Indiana School Counselor
Indiana school counselors work with students from pre-K through 12th grade, and the median wage in May 2025 was $59,260. The state projects about 460 openings a year from 2024 to 2034. For an Indiana Department of Education license, you’ll need a master’s from an approved school counselor program, a passing Praxis content-area score, and state-required training and CPR/AED certification.
Indiana Links
A junior at a rural Indiana high school can’t decide whether to enlist, start a two-year program, or go after a four-year scholarship. Over three appointments, his school counselor helps him sort out his interests, walks him through financial aid, and connects him with an advisor at a nearby community college. By graduation, he has a plan. That’s the job for Indiana school counselors, and it looks different at every grade level.
What School Counselors Do in Indiana
School counselors in Indiana serve students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The work changes with the grade level, but the core stays the same: meet students where they are and help them move forward academically, socially, and in how they think about life after school.
At the elementary level, the focus is often developmental. A counselor might run a small-group lesson on emotional regulation, check in with a third grader who’s had trouble concentrating since a family change at home, or work with a teacher to spot a student who could use extra support. Early intervention matters, and counselors often connect the dots.
Middle school is where academic stakes rise and social pressure grows. Counselors at this level handle both. One week that means supporting a seventh grader who’s pulling away from friends after moving to a new school. The next, it means helping students build course plans that set them up for high school.
At the high school level, the work shifts toward college and career readiness. The scholarship search, the résumé for a first job, the student who wants to serve in the military but hasn’t told his parents yet: these are the conversations that fill a high school counselor’s week. Indiana’s student services rule, 511 IAC 4-1.5-4, requires school corporations to provide educational and career services at the secondary school level, coordinated by a certified school counselor. So this work is built into how Indiana schools operate.
Many Indiana counselors build their programs around the ASCA National Model, a framework for delivering counseling across academic, career, and social-emotional development. It isn’t a rigid script. It’s a structure that keeps any one area of student development from getting pushed aside when caseloads get heavy (and they do).
Job Outlook in Indiana
Indiana’s long-term occupational projections show about 460 openings a year for school counselors from 2024 to 2034, with employment growing 6.6% over that decade. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 3.5% growth for the occupation nationwide over the same 2024 to 2034 period. That’s a steady market, not a boom. Only about 35 of those openings a year come from new positions. The rest open up as counselors retire, change roles, or leave the field.
Caseloads are the other thing to know. Indiana doesn’t mandate a student-to-counselor ratio. The state’s student services rule, 511 IAC 4-1.5-2, recommends one school counselor for every 600 students in grades 1 through 6 and one for every 300 in grades 7 through 12. ASCA recommends 250:1 across all grades. Those are targets, not requirements, and actual caseloads vary a lot by district. Ask about them when you’re weighing a job offer.
School Counselor Salary in Indiana
Indiana school counselors earned a median salary of $59,260 in May 2025, below the national median of $64,330. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports these figures for educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors, a group that also includes college advisors and career counselors, so treat them as a close guide rather than an exact school counselor figure. About 5,610 people held these jobs in Indiana. Pay spreads widely, from $41,180 at the 10th percentile to $82,690 at the 90th.
| Percentile | Annual Salary |
|---|---|
| 10th | $41,180 |
| 25th | $47,700 |
| Median (50th) | $59,260 |
| 75th | $71,860 |
| 90th | $82,690 |
Location matters too. Here’s how median wages compared across Indiana metro and nonmetro areas in May 2025.
| Metro Area | Median Salary |
|---|---|
| Bloomington, IN | $74,940 |
| Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN | $60,690 |
| Fort Wayne, IN | $59,580 |
| Northern Indiana nonmetropolitan area | $59,480 |
| South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI | $58,320 |
| Southern Indiana nonmetropolitan area | $57,250 |
CACREP-Accredited School Counseling Programs in Indiana
Seven Indiana universities offer a CACREP-accredited school counseling master’s. Six are listed below in order of how many master’s graduates each reported in 2023, which measures size, not quality.
| Institution | City | Degree | Accredited Through | Master’s Graduates (2023) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana Wesleyan University | Indianapolis | M.A. | October 31, 2030 | 33 |
| Purdue University Fort Wayne | Fort Wayne | M.S.Ed. | March 31, 2028 | 30 |
| Indiana University, Indianapolis | Indianapolis | M.S. | March 31, 2030 | 25 |
| Butler University | Indianapolis | M.Ed. | October 31, 2030 | 24 |
| Indiana University South Bend | South Bend | M.S.Ed. | October 31, 2030 | 17 |
| Indiana State University | Terre Haute | M.Ed. | March 31, 2030 | 8 |
Purdue University Northwest in Hammond is also CACREP-accredited, through March 31, 2029. It does not report graduates under the federal code used here, so it is listed separately rather than placed in the size order.
CACREP accreditation and an Indiana license are two different things. The Indiana Department of Education issues school counselor licenses, and its published requirements call for a master’s from an approved school counselor program without listing CACREP accreditation. Accreditation alone doesn’t make you eligible for an Indiana license, so before you enroll, ask the program’s licensing advisor whether it leads to an Indiana school counselor license.
Indiana built its own school counseling model
In late 2022, the Indiana Department of Education launched the Indiana Comprehensive School Counseling Model after months of input from counselors, principals, superintendents, and school board members. In February 2023, IDOE announced $5 million in Comprehensive School Counseling Grants to 26 districts, charter schools, and community partners, with lowering counselor-to-student ratios as one stated focus. The money came from the state’s federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) plan, so treat that round as a one-time investment rather than ongoing funding.
How this table was built. Every program here is accredited by CACREP as a School Counseling program, verified against the CACREP register on September 30, 2026. Any program whose CACREP status shows a teach-out, closure, show-cause or withdrawal is excluded, because a reader cannot reliably enroll in it. Programs are ordered by the number of master’s graduates each university reported to the federal IPEDS survey for 2023 under CIP code 13.1101, which measures size, not quality. That count covers the whole university, so a school running more than one school counseling master’s reports them together, and a low count can mean some graduates are reported under a different code. Treat the order as a rough guide to size rather than a ranking. Where a university reports no graduates under that code we name it below the table rather than place it in the order. CACREP accreditation is not the same as state approval: check the Indiana requirements for school counselor certification before you enroll.
- Steady openings: Indiana projects about 460 school counselor openings a year from 2024 to 2034, most of them from counselors retiring or leaving the field.
- Licensed through IDOE for pre-K through 12: An Indiana license requires a master’s from an approved school counselor program, a Praxis content-area test, and state-required training and CPR/AED certification. Day-to-day work shifts significantly from elementary to high school.
- Below the national median: Indiana’s May 2025 median of $59,260 trails the national $64,330, though Bloomington’s $74,940 runs well above both.
- Recommended, not required, ratios: Indiana’s rule suggests 1:600 in grades 1 through 6 and 1:300 in grades 7 through 12. Ask about actual caseloads before you accept a job.
- Seven accredited programs: Indiana has seven CACREP-accredited school counseling master’s programs, from Hammond to Terre Haute.
Found a program that fits? Next, understand what Indiana requires before you apply, from coursework to supervised fieldwork.
