I want to be a physical therapist, I'm 27 ,never gone to college. I only make 13$/hr
How is it as a career? Is it like being a doctor?
Is it too late?
Please halp
It's never too late for higher education. You would need a Doctoral degree and acquire a state license before being able to practice though. That includes getting a bachelor's first before accessing the required Uni-level programs.
>How is it as a career?
$80k annual, decent hours.
>Is it like being a doctor?
No.
>>16605592
>it's never too late
Yes it is. Like a retirement account, it can be too late to ever see a return on investment for higher education.
To OP, you waited a long while and you're close to being shut out. If you are going to do anything like that worth your life, you need to start taking purposeful steps as soon as possible.
>>16605592
You don't need a doctorate, but a Masters is the minimum one requires from a person.
Its a quack job, like a psychic.
If you're cool with that, go for it.
>>16605577
It's not worth it anon, unless you have rich family willing to pay for the schooling.
The pay seems good on paper, but the cost of the program would be $150k-$200k all together.
Think about how long it'd take you to pay that back. You'd be making a pretty decent salary, but think about it in the long run. Do you want to be in debt for the rest of your life?
I'd recommend doing a bachelor's in exercise physiology and getting certified from the American College of Exercise Science's Certified Exercise Physiologist program.
It's similar but only require's a bachelor's degree, and undergrad education is roughly half the cost of postgrad so you'd be saving a lot of money. You wouldn't make as much, I think around $50k/yr but the demand for them is going through the fucking roof right now and your job would be nothing more than putting patients with heart, lung, and metabolic (think diabetes, obesity, etc.) issues on exercise programs to get their bodies back to functioning normally.
More info:
https://certification.acsm.org/acsm-certified-exercise-physiologist
>>16605839
Some things I forgot to mention:
A lot of physical therapists did their bachelors degrees in kinesiology, exercise science, or exercise physiology. If you decide you still want to go to graduate school and pursue a DPT, you'll be able to do that, with this as a fallback.
Seriously, check out the data on bls.gov
Exercise physiologists & athletic trainers are seeing a growth of 21%. The average for all other occupations sits at around 5-6%. You will not have trouble finding a job. Go to any hospital and do some shadowing to see if you like it.
WOW, OP here, you guys are amazing I really appreciate all the feedback.
Thanks
