phd in psychology takes 5-6 years?

[nj593]

Ok, so am I reading this correct?
After someone gets their grad degree they would have to go for another 5-6 years for their phd in psychology?
Why would anyone then do that?
I saw on salary.com that psychologists only make 65-80k a year. The student loans alone should be about 120k when they are done. Not to include why would then people not just study medicine which would be shorter in studies and more money?
I couldnt have read that correctly.
Someone step in and correct me please !

[HawkGuy]

Depends if you want a PhD or a PsyD. There's a big difference.

Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program

[enhancedrouting]

Short answer, no, that is not correct.

Long answer.

By Grad degree do you mean masters? The answer then would also be no, but there might be an explicative in front of it for emphasis.

In general you can get a doctoral degree in the thing of your choice within 3-5 years depending on availability of classes, how much free time you have and how insane you want your workload to be. Most programs are designed around the idea that you'll be done in four years. This is starting with an undergrad degree. If you already have a masters in the field you can usually transfer in at least one year of coursework in. If you got the masters at an institution that offers a doctoral degree as part of a degree track program you should be able to just resume study and get the doctoral degree in two years from that point, depending on how dedicated you are.

The saying about grad school is that if you have to pay full price to go to grad school you either shouldn't be going to grad school or you're going to the wrong school. A couple of friend's of mine got free rides. Scholarships of that sort are not unusual. Also most colleges offer substantial discounts, or credit waivers in exchange for TAing while you're there. Not counting any undergrad debt you might have, your debt load from graduate school should be 30k or less when you're finished. Of course a lot depends on where you want to live and how well you want to live.

To clarify an M.D. is not shorter, it requires the same 4 years of school, which tends to cost more (150-200k), it then requires an additional 3 years of interning and generally working under someone else before you can go off and practice by yourself. It also requires time for specialization in addition to that. Oh, and then there's the whole dissecting dead people. Not my cup of tea. A lot of us psych people are humanities types, we just don't want to chop up dead bodies, no matter what the paycheck might be.

Quite a few people do take 5-6 years to complete their grad degrees, but that's a choice on their part, or the result of life circumstances specific to them. Many people also take 5-6 years to complete their undergrad degrees, that isn't how long the programs are supposed to take, that's just how long people end up taking to finish them. If you're dedicated enough to CLEP out of things you're probably dedicated enough to finish a doctoral program in 4 years. Just make sure you shop around before you enroll. Also study for your GREs, you'll want to take the general and the psych specific, score well enough and you'll earn a free ride. Regardless of your scores if you apply to enough different schools you'll probably end up with a free ride or highly reduced tuition rate from someone.

Ok, so am I reading this correct?
After someone gets their grad degree they would have to go for another 5-6 years for their phd in psychology?
Why would anyone then do that?
I saw on salary.com that psychologists only make 65-80k a year. The student loans alone should be about 120k when they are done. Not to include why would then people not just study medicine which would be shorter in studies and more money?
I couldnt have read that correctly.
Someone step in and correct me please !