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How to Become a Counselor

Posted on June 14, 2021 by

Becoming a advisor typically requires a master's degree and some supervised post-graduate experience in the field before earning a country license. At that place are many different types of counseling and the level of education and licensure required for each varies from state to land.

A career in counseling is a terrific way to achieve that magic combination of both task satisfaction while giving back to your community.

Figuring out how to become a licensed counselor isn't always piece of cake. Unlike states don't define counseling requirements in the same mode, and sometimes don't even telephone call identical types of jobs by the same title.

On top of that, counseling is a very broad profession. Counselors have dozens of dissimilar areas they tin can practice in, but one affair they all have in common is that they are working to aid people.

Counseling is the work that's taking identify in group sessions in jail cells as counselors help prisoners place how their lives led them in that location and how to brand amends with their victims… and at the end of a long, ragged crying session in a private office as a woman deals with the grief of her father's passing… and when a schoolhouse counselor helps the trouble child in class figure out what to do with their life.

It's all counseling. It's all of import.

Then maybe the outset thing you lot have to practice to become a counselor is to await into yourself and observe the kindness, compassion, understanding, and proficient will that it takes to dive into the nearly difficult moments in people's lives and make a difference.

If those are the qualities and the kind of motivations you have in your centre, then read on to observe out how to become a counselor.

Becoming A Counselor is a Dream Job In Homo Services
What Are The Unlike Kinds of Counselors?
What Are The Half-dozen Requirements To Be a Advisor?

Becoming A Counselor is a Dream Task In Human Services

Counselors accept some of the best jobs in the entire human services sector. In fact, they have some of the best jobs in the United states, catamenia, co-ordinate to U.S. News & World Written report. For their 2021 list of the Best Jobs in the country, substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors come in at number 16… and number 1 for Best Social Services Job. Mental health counselors come in 7^th on the All-time Social Services Chore list.

Counselors take two spots in the pinnacle x listing of the Best Social Services Jobs in the The states according to U.S. News & World Report.

Why is becoming a counselor such a great option? In that location are a lot of reasons:

Job Satisfaction – Believe it or not, there are scientific studies that acquaintance compassionate behavior with personal happiness. People who assist people get a boost to their own well-existence. When your entire job is about helping people out every day, yous can imagine it brings in quite an attitude heave! On elevation of that, you're getting paid to practise it!
Independence – LPCs tin piece of work in clinics, hospitals, or for social services agencies like other human services workers, just they are more likely to hang out their own shingle and operate independently. Other than outpatient intendance centers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the top employing industry for counselors is individual and family services. It'south very common to run your own office in that industry. That brings the satisfaction of beingness your own boss and the flexibility to set your own hours, pick your own clients, choose your ain vacations. Put information technology all together, and that is the freedom to be satisfied with your task!
Easier Educational Path – Make no mistake, getting a master's degree isn't a piece of cake. And you will demand ane in order to become an LPC. Just it'southward withal non at the same level, either in terms of financial or time commitment, as earning the doctorate yous would demand in order to practice as a psychiatrist. Withal LPCs see many of the same types of patients and treat the aforementioned kinds of weather every bit psychiatrists. That makes counseling a relatively inexpensive and rapid path into meaningful human services work.
The Correct Specializations For Anyone – Counseling comes with a ton of specialization options. Everything from gambling addictions to autism treatment to couple's therapy. That opens upwardly the door for almost anyone to find exactly the niche they volition love in counseling. Compare that to union and family therapy, where you had meliorate enjoy working with couples and families. There's no opportunity to shift your practice if yous go bored or dissatisfied as an MFT. Counselors, on the other hand, can try out dozens of specialties until they observe the right fit.
Less Bureaucracy – Don't get usa incorrect, LPCs are definitely covered by laws and regulations. And you lot may decide to accept insurance as payments, which opens y'all upward to a lot of ruby tape when it comes to billing and treatment. But still, it'due south nothing close to what you would come across if you were, instead, a social worker. You lot can operate exterior the hierarchy, focusing on one-on-one interactions with your clients. You can pursue treatment plans without checking boxes or following some protocol coming out of the land capitol.

Becoming a advisor isn't for everyone, despite all the benefits. You have to have the kind of skills, drive, and compassion to make it as an independent operator with some very trouble patients. But with the correct attitude and grooming, y'all can go a long mode as a counselor.

