Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Clinical and Counseling Psychology (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Clinical and Counseling Psychology earn a median of $50,523 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $35,237 and $66,891. We rank the 40 U.S. colleges whose Clinical and Counseling Psychology programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,710 graduates in all. That puts Clinical and Counseling Psychology at #105 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach, in Florida, leads at $82,023, 56% above the median ranked school ($52,569). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $46,366 and $58,947, and the lowest earns $39,291. 23 of the 40 ranked schools (58%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 9 public, 11 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. New York places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of California (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $21,813 a year, against $20,719 across all 40 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $24,367 in federal loans, about 41% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 3.6 years.
Showing the top 40 of 40 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach Daytona Beach, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,023 | 39 † | $23,733 | $41,272 | 3.5 |
| 2 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,328 | 95 | $17,223 | $41,704 | 4.7 |
| 3 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $73,007 | 25 † | — | $3,033 | 0.3 |
| 4 | Pace University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,811 | 52 | $25,000 | $30,892 | 3.9 |
| 5 | Azusa Pacific University Azusa, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,411 | 25 † | — | $22,212 | 3.0 |
| 6 | Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI Public · 4-year | $64,679 | 60 | $27,000 | $15,273 | 2.0 |
| 7 | Emmanuel College Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,013 | 43 | $27,000 | $26,706 | 5.1 |
| 8 | Indiana Wesleyan University-Marion Marion, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,898 | 34 † | $28,646 | $22,866 | 3.7 |
| 9 | Albright College Reading, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,589 | 33 † | $25,000 | $20,024 | 3.3 |
| 10 | Crown College Saint Bonifacius, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,077 | 25 † | $39,125 | $26,672 | 4.8 |
| 11 | Farmingdale State College Farmingdale, NY Public · 4-year | $58,570 | 50 | $18,500 | $10,867 | 1.9 |
| 12 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $58,501 | 63 | $18,842 | $17,167 | 3.0 |
| 13 | Thomas Jefferson University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,119 | 34 † | $27,750 | $28,928 | 5.9 |
| 14 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $56,000 | 65 | $15,000 | $12,470 | 2.6 |
| 15 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $55,736 | 72 | $21,208 | $30,434 | 6.3 |
| 16 | CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice New York, NY Public · 4-year | $55,595 | 495 | $12,395 | $3,203 | 0.6 |
| 17 | Florida Institute of Technology Melbourne, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,282 | 88 | $27,205 | $35,639 | 6.8 |
| 18 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $55,031 | 37 † | $19,500 | $13,359 | 2.6 |
| 19 | Mount Saint Mary's University Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $52,940 | 55 | $27,000 | $21,413 | 5.4 |
| 20 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $52,771 | 60 | $11,557 | $14,091 | 4.6 |
| 21 | Lesley University Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $52,367 | 32 † | $21,875 | $31,152 | 11.0 |
| 22 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,086 | 30 † | $27,000 | $24,402 | 9.7 |
| 23 | Tiffin University Tiffin, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,934 | 45 | $27,000 | $26,500 | 7.1 |
| 24 | Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS Public · 4-year | $50,176 | 45 | $23,000 | $17,595 | 3.7 |
| 25 | Saint Cloud State University Saint Cloud, MN Public · 4-year | $49,922 | 117 | $20,471 | $13,529 | 4.5 |
| 26 | University of Michigan-Flint Flint, MI Public · 4-year | $49,832 | 37 † | $25,250 | $7,007 | 1.9 |
| 27 | Johnson & Wales University-Providence Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,967 | 93 | $27,000 | $31,027 | 14.5 |
| 28 | Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls, OR Public · 4-year | $48,724 | 26 † | $25,520 | $15,706 | 5.3 |
| 29 | Franklin University Columbus, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,543 | 33 † | $23,593 | $25,243 | 8.1 |
| 30 | University of North Texas Denton, TX Public · 4-year | $46,468 | 47 | $18,000 | $15,649 | 5.4 |
| 31 | California State University-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $46,060 | 294 | $12,500 | $3,967 | 1.7 |
| 32 | Belhaven University Jackson, MS Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,213 | 32 † | $30,833 | $15,676 | 4.4 |
| 33 | Gardner-Webb University Boiling Springs, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,936 | 65 | $25,886 | $17,674 | 8.0 |
| 34 | University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Belton, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,301 | 43 | $26,000 | $26,106 | 13.9 |
| 35 | Clayton State University Morrow, GA Public · 4-year | $42,032 | 152 | $27,000 | $8,365 | 4.1 |
| 36 | Keystone College La Plume, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $41,571 | 35 † | $26,000 | $22,051 | 17.4 |
| 37 | Wayne State College Wayne, NE Public · 4-year | $41,391 | 43 | $20,396 | $15,360 | 13.9 |
| 38 | Point University West Point, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,621 | 30 † | $39,000 | $25,335 | 14.9 |
| 39 | Faulkner University Montgomery, AL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,459 | 35 † | $25,875 | $22,085 | 12.2 |
| 40 | Grace College and Theological Seminary Winona Lake, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,291 | 26 † | $19,500 | $19,932 | 28.5 |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only bachelor's degree programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology (CIP 4228, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 40.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 4 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Clinical and Counseling Psychology earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | $58,570 | 5 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College |
| Massachusetts | $57,190 | 4 | Boston College |
| Pennsylvania | $55,928 | 4 | Albright College |
| California | $54,470 | 4 | Azusa Pacific University |
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