Hi all
I have received offer letters from UCL as well as University of Edinburgh for MSc in child and adolescent mental health and MSc counselling respectively. I am very confused so as to which one to go for. I am looking forward to some help. Please suggest
Well, one is research oriented and one is practice oriented- what direction do you want to go with this degree?
I am drawn towards both the orientations, but slightly more on the side of research. I am also looking at it in terms of job prospects, so which one do you think will be more helpful?
Research vs counseling practice is such a profound difference that I don’t see how anybody here can help with that decision. If you really aren’t sure, I suggest deferring both places for a year and working in one area or the other to see what you think of it.
Deepi9, this forum is mostly used by students hoping to study at US universities. Very few people are familiar with different degrees and career opportunities in the UK. You might get better answers in a forum for British students, such as The Student Room.
The first obvious question you need to ask yourself is which population you want to work with. Adults or children? High-functioning or low-functioning populations? (Edinburgh’s department follows a person-centric and psychoanalytic approach, which is most often used with high-functioning adults.)
Of course that decision isn’t final yet. An MSc alone doesn’t qualify you to work as a counselor and you’ll have one more opportunity to change focus when you pursue your next degree. That said, if you have never worked a full-time job with children, I’d recommend you do that before you pursue a degree in child and adolescent mental health.
How so? I am not familiar with counseling education in the UK. I do know that there are different educational paths for clinical psychologists in the US (a research-oriented PhD vs a practice-oriented PsyD) and that the career trajectories are largely the same. The PhD has the one significant advantage that there may be funding available, whereas PsyDs are self-funded. I am having a hard time imagining how the two UK options could be so far apart that it’s not even worth discussing the similarities and differences. Maybe you could explain?
Not the UK options in particular, but the pathways: doing counseling directly with patients vs conducting research (theoretical or applied) are different trajectories. It’s a subjective opinion, of course, but the OPs questions gave me the impression that s/he might benefit from getting more clarity on what her/his goals are and what the two fields are like before actually plunking down money and a year of life on a path without a pretty good idea that it’s a path headed a direction s/he wants to go.
Actually, there are jobs at the Masters level in both fields, though obviously the Doctorate is the terminal degree.
Can you elaborate on those Master’s-level counseling jobs? Taken straight from Edinburgh’s website:
UCL too positions its program as an additional qualification for people working in non-counseling areas, or as a preparation for a PhD in clinical psychology. Not as a stand-alone counseling credential.
Of course. But a research-oriented education does not automatically lead to a research career. In the US, many aspiring clinical psychologists who are confident that they only care about patient care apply to research-based PhD programs nonetheless. There are good reasons for doing that and the pros and cons of the different educational paths would certainly merit an extended discussion.
Agree completely: which is why I thought the OP needed to do more thinking about what they want than a ‘should I go route A or route B’ question on CC. There are so many factors, and many of them are intrinsically personal.