best degree for adolescent counselor + overextending myself?

[imapretender]

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So, a bit about my background. I am a 2008 BA Psychology grad with a 3.475 GPA. I’ve been working in an unrelated field for the past few years, but now I’ve decided that I want to pursue a career as a counselor for adolescents suffering with mental health issues.

My plan is to go back to undergrad fulltime starting this summer and build my application up for the next 3 semesters. This includes taking courses to improve the GPA and gaining research experience. Hopefully by August 2013, I’ll have improved my GPA significantly and have 2-3 semesters of research work and some good recommendations to boot.

Does this sound realistic? I am concerned about getting sufficient research experience in such a short amount of time. Am I overextending myself here?

Also, I’ve been doing some browsing around these forums and it seems like these are the program options I have in order to achieve my goals:

PhD – Clinical Psychology
PsychD – Clinical Psychology (school focus)
M.A. – School Psychology, counseling psychology
MSW

Any other possible programs that I’m missing out on? And does anybody have any recommendations on which program would be best for someone with my goals?

Thanks for all of your help!

 

[docma]

For the widest range of jobs in work with youth, an MA or MSW will give you good entry level qualifications (and won't prevent getting a doctorate later if you truly feel you need one.) Probably more important is getting field experience to gain basic contact skills and to demonstrate to yourself and others that this is what you really want to do. Your B.A. and interest are likely to be enough to get an entry level job in a residential treatment setting, school or recreation center, or some other kind of community youth work. Having this experience will also increase your appeal to grad programs. There is huge need in this demographic so I hope it works out for you.

 

[mewtoo]

In concern to you doing research and improving your GPA for 2-3 semesters I don't think you'll be overextending yourself. I'm an undergrad myself so you may want to take my advice with a grain of salt in comparison to other more seasoned students, but I've essentially done the same thing with respect to the research part. I've only been involved in research for a year and have a poster and an entire experiment and manuscript under my belt. Just try to find a lab to work in as early as you can if you haven't already found one. My professor completely immersed me by making me 3rd author on a poster after only "proving" myself for a few weeks. Hopefully you can have a similar experience.

I don't know if you did research as an undergrad, but if you haven't make sure you don't take so many classes that your research suffers or your gpa suffers because you commit to the research anyway. I'd say I spent as much time as a class + study time working on research each semester this past year. Good luck with everything!