in Counseling Psychology II: Evidence-Based Practice 3 Credit(s)
• PSYCLN 727 - Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy 3 Credit(s)
• SPY G 602 - Standardized Assessment and Report Writing 3 Credit(s)

Research Courses (18 Credits)

• CSP 703 - Research in Counseling and School Psychology 1-6 Credit(s)
• CSP 704 - Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 708 - Intermediate Statistics in CSP 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 770 - Advanced Statistics in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 891 - Dissertation Seminar 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 899 - Dissertation Research 1-9 Credit(s)

Teaching Requirement Course (3 Credits)

• CSP 782 - Teaching in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)

Social Justice & Systems Change Courses (12 Credits)

• CSP 701 - Social Justice in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 702 - Foundations and Ethics in Counseling Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 787 - Advanced Practicum III in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)
• CSP 801 - Transnational Social Justice in Counseling and School Psychology 3 Credit(s)

Graduation Criteria

Complete 73 credits from 19 courses including six foundational courses; two prevention, assessment, and intervention courses; six research courses; one teaching requirement course; and four social justice and systems change courses. Students who enter with a master’s degree in counseling or a related field will have a reduction in required course credits to the extent their master’s level courses match our required courses.

Capstone: Students starting with a Bachelor’s degree must complete a capstone project based on CSP 704 and 708 consisting of a literature review paper on a topic approved by the faculty advisor. Doctoral candidacy: Completion of a qualifying paper, a critical and synthetic review of a focused body of literature in the area in which the student plans to complete the dissertation. Dissertation: Compose and defend a research project (quantitative or qualitative) that makes a substantive contribution to the knowledge base in counseling psychology or school psychology. It is usually completed by the end of the fourth year, although students may choose to complete the dissertation during or following the internship year. Practicum: Participate in two semesters of practicum. Internship: Complete one full-year of Internship. During the fourth or fifth year after having met all course requirements. Teaching: Co-teach at least one semester. Research Team: Participate on at least one faculty-student research team for five semesters.

En Route Master’s Degree: Students may, with the approval of the program director, apply to receive an MA degree en route to the PhD. To qualify, students must complete 36 credits of course work and the capstone project.

Statute of limitations: Eight years.

Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data

Counseling Psychology PhD Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data

Contact & Faculty

Graduate Program Director / Director of Training Sharon Horne sharon.horne [at] umb.edu (617) 287-7495

Counseling & School Psychology Graduate Programs csp.admissions [at] umb.edu

Counseling Psychology PhD Faculty

• Gonzalo Bacigalupe
• Laura A. Hayden
• Sharon Horne
• Sharon Lamb
• Meredith Maroney
• Takuya Minami
• Kerrie Wilkins-Yel

Learn more about faculty, students, alumni, and the program with the Counseling & School Psychology newsletters .

About Our PhD Programs

Hear why our students chose UMass Boston's Counseling & School Psychology PhD programs.

Counseling & School Psychology

Learn more about UMass Boston's Counseling & School Psychology department, our research, and our faculty.

College of Education & Human Development

Learn more about the faculty, research, and programs that make up our College of Education & Human Development.

Accreditation

The Counseling Psychology Program has been continuously accredited since 2015 by the American Psychological Association Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation. Questions related to the program’s APA accreditation status should be directed to the Commission on Accreditation:

Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation American Psychological Association 750 1st Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002 Phone: (202) 336-5979 / E-mail: [email protected] / Web: www.apa.org/ed/accreditation

Clinical Psychology Graduate Program Description

The Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at Washington State University (WSU) is located at the WSU-Pullman campus. Pullman, WA is a rural community in southeastern Washington, 8 miles west of the Moscow, ID (University of Idaho), 80 miles south of Spokane, WA, and 290 miles southeast of Seattle, WA. There are approximately 17,000 undergraduate students and 2,000 graduate students at the Pullman campus. In addition to the main campus in Pullman, the Department of Psychology also has clinical faculty at three regional campuses located in Spokane, Tri-Cities (Richland, WA—approximately 150 miles southwest), and Vancouver, WA (approximately 360 miles southwest).

ACCREDITATION

The doctoral program in clinical psychology has been continually accredited since 1956 by the American Psychological Association Commission on Accreditation.

