Is our Program a good fit for you?
An important aspect of the admissions process is determining which programs best fit your professional interests, goals, and identity, as well as your life circumstances. In reality, it can be difficult to know whether a program is a good fit until you have met current faculty and students and visited the campus and its environs. With that said, we highlight below some aspects of our program that may help you determine how well suited our program is for your interests and goals.
Research is a core component of our program
Research is a part of everyday life in our program, consistent with our commitment to the scientist-practitioner model. Students are expected to be active in research throughout their doctoral program, and coursework is designed to encourage students to discover connections between research and practice. Students whose research interests match one or more of our faculty members may find our training program particularly rewarding. Conversely, our program probably would not be a good fit for people who have little interest in conducting research and building their research skills.
Counseling is a core component of our program
Our curriculum provides students with intensive training in counseling and psychotherapy, and all graduates are eligible for certification and licensure as psychologists through the appropriate associations. Students who are only interested in research training would likely view the substantial counseling component of our program as burdensome.
Our training focuses on older adolescent and adult populations
Our courses on counseling and assessment focus on working with clients who are in their late teenage years or older. Most of the didactic practica involve working with clients in the University of Maryland Counseling Center, all of whom are university students. For these reasons, our program is not a good choice for people who wish to focus their training on children and early adolescents. However, it is worth noting that some of our students have gotten clinical and research experience with these populations outside of required coursework.
Our program is rooted in the values and traditions of counseling psychology
Our curriculum, training model, and research all reflect a strong connection to the main unifying themes of counseling psychology: focus on assets and strengths, person–environment interactions, educational and career development, brief interventions, and a focus on intact personalities. As a result, little class time is spent studying severe psychopathology and the medical model of assessment and treatment. Our students with a strong interest in psychopathology can seek outside training experiences in psychiatric settings, such as the Veterans Affairs hospitals and state psychiatric hospitals.
Our program is committed to creating a multicultural training environment
We strive to create a training environment that promotes multicultural self-awareness, knowledge, skills, and experiences that enable our graduates to develop and share knowledge regarding multicultural issues as well as to provide culturally sensitive services to a variety of individuals in our society and abroad (see our Multicultural Aspirational Statement). The process of deepening one’s awareness and understanding of multicultural diversity is inherently challenging. Our program is a good match for students who wish to embrace this challenge.
We encourage you explore the other links under “Our Admissions Process” in the menu bar above to learn more about admissions, applying to Maryland, and financial considerations relevant to deciding whether to apply to our program.