Counselors concentrate on developing counseling and therapeutic skills in their advanced training. In contrast, a clinical psychologist must obtain a Ph.D. or Psy. D. in order to develop research skills as well as counseling and therapeutic skills. Clinical, consulting, and forensic psychology often require several years of supervised experience beyond the Ph.D. Many states, including New Mexico, require both a Ph.D. and supervised work experience before you can be certified to practice independently as a psychologist. Almost all jobs require at least a master's, and a large majority require a Ph.D. degree.
College teaching requires a Ph.D., as does most research.
With a bachelor's or master's degree, you can teach in high school or work in government or business. For example, a bachelor's degree could lead to a job as an advertising consultant. In high school you should take college-preparatory courses in math and the social and natural sciences to develop your research and analytic skills. A solid background in algebra is needed to understand how tests are developed and how scores should be interpreted. Trigonometry and calculus are important to understand the multivariate statistics increasingly in use by social scientists.