For information about our accreditation status, you can contact the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association , which can also be reached at:

Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242 Phone: 202-336-5979 TDD/TTY: 202-336-6123 Fax: 202-336-5978 [email protected]

PROGRAM AIMS

The Clinical Psychology Program at Washington State University is based on the scientist-practitioner model of training. The Program is designed to integrate theory, research, and clinical practice in the training of students. Students are involved in research activities each semester in the Program and clinical practica beginning in the second year until the start of the 12-month internship. The aims of the program are to produce graduates who (a) have a broad knowledge of scientific psychology; (b) can provide evidence-based clinical services that are consistent with ethical and professional standards, including knowledge of and sensitivity to issues of diversity; and (c) are capable of contributing to current knowledge in clinical psychology.

To accomplish these aims we expect all students to achieve discipline specific knowledge in 1) the history and systems of psychology, 2) basic knowledge in scientific psychology, 3) integrative knowledge in scientific psychology, and 4) methods of inquiry and research; and to demonstrate profession-wide competencies in the areas of

• Ethical and legal standards
• Individual and cultural diversity
• Professional values, attitudes, and behaviors
• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Intervention
• Supervision
• Consultation and Interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills

Given that our graduates can potentially make contributions to clinical psychology in academic, research, medical, clinical, or community settings dependent on their interests and goals, the Program provides broad, general clinical training during the four to five years that students are at the University. Our program requires full-time commitment in pursuit of a Ph.D. and, therefore, we do not have a terminal Master’s degree program. Instead, Master’s degrees are awarded during work toward the Ph.D. The program offers both adult- and child-focused training with opportunities in Neuropsychology, Clinical Health Psychology, and Psychopathology. The program is successful in placing students in top internships nationwide. Clinical Program graduates are employed in a variety of professional settings including university and medical center faculty positions and independent practice.

RESEARCH TRAINING

Science is at the core of health service psychology, and the Clinical Program operates on the proposition that research training is an integral part of the education of clinical psychologists, relying on the most current evidence-base when training students. Although the program admits only persons who expect to receive a Ph.D., each student who enters at the bachelor’s degree level is expected to complete an empirical master’s project while in progress toward the doctoral dissertation. In addition to the master’s project and dissertation, clinical students are expected to be involved in research activity under the direction of a faculty member during each semester in residence. Clinical doctoral students present their research at scientific meetings as well as publish their research. These research endeavors are an important part of graduate training and professional development.

CLINICAL TRAINING

Assessment and psychotherapy with clients begins in the fall semester of the second year of graduate training and continues through the completion of the clinical internship. To provide broad clinical training for students, the Department of Psychology offers a variety of supervised clinical experiences working with diverse individuals who present with a spectrum of symptoms and conditions. The Psychology Clinic in the Department of Psychology is staffed by faculty and clinical graduate students and provides adult and child assessment, diagnostic, and psychotherapy services on a sliding scale to the University and surrounding communities. The University Counseling Services is staffed by clinical psychology graduate students, interns, and faculty psychologists, and provides ongoing counseling and emergency services to students. The Cougar Health Services provide assistance to students through the Behavioral Health unit, which is staffed by clinical graduate students, physicians, and a psychiatrist. Additional clinical externship opportunities are available to more advanced graduate students (e.g., Palouse Psychiatry and Behavioral Health; Marimn Health Center). Providing clinical doctoral students with all of these opportunities ensures that by the time they apply for internship in the final year of the program, each student has attained the requisite level of competency.

STUDENT SELECTION

The Clinical Psychology Graduate Program enrolls 6 to 8 students each year from approximately 180 applications. In choosing students for admission, we look for individuals whose interests match our training objectives and whose research interests match those of our faculty. The Clinical Psychology Graduate Program utilizes a mentorship model in the selection and training of students. The degree of fit between the applicant’s research interests and the research interests of their potential faculty mentor is an important consideration in admissions. Therefore, it is to your advantage to articulate clearly how your research interests coincide with the research interests of your potential mentor. The Student Admissions, Outcomes, and Other Data Section provides more specific information on the characteristics of students admitted to the program and their progress through the program.