What Are The Different Kinds of Counselors?

The reply to that question is bigger and more circuitous than you might think. Counseling is a big tent, and there are all unlike kinds of counselors. Some fall clearly into the range of licensed professionals and others be at the margins, depending on the office and the land where they practice.

The National Board for Certified Counselors lists more 40 unlike areas of practise in the field of counseling, everything from sex therapy to school counseling.

You can definitely zoom in on any of those areas to become a respected practiced in one specialty, or you can get a generalist, enjoying the diversity that comes with whatsoever new patients walk in the door.

CACREP, the specialty accreditation agency that certifies master's programs in the field, bundles all those different specializations into viii groups. Those serve equally a useful way to think about the different kinds of counseling that you might want to pursue, fifty-fifty if you lot eventually drill down to an even more specific specialization.

Habit Counseling – Habit counseling deals with the diagnosis and handling of both substance abuse and behavioral and procedure addictions, such as gambling and sex addiction. Their exercise involves assessment and testing for addictions likewise as the techniques required to intervene and treat addicts and abusers. This area of exercise can exist in both individual and group settings and often involves patients who are initially unwilling or resistant to treatment. It can likewise deal with the negative outcomes of habit and assist families and friends of addicts.
Career Counseling – Career counselors bargain with problems affecting the happiness and livelihood of clients in the workforce. They may piece of work with groups or individuals, and can be independent or employed by corporations or authorities. They apply a deep understanding of the needs of modern employers and the psychology and skills of workers to come up up with counseling and recommendations that aid people either getting into jobs they are better suited for, or adapting to their current positions.
Clinical Mental Health Counseling – Mental wellness counseling is the meat and potatoes work of psychological treatment in individuals. A wide variety of atmospheric condition can be treated, which means that clinical mental health counselors have to larn a broad set up of diagnostic and evaluation procedures. They draw from the same toolbox every bit psychologists in many cases, with behavioral and psychosocial interventions they can utilize to treat unlike atmospheric condition. They also take a strong understanding of social and neurological bases of abnormal psychological conditions. Some pharmacological knowledge is also common for conditions that can be treated past medication.
Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling – Rehabilitation counselors work toward the medical end of the spectrum, with both very astringent addiction cases and with patients who are recuperating from other traumas or diseases that also involve mental wellness care. That means they have a greater familiarity with the healthcare arrangement and medical treatments along with clinical mental wellness counseling, and are practiced at working in interdisciplinary care teams. They as well provide support to patients going through difficult physical rehabilitation efforts, and in adapting to long-term disabilities.
College Counseling and Student Affairs – College counselors largely work with college kids. That means edifice a stiff agreement of lifecycle psychology in early post-boyhood and specializing in the kinds of issues of addiction, attachment, and development that come forth with the college experience. Educatee diplomacy counselors work closely with higher administrators and students to create a safe, collaborative learning environment for all students.
Matrimony, Couple, and Family unit Counseling – Union and family counseling professionals handle the particularly difficult instance of resolving problems within family groups or between couples. That means that on top of a good understanding of the usual clinical mental health issues that can pop up in any private, they also need to be experts in the sociology and psychology of family groups. This means strong assessment and communication skills are needed. Lifecycle psychology is too of import in this type of counseling, as well as agreement of career and socioeconomic influences that often put stress on relationships.
School Counseling – School counseling is all nigh the kids. Schoolhouse counselors have to master a range of developmental psychology stages in the lifecycle, working with children in preschool through 12^th They are expected to be master detectives and analysts, able to sort through the complex influences on children and spot adventure factors and developmental issues early on. They have important roles to play with students who take mandatory Individual Education Plans (IEPs), working with not only those students and their families to implement the interdisciplinary care program, but too assisting teachers and schoolhouse staff in meeting the requirements.
Rehabilitation Counseling – Rehabilitation counselors piece of work primarily with patients who accept severe or long-term disabilities. Those can be either medical or developmental, just in every instance need assistance with mental adjustments, vocational rehabilitation, and independent living instruction. These counselors are experts in evaluating functional capacity and adapting living and working arrangements to the capabilities their clients can master.

In that location is some overlap between these roles. Depending on the state where you work, some of them may operate every bit LPCs while others may not require a license or may accept a divide license they work under with different requirements, such every bit licensed school counselors.

