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How important is the prestige of Clinical or Counseling PhD programs for students?
How important is the prestige of Clinical or Counseling PhD programs for students?
What do you mean by prestige exactly? The ranking of ugrad programs (US news) is very different from the ranking/caliber of psychology grad programs. So for example, Columbia is a top tier, ivy school, and its psychology program (in social, dev, cog) is regarded highly. However, Teachers College (affiliated with Columbia)'s PhD programs are meh (Counseling is much better). Many people choose to go to TC for their Masters, and they don't get anything out of it (except 50K+ in debt!). Another example is Penn State for ugrad is OK/decent, but Penn State's clincial psych Phd prog is super competitive and well respected in the field (for research at least).
re: getitordietryin: Fordham's a good school (well recognized regionally), but the counseling PhD program can do better (not so stellar APA-accredited internship match rates) and I'm sorry and I mean no disrespect, but the Masters in Counseling Program isn't very strong at all (I've had personal experiences w/ classes in the prog). Like many MA in Csling programs, it's to make money for the school and after you come out, it's hard to find a job (unless you're bilingual) and get supervised hours for licencing. I don't think NYC is as friendly as the Bay area for MFTs/MA in Csling folks. The only saving grace for the program is Dr. Ponterotto who is an amazing professor!!!! However, the PhD program in Clinical Psych is very solid with great MATCH rates, solid rep/training, and competitive admission rates. So even within the same university, you can have programs with different reputations and varying quality of training.
How important is the prestige of Clinical or Counseling PhD programs for students?
If you want to go into academic research, then I would say the relative prestige and respect within the field of your mentor is more important than the program as a whole. This gives you networking connections you may not have otherwise and if your mentor has the reputation for producing good students from their lab it will be easier to secure an internship and postdoc that leads to academic research.