2012 APPIC Internship Application Thread

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@ cara susanna. I absolutely love your profile pic

Thanks! I think we all wish we could be as great of a clinician as Dr. Penguin.

Hey Guys,

I was wondering if anyone of you could shed some light on the relevance or weight that is put on grades when applying for internship. In particular, I'm asking about neuropsych internship sites. So lets say you got a B- in biopsychology...would that necessarily play against you?

Many thanks in advance!

Originally Posted by Halstead

Hey Guys,

I was wondering if anyone of you could shed some light on the relevance or weight that is put on grades when applying for internship. In particular, I'm asking about neuropsych internship sites. So lets say you got a B- in biopsychology...would that necessarily play against you?

Many thanks in advance!

This question has actually come up multiple times in the past, particularly as the new cycle approaches and applicants start becoming more anxious.

In general, so long as you're at about a B+ average or so, you'll be fine. Grades only seem to become important if you've failed classes. A B- in biopsych likely isn't going to keep you out of any sites. With a neuro interest, an interviewer or two might ask what happened, but that's only if they actually looked at the grades closely enough to notice.

Originally Posted by Halstead

Hey Guys,

I was wondering if anyone of you could shed some light on the relevance or weight that is put on grades when applying for internship. In particular, I'm asking about neuropsych internship sites. So lets say you got a B- in biopsychology...would that necessarily play against you?

Many thanks in advance!

I got a B- in one of my courses (but had all As outside of that course) and ended up with 12 interviews. So I wouldn't worry too much.

Originally Posted by CSOPP

I got a B- in one of my courses (but had all As outside of that course) and ended up with 12 interviews. So I wouldn't worry too much.

I had a similar experience.

As an aside, I had similar questions that I took to my training director last summer when I started applying and she assured me that grades were not important (I had some low grades from a previous graduate program). It gave me a lot of assurance to hear that straight from my TD.

This citation was posted to a NP student listserv I frequent...and I thought some people may find it helpful:

Mittenberg, W., Petersen, R., Cooper, J., Strauman, S., & Essig, S. (2000). Selection criteria for clinical neuropsychology internships. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 14(1), 1-6.

When I was on an internship faculty, grades played little to no role in our acceptance decision making. If your DCT/department let you apply , we'd assume that you demonstrated an appropriate level of scholarship within your courses (assuming, of course, you were from a reputable and applicable program). Grades in graduate school are basically pass/fail anyways, with a B being about as meaningful as an A. I always felt that being able to prioritize and "do what you need to do to get done what you need to get done- never less, and only occasionally more"- is an incredibly valuable skill. A GPA of 3.0 with a completed defended diss. is much better than a GPA of 3.8 with only a proposed diss. I honestly can't remember a situation where there was someone who dropped down in ranking because of a few low grades. I don't think most of us even gave more than just a cursory look at the transcripts.

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