Have B.S. in Engineering, can I get M.S. in Psychology?

[Poison Ivy]

I was always interested in Psychology but I went into Engineering to satisfy my mother and since she's still not satisfied (who was I kidding?), I'm thinking about getting into Psychology. Can I get an M.S. in Psychology even if I already have a B.S. in Engineering? I'm sure it's not usual, since Engineering tends to be very difficult and much more difficult than a B.S. in Psychology. I'm asking because I'm having a difficult time wanting to find jobs in the field to which I am degreed in (I may have just made up that word, but it's English so it's okay, lol).

 

[kuruman]

To answer your question, there is absolutely no reason why you cannot get an M.S. in Psychology if you already have a B.S. in Engineering. However, you should understand that what counts is not how difficult your engineering degree has been but how much of a background you have in Psychology. Almost certainly any reasonably good grad program in psych will require you to have taken some "backbone" psych courses at the undergraduate level before admission. If they don't, stay away from them. I suggest that you inquire at the psych department of the school(s) you might be interested in. Perhaps they might recommend that you take some courses at a college near you before you apply. Perhaps you might be admitted to their institution (but not to their graduate program) so that you can take the requisite courses with them which gives them the opportunity to directly evaluate your potential as a graduate student.

As an aside, it is an incontrovertible fact of human existence that you live with yourself and not anyone else every single moment of your life. Whom does it make sense to satisfy first regarding far-reaching decisions such as your career?

 

[symbolipoint]

That is a big switch. Think thoroughly about what career you want from a Psychology degree. Big time and money investment to reach M.S. degree in Psychology, so you do not want this to be wasted.

 

[Choppy]

I think a lot depends on the specifics of the program.

Clinical psychology programs are quite competitive to get into with typical admissions being on the order of about 5% of the applicants (at least in Canadian programs - I'm assuming it's similar in the US). I think they tend not to require a specific BSc, so you would probably be qualified to apply to a number of programs, but I believe the admissions people tend to look for very specific traits in their candidates including:
- a solid background in psychology
- a background in biology and neuroscience
- some humanities courses that explore the diversity within the human population
- research experience in psychology
- exposure to clinical work (e.g. volunteer experience in peer counselling)
- very high GPA in all of this and high GRE scores

Typically engineering students are not likely to have this kind of background because the course load in engineering is quite demanding and any extra-curricular project-type work they do tends to be 'engineering' oriented. That's not to say that an engineering student couldn't do all of this. If you were a first year student who wanted to do this, it would be tough, but possible to build your education so that you would be competitive even through an engineering program. But in most cases I'm not sure that one could be "retroactively" competitive.

All of that said, there I suspect that non-clinical psych MSc degrees would be a little more flexible in who they would admit. The issue though is that if you want to get into the clinical counselling (i.e. those jobs where there just aren't enough psychologists to go around) they wouldn't be training you for this specifically. You'd get through the program after a couple of years and $x and likely not be any more qualified for professional positions than you are now.