Information for high school students

Information for high school students considering psychology

Psychology is an area of interest to many young adults as they are seeking their career path. In order to effectively find information about careers in psychology, it is important to find the correct name or names for the area in which you are interested.

Talk with persons doing work in your area(s) of interest. Find out the formal name for persons doing what you want to do.

Here is a list of the divisions of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/division.html) Which would you be interested in joining?
For example, you might be interested in sex therapy or criminal profiling. Which areas would do these things? Most often it is clinical or counseling psychologists who work in these areas, depending on precisely what you mean by those terms. Unfortunately, the media often portray these areas quite inaccurately. Such specialization takes additional training. You start by being trained as a generalist and gradually add the special knowledge and skills for that topic.
If you don't see your interest in the list, talk with someone in a related field. It may be that what you want to do is not a part of psychology but one of the related areas.

It is common for people interested in psychology to have several areas of interest. It is also common for interests to vary over one's career. Consider your first interests as a starting point.
Perhaps you can take a career interest inventory from your school counselor.

Work through the remaining questions on this website and expect that they will raise some further questions. Again, talk with a career counselor or someone in a related area to get those questions answered. Good luck!

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Presented by the M.A. - Clinical Psychology (http://edtech.tph.wku.edu/~psych/areas/clinic/) and Ed. S. - School Psychology (http://edtech.tph.wku.edu/~psych/areas/school/) Graduate Programs of Western Kentucky University

Questions or comments about the graduate programs: contact psych@edtech.cebs.wku.edu
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