Educate me on APPIC!

[imadreamer]

As I begin my second year within a Counseling Psychology PhD program, I already find myself thinking about the internship process. I am attempting to be strategic with my externship placements and research opportunities in order to be matched in the future. I began my PhD program with an MA in Clinical Psychology, accumulating client contact hours at a university psychological services clinic and a state psychiatric hospital. Both of these experiences were supervised by individuals with PhDs. Therefore, am wondering if these hours will count as core client contact within my future APPIC application? Also, how many client contact hours are appropriate to consider yourself competitive and what other activities can I be doing in order to be prepared for the internship process?

On another note, if I know the theoretical orientation that I would like to use within my future profession, do I need to actively seek out externship rotations in orientations that are completely opposite of my goals? For example, I utilize CBT but I'm not sure if internship sites would like to see broader training (e.g., psychodynamic). Similarly, do internship placements prefer we receive training with a variety of settings and populations?

I know these questions may be arbitrary but nevertheless, I would appreciate some unbiased input.

Thank you in advance for any help!

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[Ollie123]

If the MA was a "part" of your current program (i.e. obtained en route) than those count as doctoral hours. If they were part of a separate program (even at the same school) they count as master's hours. Either way they count, but many sites will heavily discount master's hours in favor of doctoral hours. In terms of goals, I'd aim for over 500 intervention and 100 assessment for most sites. Obviously if you are interested in neuro or forensics you will want to be much heavier on assessment. That should put you past the cutoffs at most places though and the few it won't are generally not places you want to be anyways. A bit more than the above is better, but once you break 1000 there are dramatically diminishing returns. You also want to make sure there is a good ratio of supervision to face-to-face hours. Someone with 10 hours of client contact for every 1 hour of supervision is going to look like they had a pretty mediocre training experience. I timed things out well so I had diversity early on, got more focused as I went, and was doing some highly relevant/unique experiences while applying (running a supervision group and getting focused experience in the exact types of tracks I was applying to).

Yes, it is good to diversify your training while still getting experience in things you are interested in. I wouldn't say "The opposite of your goals" (not sure what that would even mean), but its good to show you have some breadth. What exactly they want will generally depend on what kind of sites you apply to. My whole "theoretical orientation" essay was on how I do not have one and consider theoretical orientations an outdated concept that stands counter to everything that clinical psychology should be. It seemed to go over great with the sites I applied to...but I imagine that would not be universally true and would REALLY piss off some others.

The main advice I give to people about applying for internship are:
1) Chill - having gone through it now it is REALLY not that bad a process besides the expenses. Nothing like what I had in my mind. Compared to applying for grants, the paperwork involved in applying for internship is a joke. Which leads into....
2) Its not about your application, its about your accomplishments. You are ahead of the game with #2 since many people seem to think about it as though putting together a stellar application will get them the internship of their dreams. Except you can't put together a stellar application unless you've had stellar experiences and I'd bet on the person with a mediocre application and a strong CV over the person with a great application and minimal qualifications every time. Obviously both is better. The point is - get good experiences, learn what you need to build your reputation and career, publish good papers, go to conferences to give talks and network with people you'd like to work with, etc. If you've done that, the application process won't be nearly as big a deal as it would be if you are trying to salvage wasted years and turn them into more than they were. Grad school is not undergrad. Doing only what you are told to do and learning only the things people teach you will get you nowhere. Function as a professional and constantly strive for improvement.

 

[CheetahGirl]

In addition to Ollie's advice, you can always log on to APPIC and print or view the application to see exactly what data you need to enter, in terms of the choices in the drop down menu, etc. I did this in my 2nd year. I would also shoot for well over 500 hours (like closer to 1000 if you can do it). I would keep in contact with your Master's level program director because they will need to approve those clinical (or research) hours earned - so touching base (just to say hello) would be in your benefit, rather than popping up in 2-3 years with the blanket APPIC request for approval of hours.

Establish good, strong relationships with supervisors now, so you will have good, strong letters of recommendation for your APPIC application.

About orientation (and APPIC has forced-choices for many categories of information, in addition to "other, please explain," so look through the choices), sounds like Ollie had the confidence to reject the entire orientation argument, but that may be risky unless you've gained that particular confidence about treatment and how you approach conceptualization and then apply your interventions. Some may disagree, but I think it is your favor to diversify a bit in terms of orientation, like know CBT conceptualization/treatment well, but also learn about and apply other viewpoints (like psychodynamics or humanistic frameworks). IMO it makes for a more sophisticated, scholarly applicant, rather than a rigid one. As a clinician, you may know the problems that come with being so rigid in one's thinking. Be open to other orientations, for sure, because on internship you may be working alongside others with completely different orientations, so never discount another's framework (during training...wait until you are licensed to do that)....you never know when your interviewer(s) may deeply respect (something like) the existentialistic viewpoint, and then, here you go during your interview criticizing his/her very dear method of conceptualization.

