What have your kids done with their psychology degree

[whathappenedtosummer23]

DD planning on studying psychology. She thinks she wants to go on to become a clinical psychologist but is also playing with the option of law and has some good work experience lined up.

Predicted grades should be at least 3A’s but she’ll go for a couple of unis with lower grades too. I want her to keep her options open so Bristol is aspiration choice, Liverpool achievable and Sussex back up lower grades.

whilst I appreciate that in many careers uni isn’t important I know in reality if she goes down the law route - realistic places would be level below magic circle / big west end firms, in practice it probably will be, so I don’t want her to close doors.

Do these options sound realistic?

I’m in HR and loads of my colleagues are psychology graduates. I also come across a few HR roles looking for occupational psychologists.

My friend took a Masters as well and ended up rehabilitating sex offenders. We didn’t talk about it.

I've met about 7 people who studied law and all of them complained about how mind numbingly boring it was and how much they regretted it.

One dropped out, 5 didn't want anything to do with law after completing their degrees and the other one worked for a law firm for a year, absolutely hated it, and changed career.

I think your dd has made the right decision!

@RestingPassportFace lack of investment - they have hundreds of applications at my local uni but about 15 spaces, it’s insane. Why they don’t do something about it now is mind boggling 🙄

Doing something about it costs money. That’s the issue isn’t it.

@MidnightMeltdown Law isn’t boring if you are academic and like law. It’s always useful for young people to understand you can convert to law after another academic degree. That takes one year. Lots of employers pay the fees too. A huge number of lawyers qualify this way. If they really wanted to be lawyers they would stick with it. You can also do a masters after law conversion too. I guess the high earners aren’t bored and find their niche!

Friend did a psychology masters and is a lecturer in social work.

The same is true of clinical psychology - lots of vacancies in post, huge mental health concerns across population requiring support, hundreds of applicants per doctorate space but they will only fund a very limited number of spaces.

Law in 'not made as entertainment' shocker. Law is damn hard and deals with some knotty as hell situations. In many circumstances you are dealing with someone's freedoms or the existence of their lifestyle, family or business.
If students find it boring or they are indifferent to it they are better off out of it as they would make appalling lawyers. So many go into it thinking it's going to easy to land a well paid job afterwards.

Same with psychology. So many go into it thinking it will be really interesting (which it is) but not realising the massive amount of stats and research methods that are involved. So many dropped out once they realised it wouldn't give them powers of mind reading (I shit you not)

For my legal job having psychology as my first degree has always helped massively. We deal with people often at their lowest ebb and most vulnerable; angry, scared, worried, so I often think it's the best psych job I could have landed.