<prompt> Human: Hi All,First and foremost, thank you to this sub! I love the information shared, and I feel like I have made great changes recently. My girlfriend is incredible, and she just got into graduate school! It was putting a lot of stress on her if she would get in or not. She did, and after looking at everything, she is going to be packing on about 80-90k in loans to pay for it. She also has 22k in loans already from undergrad. Her parents are supportive, acknowledging it is A LOT of money, but if she wants to do it, she should. She is frantically trying to find scholarships does that even really work?, and I just want to make sure she is making the best decision. I thought I would reach out to you all. She has a month to decideput a down payment for the program. How should we go about thiswhat are your thoughts? EDIT: Hello all, I showed her this, and she was internally also in a similar mindset. She has decided not to attend the school and not to inquire the 100k in debt. We know she wants to get into cousenling, and we are deciding on next steps. What do you think her next course of action should be? How can she get in a rewarding career in this line of work?TL;DR - Girlfriend just got accepted for a masters program, it costs 80k she already has 22k. Most people are saying yes around us. Assistant: What is the degree in? What is the expected income once she graduates?I have a professional graduate degree and a six-figure income with six-figures worth of debt. That amount of debt is crushing if you are bringing in a good chunk of change a month. If she is doing this to make 80k, tell her to RUN.Human: Hi! The degree is in Sports Psychology. She was a collegiate all star athlete, and she wants to help others that were like her at the collegiate level.  <response>: I actually know a little bit about this as a current PhD student in Clinical Psyc. The short answer is no. she shouldnt do this but Ill break down the why hereFirst and foremost there is no college of sports psychologists. This means it is not a protected term and therefore going to school explicitly and only for this subfield of psychology is limiting and unnecessary note: sport and exercise psychologist is a protected term in some countries but in order to get the term you need to be a Clinical Psychologist first. Its like being a counsellor. Anybody can put up a sign and advertise counselling services and many people do a variety of degrees that they believe qualify them for this role e.g., MA Counselling Psyc, MEd, MA child and family studies, MAMSc clinical psyc. At the end of the day it doesnt matter what school you go to because you can all hold the same title. This is the case for Sports PsychologistSecond point is that if you go to a program for sports psyc, you cant do anything else. Conversely, if you go to a program for clinical psyc, you can practice sports psyc as well as any other sub discipline youd like. Clinical Psychologist is a protected term and therefore there are very strict regulations that you must meet in order to be legally entitled to use that term. Once you are qualified to register as a psychologist you declare your competencies. These are the areas in which you are legally permitted to practice. For example if you only ever took courses relating to children and only ever did your practicainternship with children, you can declare competency in child psychology but not adult. Therefore what a psychologist can and cannot do boils down to what they do in grad school. As such, she can go to grad school in Clinical Psyc, do coursework, placements, and professional certifications in sports psyc and then declare competency in sport psychology.All of this leads to your big question: is it financially worth it. If she does a masters in sports psyc, she can call herself a sport psychologist which she could technically do today, since its not protected and be very happy about it. This would allow her to work in the private sector and do sport-related counselling and nothing else. The demand for this work is incredibly low so her client hours will be low and given that this is private sector, your income is entirely dependent on your billable hours.On the other hand, if she becomes a clinical psychologist she can declare competency in sport psychology as well as OTHER areas. This means that she can do as much sport psyc as she is able to do but when business is slow, she can see other types of patients to make sure that shes still making money. Furthermore, as a clinician, she can work at hospitals, community mental health centres, private practice, universities, or in academia if she does research. Finally Ill say a bit about the cost of education. 80-90k for a masters program is insane and unless its an MBA it is absolutely not worth it. Im going to guess that this is some sort of professional school that doesnt have an undergraduate population? Im also going to guess that the program isnt research intensive. This is important because academic institutions will pay you throughout your degree for teachinglecturingbeing a teaching assistant as well as provide you scholarships to fund your life and your research. On top of that there are many national, international, and regional graduate research grants that she could apply to. Grad school in Clinical psyc will pay you enough to live off of modestly but not a penny more. TL;DR a program in sports psyc provides very limited career options and demand is not high enough to justify an insanely expensive masters degree. Clinical psyc on the other hand gives tonnes of options, is cheaper, and would still allow her to practice sport psychology 