What Are The Half dozen Requirements To Exist a Advisor?

Since the chore is so amazing, yous might call up the steps for how to exist a counselor would exist long and complicated. But really, in that location are only virtually six different counseling requirements that you demand to fulfill in betwixt high school graduation and getting a full-fledged job in counseling.

They are not all easy. You lot don't desire counselors who merely cakewalk through some kind of cakewalk on the way to dealing with major life traumas their clients have suffered. Y'all'll definitely work hard to become through the educational activity and qualifications required for condign a counselor. But it all starts with earning a caste in mental health counseling or a related area. The balance of the steps are all straightforward and you can achieve them in a breakneck seven years or and then with a trivial hustle.

Stride 1: Earn a Bachelor's Degree in Counseling or a Related Field

Footstep 2: Earn a Master'south Caste in Counseling

Pace three: Build Practical Experience Counseling Patients

Step four: Earn Your Counseling License

Step 5: Go a Job as a Advisor

Footstep 6: Maintain Your License And Earn a Professional Certification

Step 1: Earn a Available's Degree in Counseling or a Related Field

The path to becoming a advisor runs first through four years at a reputable college earning a available'due south degree.

You take a lot of leeway in the major you lot pick for that degree, though. According to ACA, whatsoever liberal arts degree volition work as a prerequisite for a counseling career. Most counselors start off with something more focused, however. It'south perfectly fine to stick with a degree in counseling, but many excellent counselors also get started in the field with degrees in:

Psychology
Human Services
Social Work
Sociology
Behavioral Wellness

What is more important are the subjects you volition study as part of earning that degree. You desire to lay a solid foundation in knowledge and skills for the master's degree that you will be pursuing next. That means coursework in subjects like:

Psychology
Sociology
Communications
Homo physiology and lifespan evolution
Neurodevelopment and neuropsychology
Cultural studies

You have the opportunity to branch out and explore at the bachelor's level so don't exist afraid to take advantage of it. While master'southward programs that qualify you lot for an LPC license autumn into a narrow range, yous tin utilise your bachelor's experience to pick up more expertise in an surface area that interests you, whether that is geriatric studies or education. Electives can round out the type of preparation you lot will need to go into a master'due south program in counseling.

Paying For an Instruction in Counseling

For both your 4-year bachelor's degree and the two-year master'southward programme that nosotros'll talk near in Step 2, yous can look to pay a hefty price for the education y'all'll become.

According to the National Middle for Education Statistics (NCES), a two-twelvemonth primary's degree price an average of nearly $39,000, while a four-twelvemonth bachelor's degree averaged most $112,500 in 2019.

Even though that includes tuition, room & board, and other fees, information technology's mode more than almost families tin can easily come up with out-of-pocket to pay for schoolhouse.

That means looking for scholarships and loans for most students. Also according to NCES, the average showtime-time, full-time undergraduate pupil in 2018-2019 racked up an average of $7,300 in loans for each year of their plan.

Scholarship Funding for Becoming a Advisor

Scholarships are a better source for tuition funding, since they do not take to exist paid back. Federal Pell Grants and college-specific scholarship funds are a good bet for counseling students, but there are also some counseling-specific scholarships that you might apply for.

National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation – The foundation supported by the national-level certification board for counseling has a wide variety of scholarships open up for future counselors, ranging from those aimed at military students to those in minorities or from rural areas.
American Addiction Centers – AAC awards $10,000 in scholarship grants each year to students in a broad variety of programs, including counseling, that appoint in behavioral health treatment in addiction and co-occurring disorders.
American Psychological Foundation – Not anybody thinks of the APA, the American Psychological Association, when it comes to LPCs, since licensed psychologists are really in a different field. But scholarships offered by the APF, such as the Queen-Nellie Evans Scholarship, specify simply that applicants be pursuing graduate studies for a career in academia or clinical service delivery. That item scholarship is aimed at minority students with a demonstrated commitment to serving marginalized communities, worth $four,000 annually, but many others exist also.

Scholarships like the Queen-Nellie Evans are common, in that the qualifications are oft some combination of your personal groundwork and your professional goals. That opens up an opportunity for back up for almost any pupil if you play your cards right.

