On threads discussing some of the more "questionable" doctoral programs it is pretty common to see a post along the lines of "I went there/know someone from there/work with someone from there who is pretty successful." This document shows the problem with that line of reasoning. Take my local "questionable" program- William James College(WJC) PsyD- for example. The 2020-2022 table shows that of the 152 grads who took the EPPP, 62 did not pass (I encourage you to look at absolute numbers and not just percentages- with such variability in number of grads from each program, as well as some very small n's going into the % calculations, percentage is an even weaker statistic than it usually is). In the 90 that passed, there's sure to be some pretty good clinicians. If you look at my alma mater, only 8 students took the EPPP in the same time period (and all 8 passed!). Working in a clinical setting, you are much more likely to run into a good clinician from WJC than from UMass Clinical Psych. In fact, more good practicing clinicians probably come out of William James than out of UMass. However, if you meet a UMass clinician, chances are they are going to be pretty good. There will be much more variability in WJC graduates, and we are only talking about the ~60 percent who even take and pass the exam.
Thing is, programs like WJC does not do enough a the point of admission for you to determine which group you are likely to fall into. Will you be one of the 62 who cannot move on with your career and start recouping your costs (more on that later)? It's basically a coin flip. Looking at the data from all the other programs in the state (except Springfield College, which gets a pass on their low rate FOR NOW because they are relatively new and presumably working out the the kinks), it seems like if you go there and get to the point of taking the EPPP, you're likely to be able to get on with your lives.
Looking at the 62 who didn't pass, let's assume that half of those eventually will (which is somewhat panned out by their overall ~80% pass rate between 2012 and 2022). So we are left with 30 who may never get to be psychologists when they grow up. From the WJC website, each of those 30 spent and estimated $84,094 (tuition, fees, rent, food, personal, etc.) per year to attend for five years, for a total of $420,470 (not including opportunity costs). $12,614,100 was spent by people who cannot be psychologists (the school got $7.8 million of this in tuition and fees).
TLDR- Yeah, you can find some good clinicians from programs like this if that is what you are looking for. Heck, my boss is a great clinician from whom I've learned a lot and she went there! However, you might want to look more closely for one of those 62 who didn't pass yet or for one of the 30 who maybe never will. You're spending ~500K (before compound interest if you finance), Probably makes the most sense to plan on being the median versus landing in the upper tail, with some recognition that not being able to be a psychologist after attending is an uncomfortably high probability.