STUDENT SUPPORT

All of our clinical graduate students are fully funded during their first year of study. This funding includes a tuition waiver; partial fee waiver; a half-time assistantship for the academic (9-month) year, which provides a monthly salary in exchange for 20 hours of work per week within the department, under the supervision of a faculty member, or in an instructional capacity; and basic health insurance for a 12-month period. In subsequent years, full support is provided contingent upon sufficient progress toward completion of the degree as judged by the Clinical faculty and continued availability of funding to the department. It is the policy of the department to attempt to provide complete support to students who are in good standing for four years of study. Graduate students in the department may be eligible for additional summer support as, for example, a summer session instructor or research assistant.

The clinical program also awards two fellowships to incoming graduate students, to supplement the assistantship stipend:

The Laura Asbell Graduate Fellowship, awarded to one incoming student, provides $2500 in summer funding for each of the first four years of training. The guidelines for awarding the fellowship state: “Recipients are to be chosen on the basis of commitment to the profession and to serving others, and not simply on the basis of scholarship achievement. Financial need should also be a consideration. Recipients are encouraged to return the benefit they receive through this scholarship, once their career is established, by contributing to the fund or the psychology program to help others enter the field or to make a difference through community service or the offer of counseling to those who otherwise could not afford it.

The Alan W. London Memorial Graduate Fellowship, awarded to at least one incoming student, provides $2500 in summer funding for the first year of training. The guidelines for awarding the fellowship state a “… strong preference for mature students, those individuals who have had significant life experiences before making the commitment to be a clinical psychologist. Recipients will be chosen on the basis of their qualities of intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, and dedication to serving others. Financial need will also be an important consideration.”

Students are invited to apply for the Asbell fellowship when they are invited to campus for interview day during February.

APPLYING TO OUR CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY PROGRAM

The various links (e.g., Clinical Psychology Program Faculty and Interests; Clinical Curriculum; Clinical Internship Outcomes; Diversity Interests of the Clinical Faculty; Clinical Practica) should answer many of your questions about the Program. I also encourage you to contact the individual clinical faculty if you have questions about their research. Please also feel free to contact me if you have additional questions about the Clinical Psychology Program.

Note to potential applicants: A previous felony conviction could prevent obtaining the predoctoral clinical internship required for a Ph. D. in clinical psychology, as well as future licensure as a psychologist. In addition, drug screenings and a background check may be required prior to the start of clinical practicum placements.

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (Clinical)

• Fall December 1st

International students may need to surpass the Graduate School’s minimum English language proficiency exam scores for this program. If the graduate program has unique score requirements, they will be detailed below. Otherwise, please refer to the Graduate School’s minimum score guidelines.

Degree Description:

The Clinical Psychology Program at Washington State University is based on the scientist-practitioner model of training.  The Program is designed to integrate theory, research, and clinical practice in the training of students.  Students are thus involved in research activities each semester in the Program and clinical practica beginning in the third semester until the start of the 12-month internship.  The goal of the program is to train highly competent clinical psychologists who will obtain high quality APA-accredited internships and, with graduation, make positive contributions to the field of clinical psychology.  Given that our graduates can potentially make contributions to clinical psychology in academic, research, medical, clinical, or community settings dependent on their interests and goals, the Program provides broad, general clinical training during the four to five years that students are at the University.  Areas of interest within the Clinical Psychology Program include: Clinical Health Psychology,  Neuropsychology, Adult Psychopathology, Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, and Quantitative Methods in Psychology.  The Program is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association [750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002; (202) 336-5979].

Admission Requirements:

Admission to our graduate program is competitive.  To merit consideration the applicant must have completed at least 18 credits in psychology and earned at least a 3.00 cumulative GPA.  Applicants with less than these numbers will not be considered for admission regardless of circumstances.  For those who meet this requirement, evaluation of the application is based on: undergraduate GPA (3.0 minimum); graduate GPA (if any); GRE scores; letters of recommendation; clinical, research, and/or teaching experience; the variety and difficulty of coursework completed, with the expectation that the student has completed a large number of upper-division courses both within and outside of the major; extracurricular activities; jobs related to psychology; and a demonstrated ability to function independently and responsibly.  The department actively recruits students from cultural groups that have been under-represented in professional psychology.

Student Opportunities:

RESEARCH TRAINING

The Clinical Program operates on the proposition that research training is an integral part of the education of clinical psychologists.  Although the program admits only persons who expect to receive a Ph.D., each student who enters at the bachelor’s degree level is expected to complete an empirical master’s project while in progress toward the doctoral dissertation. Students may conduct research under the supervision of either clinical or experimental faculty.  In addition to the master’s project and dissertation, clinical students are expected to be involved in research activity under the direction of a faculty member during each semester in residence.

