[Explore Health Careers](https://explorehealthcareers.org/)
There is a searchable database of health professions with option to select for income ranges and years of education.
Psychology is not a pre-professional degree and how competitive you’ll be in the job market after graduation will depend on what you do during college to prepare yourself and develop marketable job skills.
If you want a college degree that has better job prospects than psych, consider mathematics/applied math, statistics/biostatistics, bio-informatics, and, of course, engineering and computer science.
Nursing is not a good choice for pre-meds because:
- adcomms will ask why medicine and not nursing? You will be expected to have actually have worked as a nurse for several years so that you have the real world experience needed answer to that question
- adcomms are often reluctant to admit nurses to medical school because they don’t want to poach from other healthcare professions that are already experiencing a shortage of personnel
- at many colleges, the science classes for nursing students have their own course sequence that does not meet the admission requirements for med school admission.
And I agree w/ @thumper1 that no hopeful pre-med should count on getting an acceptance to med school. It’s better to assume that you won’t and plan accordingly.
Although psychiatry is not an extremely competitive specialty (like say, orthopedics or neurosurgery), entry into psych has become much more competitive in the past 5 years. Every year psych applicants are going unmatched. (i.e. they don't get accepted into a psych residency.)
**You cannot assume that you will qualify for/match into psychiatry.**
Do NOT go to med school unless you would be willing to do family/community medicine in a rural area or a low resource urban area.
Depending on your exact interests, you may want to look at a clinical psychology degree (PsyD or PhD) as a possible alternative to medical school. In some states, clinical psychologists have prescribing rights for a limited list of psycho-active medications.
Another possible alternative would be a MSW to become a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW). LCSWs do counseling and offer a range of therapeutic behavioral therapies. LCSWs can have in-patient or out-patient practices/caseloads.