One of the questions I hear from prospective students is some version of, “What will my week look like once I’m done?” I wish I had one tidy answer. After my own experience as a clinician, and after watching colleagues build very different careers from the same degree, what I can tell you is that no two weeks look alike. That variety is a big part of why people choose this path.
Here are some of the ways I’ve seen folks engage their clinical work.
Full Time in Community Mental Health
Plenty of people start in community mental health, which is often a 40-hour week salaried position. The work tends to center on people who are marginalized and underserved, and you’re usually the counseling voice on a team alongside social workers and case managers. Care is wraparound, so a day might include sessions, case staffing, and a lot of coordination with others who are helping your client stay housed, stable, and connected to resources.
Most of these agencies work with Medicaid and Medicare and other large systems, so you learn how they function early in your career. It’s challenging work, and it’s also where many clinicians build a strong foundation.
Starting in a Group Practice
Another common route is joining a group practice as an employee. The hourly rate is usually lower than what you’d earn on your own, but you get a great deal in return: supervision, office space, group case conferences, and liability coverage. If you’re still collecting hours toward licensure, that kind of support matters more than it might seem from the outside. For a lot of people, it’s a great place to start.
Private Practice – In a Few Different Forms
Some clinicians go out on their own. They might see clients in an office, work entirely by telehealth from home, or share space with other therapists. Others contract with an organization so they can bill insurance under that entity while still running things as their own small business.
A full private practice caseload is often around 20 to 30 clients a week, and that’s only part of the picture. There’s paperwork, treatment planning, and billing, whether your organization handles it or you do. If you’re on your own, you’ll need to learn billing, insurance claims, and the software that makes them manageable. Nobody gets into this work excited about billing, but it’s a real part of the job.
Private practice is also where schedules get flexible. I know people who work Tuesday through Thursday and keep Mondays and Fridays free. Some only see clients in the morning, and others only in the evening, This could be determined by your own personal or family needs, or the needs of the clients you’d like to work with (working during the day because you want to be at home with your family in the evening).
Treatment Centers, Schools, & Nonprofits
The range of settings is wider than most people expect. Clinicians work in addiction treatment centers and in milieu settings for things like eating disorders. Others work through social service organizations like Catholic Community Services, or with nonprofits focused on issues like sex trafficking. Churches and other faith-funded organizations hire counselors too.
Schools are another option, working with children and adolescents during the school day. Some people provide special needs support that happens outside of school, on a very different schedule.
Working Part-time on Purpose
Not everyone wants a full caseload, and I think that’s worth noting. Some clinicians work 12 to 15 hours a week in a group or private practice and spend the rest of their time on something else they care about, like making art, maintaining their previous career part-time, or serving in a church or faith community. For them, counseling is one part of a bigger life, and the MACP degree supports that.
The Parts that Stay the Same
No matter the setting, a lot of the underlying work is the same. Almost every counseling role involves diagnosing, treatment planning, careful notes and documentation, and maintaining supervision and peer support. Most also require ongoing training, and every one of them involves figuring out how you’ll earn a living, whether as an employee, a contractor, a business owner, or eventually an employer.
That last piece surprises some students. We talk a lot about the clinical side of this work, but the business side is real, and the sooner you start thinking about it and discussing that reality with other folks in this vocation, the less overwhelming it feels.
Specializing
Over time, many clinicians pursue additional training in a particular area. Couples work, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, Narrative Focused Trauma Care, Emotionally Focused Therapy, addiction counseling or work with children and adolescents are all common directions. A specialization gives you something specific to offer, which helps if you’re marketing a private practice or trying to stand out in a group. It can also make you a real asset in community mental health, where someone with extra training in a particular approach can become a resource for the whole team.
So, which week sounds like yours?
That’s the question I’d encourage you to sit with. Maybe it’s a full week in a busy agency, serving people who don’t often get access to therapy. Maybe it’s three days in a quiet office, or telehealth from your kitchen table followed by an afternoon of other work you love.
There’s no wrong answer, and your answer may change (or likely will change) over time, which is normal. If you’d like to talk through what a path could look like for you, our admissions team would be glad to have that conversation.