Student Loans Tin can Come up With Forgiveness For Counselors

Although scholarships are a smashing way to pay for your tuition and expenses, information technology is very rare to cover all your costs with grants. Almost every counseling pupil will end up with some corporeality of loans to become through college.

Even though these are usually depression-involvement loans with very lenient repayment schedules, they can put a existent damper on your income level for decades after graduation. But you have an ace up your sleeve as a future counseling professional. You may be eligible for some land and national loan forgiveness programs designed to boost participation in healthcare services.

The federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan is 1 of the biggest of these. Y'all tin qualify for this after making at to the lowest degree 120 payments against your outstanding federal loans, if you also piece of work for a qualifying federal, land, local, or tribal government, or a not-profit arrangement full-time.

At that place is also the National Health Service Corps. This program has a number of dissimilar areas of eligibility, and at least two of them are right in line with roles that professional counselors might take on:

Substance Use Disorder Workforce – If y'all piece of work at a SUD treatment facility in areas that qualify for Health Professional Shortages, you can apply for loan forgiveness.
Rural Customs – If you lot work in NHSC-canonical outpatient service programs in rural communities, you can authorize to have outstanding loan balances forgiven.

Step 2: Earn a Master's Degree in Counseling

That main'southward caste is your next step on the path to condign a counselor, and it's probably the about important step of all. This is where your professional skills volition exist fully shaped and developed. You'll get all the core knowledge you need to practice and care for patients. And it serves as an important part of your qualifications for licensure.

The American Counseling Clan (ACA) lists 8 different subjects that a primary'southward caste in counseling may exist offered in to qualify you as a professional counselor:

Addiction Counseling
Career Counseling
Clinical Mental Wellness or Community Agency Counseling
Marriage, Couple, and Family unit Counseling
School Counseling
Educatee Affairs and College Counseling
Gerontological Counseling
Advisor Education & Supervision

For the purpose of getting a license, though, all that is necessary is that the program be CACREP-accredited.

Just y'all aren't just checking a box to become a license at this phase. Instead, yous want to expect for the program that all-time fits your professional person goals and career plans. That means looking for programs that offering concentrations that build out your knowledge in those areas, and where professors and research programs are breaking new basis in your called field.

Although the concentration you choose tin add special training, experience, and electives to your chief'due south studies, for any CACREP-accredited program, yous'll also encompass a specific ready of viii common core areas of instruction:

Professional person Counseling Orientation and Ethical Exercise – You go an overview of the history and theory of counseling too as the legislation and regulations that accept been put in place for the profession. The telescopic of do and lawmaking of ethics are laid out. Courses also cover the professional credentialing process for licensed professional counselors.
Social and Cultural Diversity – These classes present the social, economical, and environmental forces that grade barriers in rehabilitation. Instructors discuss cultural competency and offer counseling services in multicultural environments. The latest developments in cultural and individual variety, including gender, sexual orientation, and aging issues are covered.
Human Growth and Development – Students study psychosocial development at all ages of the lifespan, together with its impact on mental health and well-bing. Yous'll as well learn about theories of personality development and human sexuality.
Career Evolution – Of import to rehabilitation counseling, these classes will teach career development and decision making models for career planning. The relationship between work and family life, including multicultural issues, is explored, and you acquire career counseling techniques and planning and assessment models.
Counseling and Helping Relationships – This coursework gets into the core of clinical mental health counseling. Everything from suicide prevention strategies to crisis intervention and trauma counseling are covered. You'll expect at counseling processes and theory for both in-person and remote counseling work.
Group Counseling and Group Work – Not all counselors will work in grouping settings, merely all counselors in CACREP programs are taught the theory and dynamics of group counseling and grouping procedure evolution. You lot'll learn how to lead group therapy and how to accept into consideration cultural and other factors in grouping formation and discussion.
Assessment and Testing – These courses embrace methods for preparing for and conducting both initial assessments and measuring progress over the course of therapy. You'll study the statistical concepts behind standardized testing and larn subjective assessment models. Environmental, career, social, and personal factors that impact client wellness and well-existence are all important takeaways from these classes.
Research and Program Evaluation – Although counseling is not as research-heavy every bit psychology, every CACREP-accredited plan does include coursework that teaches you how to identify evidence-based practices, and the methods that are behind them. You'll get a bones overview of research design and the quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods that go into the studies that power counseling concepts today.

