School Psychology: Combined Master of Arts and
Specialist in School Psychology Degree
Program Overview
Department of Psychology
Program Director: Dr. Pamela Kidder-Ashley, 828-262-2209; ashleypk@appstate.edu
Location of instruction: On campus
http://www.psych.appstate.edu/gradprograms.html
The School Psychology program has been approved by NCATE/NASP since 1991. The program is multidisciplinary and is designed to prepare graduates who are able to use their knowledge in the areas of psychology, education, and counseling to address the needs of children and adolescents in schools. Students are trained to provide comprehensive school psychological services, including psycho-educational assessment and intervention planning, consultation and problem solving, in-service education, individual and group counseling, program development and evaluation, and applied research.
Program Highlights
- Over the past 10 years, the employment rate for graduates seeking jobs as school psychologists has been 100%.
- The program graduates who have applied to doctoral programs in the past three years have been accepted for admission.
- If you are entering with a Bachelor’s degree (or a graduate degree in a field other than Psychology), you can expect to complete 72 credit hours within 3 years of full-time study to obtain both the Master of Arts in Psychology (MA) and the Specialist in School Psychology (SSP) degrees. The third year and final 12 credit hours comprise a full-time internship in a public school setting that is chosen by the student with guidance from the program faculty.
- Occasionally, students entering with a Master’s degree in Psychology or another closely related field (e.g., Counseling), and they must complete a minimum of 42 credit hours that include one year of full-time, on-campus course work plus the required internship, leading only to the Specialist degree.
- Students in both the MA/SSP and SSP-only tracks are required to complete successfully the program’s written comprehensive exams and the Praxis II School Psychologist Test, a national certification exam.
- Most first-year students are offered 10-hour graduate assistantships.
- Although students in our program can choose between two tracks --thesis and non-thesis--all students are engaged in research. Students in the non-thesis track complete an applied research project during the internship.
- Faculty research interests can be reviewed at this site: http://www.psych.appstate.edu/faculty.html
- Admission to our program is competitive, as we typically admit just 8 students each fall and select them from among 40 to 50 applicants.
- For information on what we look for when reviewing applications and how to prepare for graduate study in school psychology, please refer to our FAQs: http://www.psych.appstate.edu/gradprograms/school/faqs.html
Application Essentials
Required Entrance Exam: GRE (score must be no more than 5 years old)
Required Number of References to specify in the on-line form: 3
Supplemental Information: Resume (Required upload for application submission); two page personal statement that describes the applicant’s academic and professional goals and that reflects a good understanding of the field of school psychology and of the applicant’s “match” with the field and awareness of why ASU’s program is a good fit (upload on the Additional Information page in the on-line application).
Deadlines for Application. A program not open for a particular term will be marked with an "x." If the program has early screening dates, those dates are listed in parentheses. Applications that are not complete by the early screening date risk denial of admission due to no seats available. Increased enrollment may lead to a term being closed for new applications.
- Spring: x
- Summer Session 1: x
- Summer Session 2: x
- Fall: 3/15 (2/15)
Basic Conditions for Consideration of Admission:
Meeting or exceeding the conditions below does NOT guarantee admission. All applications for a given entry term will be weighed based upon the number of seats available and the quality of the complete application packages. With special permission from the Graduate School, a program may admit a limited number of students with exceptional circumstances who do not meet the graduate school minimums.
Graduate School: 3.0 GPA in the last earned degree and official scores from the appropriate admission test(s), OR 2.5 GPA in the last earned degree and official scores at the 25th percentile level from the appropriate admission test(s).
Admission to School Psychology: Both qualitative and quantitative aspects of applications are reviewed in comparison to the current applicant pool.
