What Extra Credentials Do You Need for a Master’s Degree? Practical Advice From a Parent
The oatmeal bowl was still sweating condensation on our kitchen table when my daughter Lila pushed her laptop toward me last month, finger hovering over a checkout page for an $800 trauma-informed care certification. She’d graduated from undergrad three weeks prior, had acceptance letters to two school counseling master’s programs tucked in her junk drawer, and was spiraling over the same question every soon-to-be grad student I know is asking these days: What do I actually need for extra credentials for my master’s?
Her pre-counseling group chat was blowing up with screenshots of everyone’s summer plans: one friend was doing three Google certifications, another was signed up for a 6-week TEFL course, a third was squeezing in a volunteer research fellowship before fall orientation. Lila’s to-do list was three pages long, full of credentials she’d added just because everyone else had them, and she’d started staying up until 1 a.m. scrolling program websites, convinced she’d already ruined her shot at scholarships and good internships before the program even started.
I’d been through this once before, two years ago with my nephew who was starting a computer science master’s. He’d spent $1,200 on two fancy cloud computing certifications the summer before he started, only to have his advisor tell him at orientation that the program offered the same training for free, and those third-party certifications didn’t count toward any of his degree requirements. I called my sister-in-law, who’s a graduate admissions advisor at a state university, and asked her to meet me for coffee the next day to sort this out. She brought her notebook, and over iced lattes, she broke down what she actually tells parents and students when they ask this question.
First, she said, pull up your specific program’s incoming student page and student handbook before you sign up for anything. Most people just take general advice from TikTok or their friend group, not from the people who are actually going to be evaluating you. Lila and I sat down that night and pulled up her top program’s handbook, and we found right there on the first page of the incoming student section: they prioritize 10+ hours of K-12 observation for all first-year students applying for internship placements. Lila already had 22 hours from her undergrad senior practicum, so that box was checked for free, no extra work needed. The TEFL certification she was eyeing? It wasn’t mentioned anywhere, and wouldn’t help her with her goal of working as a middle school counselor anyway.
Second, only pick extra credentials that directly tie to what you want to do after you graduate, not just to pad your resume. Generic certifications that anyone can sign up for don’t stand out to faculty or hiring managers, because they know most people just do them to check a box. Lila wants to work with middle schoolers who have anxiety, so we looked for low-cost or free options that aligned with that. We found a free 4-week Youth Mental Health First Aid course through the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, that met once a week for two hours at the local library. It’s directly relevant, it’s free, and it gives her a tangible certification she can list on her internship application that ties directly to her career goal. That’s way more useful than any generic data analytics certificate she would’ve done just because someone said it looks good.
Third, if you’re unsure, email the program’s graduate coordinator directly. Not the general admissions inbox, the person whose job is to support current and incoming graduate students. Lila sent a short, polite email: “I’m an incoming first-year student this fall, and I’m wondering if an external trauma-informed care certification would be useful for my program, or if you offer that training for students once I start?” She got a reply back the next day: the program offers the exact certification she was looking at for free to all first-year students, and it counts toward her state licensing requirements when she takes it through the program. If she’d paid for it independently, it wouldn’t count. That saved her $800 and 10 weeks of extra work.
Lila ended up turning down the summer research fellowship she’d applied to on a whim, because the coordinator told her that for a clinical master’s like school counseling, research experience isn’t required for internships or jobs unless you plan to get a PhD later, which she doesn’t. She kept her one day a week volunteer coaching for the local middle school cross country team, which she’s done since she graduated high school, and that’s already more relevant experience than any random credential she could’ve added.
I’ve caught myself over the years pushing Lila to do more, add more, check more boxes, because that’s what we’re told to do as parents to set our kids up for success. This experience made me realize how much of the hype around extra credentials is just that—hype, driven by social media and companies that make money selling certificates to stressed out students. No one is handing out a prize for the longest resume when you start grad school.
Right now, she’s halfway through her mental health course, and she’s got three weeks before she moves to campus. She’s spent most of her free time hiking with her friends and re-reading the Harry Potter series, something she hasn’t had time to do in four years of undergrad midterms and papers. She’s still nervous about finding the right internship, and we don’t know if any of this will end up mattering as much as we think it will right now. But she’s not staying up until 1 a.m. spiraling over her to-do list, and she didn’t waste money on credentials that would’ve just collected dust on her LinkedIn page. That feels like enough, for now.
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