American School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University, San Francisco Bay Area

If you are thinking about a clinical psychology degree and would like to study in the San Francisco, you might consider the American School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Although the school is not in San Francisco itself, it is located in the East Bay city of Alameda. The American School of Professional Psychology is a component of the Argosy University System, an array of 28 for profit schools located throughout the United States. The San Francisco Bay school partners with community hospitals, clinics, mental health centers, schools and VA hospitals in the area to give students ample training opportunities, but psychology students are also able to train at the school’s Assessment and Intervention Clinic or at the Intensive Clinical Training Program. Both of these offer low cost therapy and assessment to the community, but treatments at the Clinical Training Program are performed by teams consisting of students and doctor/supervisors.

The goal of the programs is to develop “practitioner-scholars.” All instructors, according to the college website, are professors with practical psychology knowledge.

American School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University in the San Francisco Bay Area Accreditation Details

The school is accredited through the Senior College and Accrediting Commission of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

The PsyD program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association.

American School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University in the San Francisco Bay Area Application Requirements

Applicants to the Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology must submit a completed application form along with an application fee that is refundable in California. They must also submit a personal statement of their goals and a resume or career summary. They must have three completed student recommendation forms as well as the official transcripts from all post-secondary institutions they attended. Applicants to the PsyD program must also have a GPA of not less than 3.0 on a four-point scale and undergo an interview by faculty admissions committee members.

Tuition and Financial Aid

Tuition is figured through an online calculation tool. Students enter their age, marital status, income, whether they are dependents of someone or have dependents themselves, whether they intend to live on or off campus and other information.

For a student applying to either of the psychology programs, a single, 27-year-old male, with an annual income of $37,000, that tuition is calculated at $13,500, with room and board expenses estimated at $5,600 and other expenses at $3,700 for a base tuition of $22,916 for a year. The school applies certain cost-reductions to the figures before arriving at the figure, but the per-credit hour tuition is $731.

If you will need assistance paying for your education at the American School of professional Psychology, your first step in obtaining financial aid is completing the FAFSA form. Your search for assistance will be different for the psychology programs because they are graduate-level and many financial opportunities are offered only to undergraduate students. You cannot, for instance, receive a subsidized loan Your debt, as a graduate student, includes any loans you took out as an undergraduate that have not been repaid, and that amount is subject to a debt ceiling. The government may award you an unsubsidized loan which is at a low interest rate set by the Department of the Treasury and upon which payments are not due until after you graduate.

Scholarships are available, but on a more limited basis than for undergraduates. Employers often reimburse tuition for their employees as well. If you are applying for the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, you may qualify for an unsubsidized loan of up to $12,500 per year. Students in this program may also qualify for the Dean’s Scholarship which awards up to 25 percent of tuition.

You can research other grant and scholarship opportunities online. In addition, you may take out private student loans which will be offered at a lower rate than traditional loans and, like government student loans, will have a deferred payback.

Traditional and Online Counseling and Psychology Degree Programs

The American School of Professional Psychology offers only two traditional programs at its San Francisco area campus. One of these is the Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology. This degree is intended to be either a terminal degree or to lead to doctoral studies. Full-time students can complete the program in two years, and may not take longer than five years earning the degree. It consists of 51 credit hours, including required “Bases” courses in the science of psychology and Individual Courses in Assessment, Treatment and Professional Practicum.

The school also offers a PsyD program. The practicum begins in the second year and each year thereafter. You can earn the PsyD in Clinical Psychology in five to seven years of full-time study. The 98 credit hours of courses must be taken in sequence. Besides required courses, there are electives and a research course in addition to the course time allowed for completion of the dissertation.

Aside from those two programs offered at the Alameda campus, you can earn a psychology or counseling degree on line. There is a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling that is comprised of 45 credit hours of core classes, six hours of electives and nine of practicum. There is also a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology which has 24 credit hours of core classes and 12 of concentrations, including Assessment and Treatment, Homeland Security or Law Enforcement.

You can earn a 36-credit-hour Master of Arts in Industrial-Organizational Psychology online, a 30-credit hour Master in Sports and leisure Psychology or a Bachelor of Science in Psychology online. Other online offerings are in counseling. You can earn an Ed.D. in Counseling Psychology which contains 27 credit hours in core classes, nine each in electives and concentration, 12 in research and the rest in your dissertation and internship. There is also an online Ed.D. in Pastoral Counseling. This degree is flexible in the manner in which the courses are taken and can be specialized in several ways.

If you want to study in California, you can earn your psychology degree in the traditional campus setting or take an online program to accommodate your work schedule at The American School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University on the San Francisco Bay Area campus.