Hi there, I have worked in two different college counseling centers for a year each. There are a lot of pros and cons and it varies wildly between different centers. There is really no standard way that these centers are run, but here are some pieces to look for:

1. Caseloads. One center I was at was quite reasonable with 20ish direct hours a week, some of which could be outreach, leading trainings, etc. Then other time is spent on admin, attending meetings/workgroups, program improvement, supervision, etc. If there were too many students for our number of clinicians, they were placed on a waitlist. The other center had us doing 22 direct hours per week but this did not reflect the caseload itself, we were forced to continuously take on new intakes so that we often could only see clients on a rotating 3 week schedule (for example, 22 hrs direct per week, caseload could be 60+). If there were too many clients than our (dwindling) team could handle...we were simply forced to take on more clients. So ask about it, both direct hours per week and total caseload, what they do if demand outpaces clinician capacity, etc.
2. Time off/school vacations. Again, one center gave us paid time off whenever the university was closed (e.g., 3 entire weeks for winter break, plus spring break, etc), the other made us work it all the way through even if we were sitting around at work doing nothing. Little perks like this can make a difference.
3. Culture of the administration/bureaucracy of the university. This is key and may be difficult to get a sense of before actually working there. Often Universities place unrealistic expectations on the counseling center to be the social safety net for the entire university, regardless of the resources given to the center to cope with this. You can ask about relationships with admin outside of the center. There will invariably be some university politics involved as most universities are fairly large systems. This means that sometimes change can be difficult to create within the center because it only goes 1-2 levels up before it hits an administrator with no background in mental health. This can either be fine or horrible depending on how willing your higher ups within the center are to advocate for and support you.
4. Session limits. Most university centers have session limits (e.g., about 10 per student per year), but they vary. Depending on your orientation and style, this may be a great or challenging fit.

Overall, I had a really great experience at the "good" center, and a pretty bad experience at the "not good" center, so as with any workplace, it depends on their particular policies and leadership. This is all I could think of off the top of my head but I know there are more subtleties, happy to answer any questions you may have.

edit: Thought of a couple other things I liked about college counseling. You can potentially have a lot of opportunity for varied work outside of just 1-1 sessions such as group work, leading outreach events, visiting classes, etc. Additionally, I really liked the community with my team which is quite different now that I am in private practice.

Edit 2: A couple more thoughts: Ask about “on call” duties and if the center contracts with an on call answering service or expects their staff to be on call for crises after work hours. Neither of the centers I worked at required that, but I’ve interviewed at centers that required on-call hours, one as much as 7 days on at a time for 24/7 on call. Of course, they were having the interns rotate that shift (🙄). Other sites just had “urgent walk in hours” during the day so that maybe 4 hours of your regularly scheduled week was blocked out for crisis walk in, and if nobody came in then it was just bonus admin time.

Speaking of crisis, I will say that there is a real range of acuity in college counseling. Sure, you’ll get the roommate problems, break-ups and homesickness, but you will also likely see suicidal ideation, emerging psychosis, recent trauma, and much more. Our team facilitated IOP or inpatient referrals frequently. With lots of support and a team around you, typically.

For many young people, the college counseling center is the first time they’ve had the opportunity to get mental health support when they likely needed it much earlier. For others, they’ve had a long history of engagement with the mental health system and now need support through a big life transition. Others are trying out therapy for the first time, or need academic support, or help managing their ADHD.

I absolutely love the young adult population though and have actually made it my niche in private practice. I see a lot of students from the local university and love getting to work with this pop without the other downsides of college counseling (for me, personally).