Glad to see they published the pass rates. Once in a while I like to come in here and read what people really think about students from different programs. Even very qualified students at great schools sometimes don't pass. Does that mean they weren't prepared by their program? Does that mean people who passed despite having gone to a less reputable program were better prepared by their program? Are they more intelligent or better clinicians? We all know that some schools are better than others. All I would care about as a supervisor and as a colleague is if you, personally, can do what is required. Lots of people can go to a great program, pass a test, and be an awful clinician. Even worse, be an awful human being. As much as we should gate keep, we should also be mindful of how we go about it. Take care.
Clearly there can be great, good, and bad students from any program. Like you, as a supervisor the bottom line is can you do the job, do it well, and contribute positively to the agency. Unfortunately, when onboarding a new intern, staff member, etc., you have limited information about the candidates individual abilities (particular things not related to actual clinical abilities, such as good work habits, professional responsibility, good oral and (especially) written communication skills, and an ability to integrate knowledge and skills from multiple areas to solve novel problems. It is very helpful for me when training programs play "gatekeeper" regarding these abilities. While I can't predict with 100% accuracy that the trainee from local mentor model, small-cohort, clinical doctoral program has these abilities, I
CAN predict that, on average, they are more likely to possess those skills (and have better overall clinical training and experiences) that the trainee from the local huge-cohort professional school. That saves a lot of time and headache in investing in the onboarding, training, credentialing, etc. of new staff. I can rely on certain programs specifically, and more generally (but less accurately, obviously) certain types of training programs to produce- on average- much better candidates. I literally (and I mean that in the real sense) cannot rely on graduates of my local big professional school to be able to construct a written sentence following basic rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., or to reliably follow an instruction to not wear jeans to work (while not a big deal, it's policy so deal with it). These latter deficiencies would have prevented you from progressing beyond year one in many respectable programs.
Yeah- there's good clinicians from every program. However, some programs and types of programs reliably produce good-great clinicians, and these clinicians are often identifiable by the name on their diploma and the mentor they worked with. They are- on the average- better trained, have better oral and written communication skills, and have better professional and work habits. If a program with a cohort size of 10 produces 8 really good clinicians each year, while the program with a cohort size of 100 produces 30 really good clinicians each year, I'm much better off- de facto- choosing someone from the the small cohort program even though the other program produces
a lot more really good clinicians. New staff are expensive and we often have to convince "higher ups" to let us hire them. The financial and "karmic" expenses of someone not working out are huge, so if I can rely on somebody else (e.g. a good graduate program) to do some of the gatekeeping, then I certainly will.