CACREP too requires a specific combination of practicum and internship hours to give you 18-carat field experience as role of your master'south education. Every student has to consummate 100 clock hours of practicum, with at least 40 hours of straight patient contact, all while supervised by experienced faculty. Following that, they are required to go through 500 hours of supervised counseling internship in areas relevant to their specialization, with 240 hours of direct service experience.

Equally noted earlier, CACREP also lays downward specific curriculum markers for viii specializations within counseling primary's programs. These make sure that concentrations in those areas come up with the right kind of specialized coursework to qualify you for practice in those areas correct out of school.

What is CACREP and Why is information technology So Important For Becoming a Counselor?

CACREP is the Quango for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Programs, a non-profit organisation established in 1981 to develop national standards for counseling education programs.

Y'all might have already figured this out past reading the name, only CACREP is a specialty accreditor. That ways they only and entirely deal with evaluating counseling programs. Through close ties to the customs and a focus on practical standards, that makes the system a get-to resource for both counseling education programs and for state licensing boards to rely on. Even NBCC, the National Board for Certified Counselors, leans heavily on CACREP's core standards.

CACREP only accredits main's and above level programs. In that location are 883 accredited programs as of 2021, although that includes multiple programs for some schools… for case, a schoolhouse counseling degree and a clinical counseling degree, or a primary's and a doctoral program.

What is MPCAC and Does Information technology Meet Counseling Requirements?

A newer specialty accreditor came onto the scene in the counseling world in the early 2000s. That's MPCAC, the Masters in Psychology and Counseling Accreditation Council.

Like CACREP, it but accredits master's and higher level programs, and information technology has a like set of program standards in play. But MPCAC was created to encompass what was viewed as a gap in accreditation coverage in the field of counseling psychology. Because CACREP but accredits counseling programs, and psychology programs are covered by a different specialty accreditor, the American Psychological Association (APA), counseling psychology programs fell into a kind of a gap.

MPCAC intends to fill up that gap, and offering the kind of accreditation required past state licensing boards fifty-fifty for time to come counselors who feel that a master's in psychology would better set up them for their career path.

MPCAC doesn't have the widespread recognition among state licensing boards that CACREP has, however. That can brand earning a license with a MPCAC-accredited degree involve a lot more hoop-jumping. Most states practise have alternating routes to licensure for non-CACREP-accredited programs, simply the burden of proof shifts on to y'all for demonstrating that you got an adequate teaching. Until MPCAC becomes more than widely recognized, that makes it a more complicated choice than CACREP for picking your master'due south programme.

Should Y'all Earn a Doctorate in Counseling?

Counseling degrees don't cease at the master's level. Like other mental healthcare professions, you tin go on to earn a doctorate, or PhD, in counseling. In fact, as you study for your master's degree in the field, you are probably being taught by professors who agree doctoral qualifications in counseling or related fields.

Dissimilar psychology, where a doctorate is a requirement for licensure to practice in clinical therapy, in counseling there's no articulate career benefit to such a high-level degree. With an additional six or 7 years of report (and tuition payments!) it's a existent commitment if you decide to pursue it.

The kind of PhDs that yous will observe offered in counseling tend to reverberate that reality. They are aimed primarily at research and academic counseling positions. You won't learn a nifty deal more than virtually clinical counseling by earning 1. On the other hand, you will position yourself for piece of work in counseling pedagogy or in high-level inquiry if that's your goal.

Step 3: Build Practical Experience Counseling Patients

Counseling is an intensively face-to-face up profession. Your success in the field will be determined by your ability to take all that book learning you got in schoolhouse and to use it in person with existent people, with all the ups and downs that come with real-world counseling environments.

That'southward non a skill you can acquire in a classroom. To meet both professional standards and state licensure counseling requirements, you're going to need to go some hands-on experience delivering legit counseling services to actual clients.

Practicum and Internship Placements Offer a Start Taste of Condign a Counselor

Some of that will come as a part of your master'south degree program. CACREP requires over 700 hours of supervised field feel including both practicum and internship placements; many schools build more than that into their own curriculum requirements.

A practicum is an actual higher course that includes on-site, supervised experience and observation equally a part of the curriculum. Y'all'll exist overseen past an teacher or qualified clinician at the practicum site.