In terms of populations, I agree with Ollie in that breadth in training in essential. My particular strategy was to gain experience of all ages working with trauma populations. Therefore, now on internship I matched to a VA where half my time will be spent working with the geriatric population, since it is the area that I am least familiar with as group. When it's all said and done, I will have many clinical hours doing 'trauma work' with ages 4 to 80. Perhaps in post-doc, I will narrow in on one particular age-group. Also to echo Ollie, figure out early on what major category that you find most desirable, if you want to specialize in the future for neuro, forensics, child/adolescent, trauma, etc. and, of course, gear your subsequent externships to those areas. For example, I only figured out in my 3rd year that I really enjoyed neuropsych assessment and then considered how I could fit it into my trauma work, but by the time to apply for internship sites, I could not apply to any of the neuropsych internship sites because I did not have enough clinical neuropsych assessment batteries (there may be like a minimum of 6 or so - you can also search the requirements of some future sites you'd like to target now). Thankfully, I will still get some neuropsych experience on internship but not enough to be competitive for post-doc, so I imagine I would be good treatment support for the neuropsych folks because of my own experiences in this area. So look into those types of things now.

And good job pre-planning! Foresight is always your friend. Good luck!

 

[cara susanna]

1) Chill - having gone through it now it is REALLY not that bad a process besides the expenses. Nothing like what I had in my mind. Compared to applying for grants, the paperwork involved in applying for internship is a joke. Which leads into....

No offense, Ollie, but you had a pretty amazing application and got VERY good interviews/match results. I don't think that your experience is the modal kind of experience for applicants.

 

[erg923]

I was likely a rather typical phd applicant. 850 hours (or something like that), some VA experience, good AMC research, dozen posters/talks, 1 pub first author and one submitted as 3rd. Everything was solid but but nothin amazing, as I wasn't the most overachieving grad student. I didn't really research network during grad school that much and I didn't apply to research oriented places. I did go to an academic VA with some protected research time but mostly used that for dissertation time.

Flying all across the damn country for a one year job making the equivalent of $11/hour seemed ludicrous to me. The whole thing should be redesigned.

 

[Ollie123]

None taken, but I think I may have just been unclear.

The stress attached to "Will I match, won't I match, where will it be" is tremendous. I just meant the actual process of applying (i.e. the paperwork) is not a big deal and the overwhelming majority of interviews (at least in my experience) were incredibly laid back. I guess my point is that the ideal time to stress is years 1 through 5, and let that stress be a motivating factor. Once its time to apply, what's done is done.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Agreed with Ollie that the interviews themselves and the APPIC paperwork, at least in my experience, were the least stressful parts of the whole internship debacle. I actually enjoyed some of the traveling, after I'd mentally distanced myself from the points erg mentioned (i.e., that I was paying hundreds/thousands of dollars for a one-year position with a salary of $20-25k). I very much enjoyed my internship, and definitely think there's something to be said for training somewhere far removed from your grad program, but I have to agree that the process is extremely strenuous and needs to be revamped.

And to the OP's questions--as Ollie mentioned, if the MA was earned separately from your current doctoral program, there will be a spot on your application for those hours, but they won't necessarily be "counted" in the sense of being lumped in and considered equivalent with doctoral training hours. As for a number to aim for, that's exceedingly tough to give. If I were pinned down and absolutely had to give an answer, I'd say that most places seem to have minimums set in the 300-500 face-to-face hours range. If you're on the lower side of client contact hours, though, you can often "make up" for it by having additional research experiences.

As for exposure to different orientations, I'd say it could potentially be useful as a clinician, but that's up to you. I had little to no formal psychodynamic training in grad school, for example, but it didn't prevent me from matching for internship. I'm sure it did get me unranked/ranked lower at psychodynamically-oriented sites, though.

 

[cara susanna]

None taken, but I think I may have just been unclear.

The stress attached to "Will I match, won't I match, where will it be" is tremendous. I just meant the actual process of applying (i.e. the paperwork) is not a big deal and the overwhelming majority of interviews (at least in my experience) were incredibly laid back. I guess my point is that the ideal time to stress is years 1 through 5, and let that stress be a motivating factor. Once its time to apply, what's done is done.

Gotcha, makes sense! Sorry for misunderstanding.

 

[imadreamer]

Thank you all for the unbiased opinions as well as the personal experiences. My SUDS rating has lessened because of it . Because I have started early and attempting to focus on quality training rather than quantity, I believe I am in a good place and optimistic about the APPIC process. However, I will be back when the time approaches and all my rational thinking is out the window. Cheers!