CLINICAL TRAINING

Exposure to professional clinical activities begins in the fall semester of the second year of graduate training and continues through the completion of the clinical internship.  To provide broad clinical training for students, the Department of Psychology offers a variety of different clinical experiences.  The Psychology Clinic in the Department of Psychology is staffed by faculty and clinical graduate students and provides assessment, diagnostic, and psychotherapy services for a fee to the University and surrounding communities.  The University Counseling Services is staffed by clinical and counseling psychology graduate students and faculty psychologists, and provides ongoing counseling and emergency services to students.

Career Opportunities:

Post-Graduate Employment Opportunities: 1. Post-doctoral (one to two year) positions in universities and medical schools; 2. Staff psychologist positions in VA Health Care Centers; 3. Faculty positions as clinical psychologists at Universities; 4. Staff psychologist positions in hospitals and clinics; 5. Staff psychologist positions in medical schools

Career Placements:

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT 2015-2020 GRADUATES VA Eastern Kansas Healthcare System – Leavenworth, KS Mayo Clinic Health System, La Crosse, WI Cleveland Clinic- Cleveland, OH University of Idaho Counseling & Testing Center, Moscow, ID Self Employed and affiliated with The Seattle Clinic in Seattle, WA University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN Community Health of Central Washington, Ellensburg WA Mt Holyoke Sanford Health Loma Linda University Behavioral Medicine Center Providence Medical Center; Spokane, WA Concordia University Vancouver, BC, Canada The Clinic, San Francisco CA UC Davis Medical Center Sacramento, CA University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA Natalis Counseling and Psychology Solutions, St. Paul, MN Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, CA

Contact Information:

• Stacy Gessler [email protected]

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Welcome to r/CounselingPsychology! This subreddit is for discussions related to counseling psychology, a field of health service psychology.

Are there Counseling Psych PhD programs with funding?

I understand that the situation is different from Clinical Psych programs where the funding is research based, but is there not a need for teaching fellows for undergrad classes?

Full disclosure: I am preparing to apply to psych programs this year. This is a second career for me, after doing MA/PhD in Philosophy (with strong emphasis on philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology). My former PhD was fully funded, through a teaching fellowship. I don’t have clinical research experience, and am mainly interested in becoming a psychotherapist, but I would love the opportunity to teach as part of my career, so I’m trying to figure out where in grad psych ecosystem I fit best.

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Ms in psychology: professional counseling psychology.

Our Master of Science in Psychology with a major in Professional Counseling Psychology prepares research-informed future therapists, counselors and consultants for the independent and licensed professional practice of counseling, psychotherapy and program evaluation. Our program offers students a solid foundation in psychology and opportunities for specializing in a range of clinical problems and diverse populations, with learning through faculty-guided mentorship and supervised clinical training.

The program is designed to provide instruction and training for advanced study in psychology and prepare students to become professional Licensed Mental Health Counselors (LMHCs) in the state of Florida. Students are trained to use scientific and applied behavioral science theories, methods, techniques, and evidence-based treatments for the purpose of describing, preventing, and treating psychological problems, enhancing mental health and human development. 

Students may pursue this program in a hybrid or fully online format. See Program Structure or contact [email protected]  for more information.

Getting Licensed

Program Contact

Please send questions about the program to   [email protected] . 

Kristin A. Nichols Program Director, Professional Counseling Psychology; Associate Chair, Department of [...]   305-348-2880   [email protected]

Department of Psychology [email protected]

MMC: 11200 SW 8th Street, DM 256 Miami, FL 33199 Tel: 305-348-2880 Fax: 305-348-3879

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URI to launch new Master of Science in Mental and Behavioral Health Counseling degree program

The clinical psychology doctorate program at University of Rhode Island is ultra-competitive, accepting maybe 3% or 4% of the 200 to 300 applications it receives each year. The school's graduate program ing licensed mental health counseling aims to produce more mental health professionals through rigorous training that's less demanding than earning a Ph.D. (Getty Images)

The vast majority of the approximately 1,000 undergraduate University of Rhode Island (URI) students who major in psychology each year never become practicing clinicians. Nor do they want to. 

