Career as Child Psychologist

[CrosswordAddict]

Help please and advice for my DD (13) who wants to be a Child Psychologist.
What GCSEs does she need and does she HAVE to take Physics as she hates it?
Then what A Levels?

You're best off looking at the university requirements on the web site of the one she's thinking about. I wouldn't have thought she needed Physics.

www.bps.org.uk/careers-education-training/careers-education-and-training

Above is the link for the careers section from the website of The British Psychological Society, the professional organisation for psychologists in the UK. You and she should explore it so you both understand more about what qualifications are needed. An undergraduate degree is often the first step towards a professional qualification (e.g. an Msc or Ph.D). All sorts of psychologists (clinical, educational...) can work with children. Universities do tend to like one science A-level but not nec. Physics!

esperanceThanks for that info. I know so little about Child Psychologists that I can't help DD much. Will sit with her today and look at the website you suggested.

I did psychology as a degree. Maths A level is useful as there was a lot of statistics. I did Maths, chemistry and biology A'levels. The biology was prbably useful too now I think about it.

Does your dd want to do clinical psychology working with children, educational psychology or something else? Clinical psychology is incredibly competitive, with a very uncertain career path. Getting the psychology degree is the first step, then getting assistant posts and getting onto the clinical course are much greater hurdles.

One of my best friends is a child psychologist - and it looked like damn hard work getting there! The clinical posts, as CAE has said, were particularly tough to get. It took my friend 3 years (with 2.1. in Psychology from Russell Group uni) to get one.

I think there's quite a cross over between psychology requirements and medicine so maybe look at those. Sorry not a lot of help as I can't answer the Physics question.

I think that is some ways doing child psychiatry is a more predictable path that child psychology. Not the same thing obviousy but some similarities in the kind of work done. It is much much harder to get into medicine than to get into psychology, but once you have done that, if child psychiatry is your dream then I think you would have a reasonable chance of getting there. I'm not sure what the stats are for the proportion of people who would like to do clinical psychology managing to become clinical psychologists, but I suspect it is pretty low.