An internship is a petty more than intensive and a petty more flexible. Your involvement will be more contained, treating patients directly at a working clinic. It's more like a job placement with a longer term and more responsibilities. Y'all'll go on to exist overseen past a qualified supervisor, often role of the regular staff at the clinic. You're expected to first to develop your own clinical assessment skills and lead off with handling plans, subject field to review.

Your counseling practicum will probably be your outset direct feel working with patients. Although you lot will have plenty of volume learning about counseling processes past the fourth dimension you start your practicum, you lot'll quickly detect that the earth looks a lot different from inside the counselor's office than it does from the classroom. Edifice an emotional rapport with clients is something a textbook may talk almost, just yous won't understand it until y'all really have to practice it.

Because you are working with real clients, not everything will go according to program. And although you will be supervised by expert counselors and instructors, you are responsible for delivering real services. Y'all may need to larn liability coverage prior to starting. It's a serious business.

Only information technology is office of the process of learning your business, the business organization of counseling. Most schools rotate yous through different types of practicum placements, so you will get a gustatory modality of grouping counseling, clinical therapy, career counseling, and possibly even student counseling. Information technology both builds your feel and helps you make up one's mind where you lot desire to focus your future studies.

Post-Graduate Experience Builds Expertise in Counseling Requirements

After you earn your master'southward degree is when the field experience actually starts. Nearly states require three,000 hours or more than of supervised post-graduate feel as a counselor before they will give you a full license. You lot may be required to get a provisional license while you are obtaining this experience, depending on the state.

These hours are even so considered supervised hours, and you will accept to have a qualified supervisor who is already licensed to oversee you. Some states accept a minimum number of hours that yous are required to spend with your supervisor as well as client contact hours. There may too exist fourth dimension limits involved—for instance, NBCC requires your postal service-graduate experience to have been earned in the past 24 months in lodge to apply it to their counselor certification.

Step 4: Earn Your Counseling License

A license may or may non exist required for the kind of counseling exercise you lot plan to work in. Information technology's going to depend entirely on the land where you are located.

One matter that is just about universally true is that all states license school counselors, and all states require a license for counselors who are engaged in offer clinical services. That means if you desire to engage in mental health care counseling, you lot're going to demand a license.

What's in A Name? When It Comes To How to Become a Licensed Counselor, A Lot!

We've been using the shorthand of LPC, or Licensed Professional Counselor, throughout this folio to talk about licensed counseling jobs in every land. Merely not every state actually calls their licensed counselors LPCs!

Counseling requirements for licensure are very similar in all 50 states, but the actual titles that are used are not. Depending on the state where you programme on becoming a advisor, y'all might find yourself chosen:

Licensed Mental Health Counselor – LMHC
Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor – LCPC
Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor – LPCC
Licensed Clinical Health Mental Advisor – LCMHC
Licensed Professional Advisor – Mental Health – LPC-MH

Don't worry besides much about the label. Although there are a scattering of states that offering both an LPC and one of these other licenses, the differences are usually self-explanatory. For example, in states that offering simply an LPC, the LPC about always covers clinical counseling. But in states that have an LPC and an LPCC, the LPC will cover non-clinical counseling roles and yous'll need to step up to the LPCC in order to do clinical counseling

In every case, it always pays to check closely with your state licensing board before you kickoff off on your education and training to make sure the steps you plan to follow volition authorize you for the license that you want to earn.

Although they take a lot of different things that they call their licenses, most states accept a pretty similar process for earning them. If you made it through steps i to three, you've already checked most of those boxes:

Earn a master'southward degree in counseling from an accredited counseling program
Fulfill around 3,000 hours of supervised post-master's clinical experience
Be trained and experienced in the professional code of ideals for counselors

What'due south left in coming together counseling requirements for a land license? Passing the test!

Passing the Required Counselor Licensing Examination For Your Field

In that location are four tests that well-nigh states have for licensed professional counselor applications. Fifty-fifty states that don't utilise these tests specifically unremarkably offer a state-specific variant that is closely based on one or the other.

