PsyD Tuition by Program: Published Prices and Periods

APA requires every accredited program to post a cost table for its incoming class, and each school fills it in its own way. The figures here come from the 104 ranked programs whose pages give tuition for the incoming class: 100 of them as the out-of-state row of the table, which is the row used where a public university lists two prices. 99 print a yearly figure, and 5 print the price of a shorter period.

The table groups the figures by the period the school printed. A median is shown only for a group of three or more programs, because the middle of two figures says little. The PsyD tuition counted for scoring is different: the methodology page says how a price per semester is turned into a yearly one for the Cost factor, and no program’s card shows that total as the school’s own price. The median yearly figure in this post uses only the yearly figures programs print, so it differs from the one in the PsyD guides, which count a per-semester or per-quarter price over the terms in a year.

Type of school is the clearest line through the yearly figures. These medians are of the yearly figures only, so a price per semester never enters them, and a group appears only when it holds three or more programs. The public median is $25,506 and the private nonprofit median is $41,492. The table rows add to 98 of the 99 yearly figures: 1 program is left out because no type of school is on file for it or its type has fewer than three programs.

Grouped by price, the 99 yearly figures fall into these bands. A band is a way to see how the PsyD tuition spreads, not a ranking of programs; for programs side by side, see the lowest-tuition list.

A tuition figure is the price of instruction and nothing else. Fees, books and living costs are shown on each program where the school publishes them, and the ranking does not score them. Aid changes what a student pays, and it does not change the printed price: the ranking counts a program’s tuition as lower only when the school states that it waives tuition for every admitted student.

What students borrow is a separate figure. APA’s graduate-school FAQ reports: “In 2016 the APA conducted a survey of individuals that had completed master’s or doctoral degrees in psychology in the past 10 years.” It adds: “Those who received PhDs had, on average, $78,000 in debt, and those who received PsyD had $146,000 in debt.” That is a 2016 survey, so it is a dated figure. APPIC’s 2023 survey of internship applicants, who include PhD and PsyD students, found median reported debt of $50,000, and $60,000 for applicants at U.S. schools, and a mean internship stipend of $35,478 at U.S. sites.