Is (clinical) psychology a good career prospect?

Clinical Psychologist DClinPsy/DClinPsych - 14% of those that apply get on it.

PhD in Psychology (totally different thing and different outcome) - more readily achievable, although funded PhDs are rare. These days if you are so inclined to acquire around £80,000-100,000 of debt there are even student loans for PhDs.

It's a very difficult question to answer as I have no idea what your other aspirations are, personality, what your other so called careers you are comparing to clinical psychologist. If you failed to get on the DClinPsy you could still have jobs you find very interesting such as assistant psychologist, academia, Psychological Wellbeing Practictioner, CBT therapist etc. Mental health nurse. Other totally different things. (some require extra training too). You'll probably find yourself in them on the way to a DClinPsy anyway.

Also the 7 years (likely to be longer actually), it depends what you are comparing that to. If you're comparing it to medicine, dentistry, teaching, nursing, pharmacy, engineering each of those have their ups and downs. Most professions go on and on about the long training, but this is usually set in a time machine where they are comparing themselves to 'school leavers' rather than people who've been to university for 3 (or even 4 years which is more common than people think). I hang around with a load of professionals at work that often talk of their 'extra year', unfortunately some are blind to the fact that a lot of people that work with them have degrees and sometimes spent more time studying than they have. It's the modern world. Anything like Clinical Psychologist which is a protected title and highly regulated is going to get a premium in terms of pay/prestige vs everyone else in general employment.

A lot also depends what you think the 'typical' graduate does as your base comparison. So assuming we're talking 3 year degrees, what do you think Psychology students do after their degree, what do they earn? Psychology graduates and a lot out of uni earn way less than people think they do. A lot do jobs like work in charities, support worker, schools, some get on PWP training, office work, the usual graduate stuff like retail and barista. Is an extra 3 or 4 years such a big deal then? Or maybe it is, I don't know. Usually people get into more higher paid jobs 2-7 years after graduating. In Psychology it's very common now to have a vast amount of work/volunteering experience (compared to other graduates) and a master's degree. This will get you a lot of low paid jobs easily in the general employment market.

You said compared to other degrees you’ll have a lot of work experience compared to other graduates and that this will get you a lot of low paid jobs?

How? Won’t it stand you in good stead to potentially get well paid jobs too just not titled ‘clinical psychologist’?

What do you mean low paid?

What job do you do?

How? Won’t it stand you in good stead to potentially get well paid jobs too just not titled ‘clinical psychologist’?

If you have any really good ideas to get lots of Psychology graduates well paid jobs, then suggest away.

I think you are reading my post as more negative than it was - it isn't. If someone really wants to do a DClinPsy then why not go for it, they'll probably get another interesting job they may like along the way even if they fail. It's the whole conversation about comparisons with the city of London, medics and so on that's the difficult bit and everyone has different expectations. I think regret comes into things for a lot of people.

I’m asking to see if you have any valuable info/tips not to challenge you. I don’t want to do Clinical Psychology... I’m interested in other areas. I just want to highlight that you cannot right of a natural progression. Although people won’t be in high paid jobs at 25 they might end up climbing up the career ladder to a equally well paid job in the long term. If they carry on in a steady upward trajectory even if they do start on a low salary to begin with.