National Advisor Examination (NCE) – Offered by NBCC, this is a 200 question, multiple pick exam covering nine content areas that roughly stand for to the CACREP common core requirements. The questions are built around a national chore assay reflecting real-earth requirements in counseling practice.
National Clinical Mental Health Counseling Exam (NCMHCE) – Also offered by NBCC, this test is aimed more toward validating clinical practice experience, with additional emphasis on assessment, intervention skills, and handling planning. The format is also quite different, consisting of between 12 and 14 case studies designed to replicate the real piece of work of a clinical mental health counselor.
Certified Rehabilitation Counselor Test (CRCE) – The Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification (CRCC) fills a like part to the NBCC, but with respect to rehabilitation counseling. The CRCE tests 12 knowledge domains over 175 multiple-option questions to be completed in three and a half hours. The exam also closely mirrors CACREP requirements, just with a focus on rehabilitation counseling applications.
Professional person School Advisor – This Praxis exam, offered by the Educational Testing Service, is the primary test used for school counselor licenses. Yous'll discover many land or region-specific variants, however. The Praxis version is 120 selected response questions given over two hours, designed to follow the American School Counselor Association's National Model, with four main components focused on the foundations of the profession, delivery of service, management, and accountability.

The tests are all computer-based, and delivered nationally through either Prometric or Pearson VUE testing centers. You'll have to pay a fee to have the tests themselves, whether you laissez passer or fail. The toll is too divide from the actual cost of licensing that you will pay to the country.

File Your Awarding and Have Care of Paperwork

Of grade, any fourth dimension y'all are dealing with a licensing lath, you're going to be dealing with paperwork. Although you accept gotten all the hard requirements to exist a counselor out of the style by this stage, you still take to get the forms filled out and spring through a few more hoops before the job is done.

That ordinarily means filling out a formal application and filing it, with associated fees. In most cases, yous will also take to submit to and pass a criminal background check, which will also cost you some money.

Some states will require that you submit three or more than professional person references as a role of your application. In some cases, you may be required to demonstrate English language language proficiency, provide proof of citizenship, or laissez passer another curt exam on country-level regulations for counselors. In at to the lowest degree one state, you'll have to swear y'all've never killed anyone.

These little bureaucratic details vary from state to state, just all states have them, and then it pays to check with guides published by your state licensing board before you get started.

Step 5: Become a Job as a Counselor

This might be the easiest step in the whole list. Yous're going to have no problem at all finding a job as a counselor just about anywhere in the country.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells the story: the job outlook for Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors is estimated to grow past a skyrocketing 25 per centum between 2019 and 2029, much faster than the average rate of growth. Rehabilitation counselors will jump past 10 percent over the same menses, while school and career counselors volition increase by about eight percent.

The height industries hiring for these positions are:

Outpatient Care Centers
Private and Family Services
Residential Intellectual and Developmental Disability, Mental Wellness, and Substance Abuse Facilities
Vocational Rehabilitation Services
Land and Local Governments

Of grade, that private and family services sector includes a lot of jobs that aren't actually beingness hired out. Information technology includes many sole proprietorships, individual counselors who accept decided to open up up their own shop and run their own bear witness. That'due south an option for you, besides, even if you are a newly minted LPC.

Bacon Expectations for Counselors

Counselors tin can earn a very solid living, but the bacon levels depend a lot on your specialization. BLS has the run-downwards:

Substance Corruption, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health – $47,660
Rehabilitation Counselors – $37,530
School and Career Counselors – $58,120

Those are median values, however. In the acme ten percentage of counselors, the salary tin attain nearly $80,000 per yr, or almost $100,000 in school and career counseling.

Pay varies past manufacture, likewise. The median salaries in the highest paying industries for most counselors are:

Insurance carriers – $66,140
Solar day care services – $65,620
Land government – $55,800
Medical and surgical hospitals – $54,540

There's ane expanse of employment where the sky is the limit for counselors, just the risks can as well be large: self-employment.

For many licensed professional counselors, owning your own practise is living the dream. You are the dominate, you brand all the decisions about what clients to accept on, what to charge them, and how to care for them. You keep holiday when you lot want and set your own hours. There'southward a kind of job satisfaction that comes with that freedom, and there's also a real benefit to pocketing all the profits. Work hard enough and long enough, and you tin hit the big time.

But being your ain dominate isn't for the meek. Yous also run all the risks that any business possessor runs. You lot volition negotiate your part charter; you volition file the land and city licensing paperwork; you're on the hook for business taxes at every level of government. That free vacation yous decided to take? It's not actually gratis… you don't go paid if y'all're not working.