“Psychology is nicely paired with many other things,” said Mark Robbins, chair of the psychology department at URI since 2016, in a phone interview Tuesday. “I see a range of students who are psychology majors, but they’re not interested in becoming a licensed provider.”

But for students who do want to enter clinical practice, a new advanced degree from URI could fill in the gap between the school’s many psychology undergraduates and the elite few in the school’s clinical psychology doctorate program. 

Starting in January 2025, applications for URI’s new Master of Science in Mental and Behavioral Health Counseling will open. The first cohort of approximately 10 students is anticipated to begin studies next summer and receive their degrees by summer 2027. The class will slowly increase in size each year until reaching about 40 when fully up and running.

The new degree offering received final approval at a June 28 meeting of the URI Board of Trustees, after having been approved by President Marc Parlange in May and the Faculty Senate in April. 

“The thing about psychology is, when you walk across the stage at the end of your undergraduate, you have a bachelor’s in psychology, but you’re not a psychologist,” Robbins said. “It’s different than if you walk across the stage in engineering, you get to say you’re an engineer…But psychology, you have to have training to deliver service, you have to have a license, and that license requires, usually either very significant training plus courses or a master’s degree.”

The new masters program contrasts the existing clinical psychology P.hD. program in its focus and intensity. Robbins said the Ph.D. track students number maybe five a year and require extensive mentoring and research experience in addition to clinical responsibilities. 

The Ph.D. students are “training as a researcher, and that is not the thing you can do in large numbers,” Robbins said. “I typically have maybe four or five Ph.D. students who are working with me, and they’re all at different levels, from brand new to more senior.”

The demand for research savvy isn’t as intense for mental health counselors. Robbins said counselors should know how to consume research, but they probably won’t be consulting the top 40 journal articles monthly or in the course of their daily practice. Clinical Ph.D.s may spend half a decade on their degrees, and a Psy.D., or Doctor of Psychology program, can take just as long to complete. There’s also postdoctoral training involved for any clinician. 

Enrolled students will gain experience through URI’s on-campus training clinic, the Psychological Consultation Center, and internship opportunities in settings like Rhode Island Hospital. Robbins said local hospitals and health care providers always seem to be looking for licensed mental health counselors (LMHC) or social workers; he often sees eight to 12 positions open at any given time. Students who enroll in the new masters program will be well on their way to achieving state certification for licensed mental health counseling, for which Rhode Island law requires 2,000 hours of direct clinical experience.  

Similar programs for school psychologists have existed at URI in the past, but the licensed mental health counselor track is new, and it’s a thought Robbins said he has mulled for some time. The opportunity to develop the plan came when the university launched a strategic initiative to craft new degree programs.

“It took some convincing. Everybody’s always worried that their workload will change, I guess,” Robbins said, adding that workforce development is another valid reason to offer the program. At full enrollment capacity, or approximately 40 students, the new program should generate around $450,000 in revenue for URI, according to the proposal .

Rhode Island has high need for mental health clinicians

Newport and Washington counties, as well as Providence with its concentration of low-income residents, are all considered “high needs” areas for mental health clinicians in Rhode Island, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The federal administration designates both geographic areas and specific facilities lacking enough health care professionals as health provider shortage areas . 

Rhode Island has eight federally qualified health centers in the state with a subpar provider-to-patient ratio, and the Narragansett Indian Tribe Health & Human Services agency also scores as high need.

Still, a 2024 data table from KFF that used federal data shows Rhode Island, at 58.1%, ranking third nationwide in meeting its population’s needs for mental health care. That’s more than double the national average of 26.8%. A 2023 article from the American Counseling Association pointed to reimbursement rates, lack of funding, high turnover, a greater need for services, and a counseling workforce approaching retirement as reasons for the nationwide shortage.

URI has yet to publicly advertise the program but will start within the next month, Robbins said. The program will also apply for American Psychological Association accreditation — the same accreditation received by the 50-year-old clinical psychology doctorate program — but that process takes a few years.

Psychology courses can be useful for aspiring med students and students interested in behavioral science and research, Robbins said. Still, he recalled being momentarily stumped when a philosophy department chair once asked him what made psychology so popular with so many students.

“I think we’re a culture which is very interested in how we think, how we feel, how we understand ourselves,” Robbins said. “I think this is an area where lots of students [say], ‘Yeah, this is both useful for me to learn about myself as much as it is about what I might do for my career.’”

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