Quick Highlights:
- LPCs help clients manage mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, in various settings such as private practices, schools, and hospitals.
- You need a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in counseling or a similar field from an accredited program.
- Gaining 2,000-4,000 hours of supervised clinical experience is required, followed by passing the NCE or NCMHCE exam.
- After meeting educational and experience requirements, apply for the license and complete continuing education to maintain it.
In a time with more mental health concerns than ever before, counselors are in strong demand. Specifically, becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor is a career step that you can take to open up many possibilities. Is becoming an LPC something you would like to do? If so, following the Licensed Professional Counselor steps is required, and we’ll highlight those below.
Like any other professional field, the LPC licensing process can be demanding and time-consuming. That’s for good reason, however. You’ll be trusted with the care of a patient’s mental health when working in the real world, so you need to be fully qualified for such an important role. Let’s take a closer look at how you get there.
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What is the Role of a Licensed Professional Counselor?
Any good college student guide to LPC is going to start with a definition, so let’s do that first. Licensed Professional Counselors offer a range of services that are meant to help people deal with mental health issues. Countless different issues can fall under this umbrella, including depression, anxiety, relationship issues, stress, substance abuse, and more.
LPCs can be found applying their training in plenty of different settings. They might work in a private practice facility, in a school, in a hospital, or any of a number of other places. In each place, the services that are provided will need to be customized to serve the clients or patients properly.
One of the desirable things about a career as a Licensed Professional Counselor is the opportunity to impact the world positively. Not all careers present such potential for making a difference. Once the LPC certification process is complete and you are able to get to work, you’ll quickly see how what you do can change lives for the better.
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Meeting the Educational Requirements
The educational path to LPC is the starting point in this process. Without the right education, nothing that comes next will be possible. If you want to know how to become a counselor, it all starts with going to school.
As a first step, look at programs that will provide you with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. From there, you are going to need to find a master’s program, either at the same school or a different institution. This degree will be in counseling or something very similar. Always look at accredited programs for your education, as this will be necessary to get a license later on.
LPC degree requirements don’t have to stop you from reaching this goal. Yes, you’ll need to do a lot of classwork to finish a bachelor’s and master’s program, but completing those steps to become an LPC will arm you with the knowledge and skills you need to do great work in the field.
Picking Up Valuable Experience
It’s not only educational requirements that have to be met in this process. You’ll need to concern yourself with experience demands, as well. LPC clinical experience is required before you can become fully licensed to practice on your own. Typically, this experience involves working under the supervision of a licensed counselor. Depending on where you live, accruing somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 hours of supervised work will be necessary.
One of your challenges is to find opportunities where you can pick up this experience. You might simply find a job that is designed to get you this experience while serving patients at the same time. Or, you could network and make connections in the industry to find someone willing to provide you with an opportunity to gain experience. Internships are also a good choice. You may be able to work with your master’s program to at least get pointed in the right direction.
Passing a Licensing Exam
With the experience requirements met, it will be time to take a licensing examination. LPC exam preparation can be a lot of work but it’s one of the last hurdles standing in your way. There are two common exams that are used by state boards to get an LPC license. Those are the National Counselor Examination, or NCE, and the National Clinical Mental Health Counseling Examination, or NCMHCE.
It’s important to fully prepare for these exams before the test date arrives. You’ll likely feel quite knowledgeable in your career at this point with so much experience to your credit, but don’t take the exam for granted. Setting aside time to study and perhaps working with a study group will make it much more likely that you’ll pass without trouble.
Applying for – and Maintaining – Your License
The last step in the counseling licensure guide is to actually apply for your license. You’ll need to have everything about your education and training on hand when you submit your application. That includes documentation of your educational background, the experience you’ve accrued in the field, and your exam results. As long as you meet all of the requirements in your state, and pass a background check, your license should soon be approved.
Of course, that’s still not the end of the road. There are requirements in place to maintain your license over time. Primarily, these relate to completing continuing education. You’ll have to record a certain number of educational units per year – or per period – in order to remain licensed. Not only does continuing education check off a licensing box, but it also enables you to do better work for your patients and clients.
Start Down the Path Today
Meeting all of the LPC qualifications might seem intimidating at first, but you can work through the professional counseling license steps one at a time. If you get started right away, soon enough you’ll be at the end of the process and ready to put your license to use.
This is an exciting career path because of the good you can do in the world. In addition to earning a nice living, you can help people when they need it most. That’s a powerful reason to get up and go to work each day. We hope this page has been helpful and good luck in your career endeavors!