And then there are merchandise-offs involved in being a self-employed counselor, but many contained counselors would never go back to a regular ix to five!

Step half-dozen: Maintain Your License And Earn a Professional Certification

Every year or 2, you'll be required to cough up another couple hundred dollars and renew your license in order to keep it current. Most states are moving to online renewal systems, which makes this procedure a lot more painless than it used to exist.

But y'all nonetheless have to plan ahead to maintain your license, considering information technology takes more than just filling out some forms and cutting a check.

Psychotherapy and other counseling fields aren't set up in rock. Every day, new research is existence conducted that leads to new diagnostic ideas and new treatments. You can't just earn your license and residue on your laurels. You lot're going to take to proceed up-to-date to keep up your license.

Keeping your counseling license ways putting in the hours to encounter continuing education requirements established by state licensing boards.

Continuing Education Hours Keep Counselors Current

Each state has its ain requirements for continuing didactics (CE) in order to maintain a counselor'south license. Those may encompass:

Canonical sources for continuing educational activity hours
Types of activities that may be counted equally continuing education
Specific topics that must exist covered during each CE period
Whether or not, or how many hours of, CE can exist completed online
Whether or not CE hours can exist carried over into the next period, if yous have more than than are required

Nigh states require around twenty total hours of CE per year to renew an LPC. Some areas of pedagogy that are commonly required are ethics or social or cultural competency.

States also often take a list of approved vendors whose courses will count. The American Counseling Clan is on most of those lists, and if y'all happen to exist a fellow member, you can accept upwardly to 12 costless courses per year online.

It's too worth checking the NBCC list of approved CE providers, since if y'all hold i of their Board certifications, you'll need to fulfill their requirements as well as those of your state licensing board.

Earning Professional Certification in Counseling

So what exactly is a professional certification in counseling? It'due south another way to upward your game after yous become a licensed advisor. A Board certification looks pretty nice hanging on the wall and is also a good thing to have on your resume when you are applying for high-paying, high-prestige counseling positions.

A certification is basically a way to stand out from the crowd. They are awarded by independent non-profit organizations that have strict standards that go over and higher up the usual licensing requirements to be a advisor. They permit potential employers or clients know that you lot aren't only any old counselor; y'all're amid the best in the field.

In that location are two major certifications y'all might pursue in counseling, depending on your particular area of practice:

National Certified Advisor
- Offered past NBCC
- Requires a master'southward or in a higher place program with completion of at least 48 semester hours in a CACREP-accredited plan or coming together specific content in 9 areas of counseling
- Must have a professional person endorsement from a colleague in the field
- Take at least 3000 hours of documented post-graduate clinical experience with the previous 24 months
- Pass the NCE or NCMHCE
- Comply with NBCC ethical standards
Certified Rehabilitation Counselor
- Offered by CRCC
- Requires a master'due south or in a higher place program accredited past CACREP or meeting certain educational content requirements
- Complete at to the lowest degree 600 clock hours in a rehabilitation counseling internship OR 12 months of supervised experience OR 24 months of other experience
- Pass the CRC examination

One time you have your NCC, you may as well be able to obtain a specialty certification depending on your surface area of practice. NBCC offers iii of these:

CCMHC – Certified Clinical Mental Wellness Counselor
MAC – Masters Addictions Counselor
NCSC – National Certified School Advisor

Similarly, CRCs are eligible to apply for the CVE (Certified Vocational Evaluation) specialist certification from CRCC.

Whether y'all decide to pursue a professional person certification or not, at this bespeak your career in counseling is entirely on rail. Over time, you lot'll continue to develop expertise and experience. You'll get the highs that come from watching damaged and depressed patients walk out the door with smiles and their heads held high. You will change lives every day.

That'southward what condign a counselor is really almost. And information technology's no wonder that people who pursue that career are some of the happiest in human services.

May 2020 Bureau of Labor Statistics salary and job growth figures for Substance Corruption, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors , Rehabilitation Counselors , and School and Career Counselors and Advisors represents national data, not school-specific data. Conditions in your area may vary.

Tuition data provided by College Scorecard and the National Eye for Education Statistics , services of the U.S. Section of Didactics, using data collected for the 2019 school year. NCES loan and scholarship data comes from an April 2017 study published past the Department of Education.

Data Accessed June 2021.