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- Dec 29, 2011
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Yes. You make very good points and I will attempt to answer all of your questions. Argosy OC is a for profit prof psych school (which is why I have openly disclosed the debt I have incurred numerous times). When students don't match, they go to second rounds. If still not matched they pay for a year of practicum supervision and dissertation costs (if they have not yet completed). Or they work in the field and apply the next year. 1 student this past year was not concerned about APA so she got a CAPIC university site. She plans on working in a private practice so it worked out for her. The others either got APA, delayed a year to reapply next year and the rest matched with APPIC sites.
Some students do not care about APA internships and obtaining an APA internship is not a requirement for my program (as it probably is for yours, which makes sense because of your probable career goals hence choosing the phd route over the psyd route to begin with). This might shock you but some people want to work in places that do not require an APA internship such as state prisons (only federal require APA), private practice, some hospitals, community centers, etc. The world is big and there is a need for psychologists in other settings besides universities, some hospitals (va specifically) and federal prisons.
Also, California internship sites are saturated with applicants (I have to say, the weather is great here and it is a fun place to live 😎). When ppl are geographically limited (many Californians want to stay close to home or just love it here), it hurts their chances of being matched as well (please refer to the internship threads- internship tips, 2013 internship application and 2014 internship application).
To answer your other question, my current class size is 8 (however to not mislead...the class above me is the biggest we have ever had, 25).
So yes, Argosy OC is making lots of money and is doing the best they can to provide us with better training sites and resources.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using SDN Mobile. Please excuse any typos.
Don't even get me started on California - so overrated 😳
Your class size estimates don't jive with the data your program posts.
http://www.argosy.edu/documents/psydinfo/OrangeCounty-psyd-outcomes.pdf
They report their first-year student class sizes to have ranged from 19-38 over the past few years (see attrition table). Yes, some drop out, but that is an enormous amount of students to admit to one program (and some institutions are much worse).
I definitely take your point about other employment opportunities. I know that not all jobs require APA accreditation and there are other opportunities out there. But many of us also believe in minimal standards - APA accreditation is a MINIMAL standard of training, not some extra credential that would be nice. I firmly believe that no one should be licensable without an APA internship (match issues aside - there wouldn't be a problem if there weren't huge class sizes), and wish that more states had some kind of a standard that would prevent FSPSs from taking so many students every year.