maranatha said:
Thank you. Won't name my school, but I haven't received much helpful advice from my PD and it seems that many of the attendings where I am are not up-to-date on the programs. Hence, the post on this forum...
Hey Maranatha,
I had a similar situation this year where my school was not particularly helpful in guidance regarding specific programs. Basically what I did was I decided on where (geography-wise) I wanted to live. Then, within those areas, I took a look at the programs available and went to their websites. While most programs will say that they are balanced, you can get a lot of info from their mission statement and the type of didactics they have on their website. Check to see that they have a lot of didactics throughout the year and years on therapy. In addition, I tried to see if they had people trained in the specific therapy modalities teaching each modality. Also, knowing the training that the PD and chairman have can also be a good hint (i.e. if they're analytically trained, they're probably not going to throw therapy out the window in favor of pharm). IMHO, all programs will train you in psychopharm, so you should look to make sure that they have adequate/acceptable training in psychotherapy.
Also, SDN is a great resource. Take a look at the post-interview impressions for this year and run a search for the previous years. You can get a great idea about what the people here thought about balance of programs.
Geography wise, I think that the two coasts are more therapy-friendly. I've heard that Cali is pretty good with therapy and I know that the east coast (NYC, Boston, DC) has great therapy training and atmosphere. Chicago is also great (my number 1!!)
You'll get the best idea once you start interviewing, but in terms of planning out which programs to apply to, I basically only did the above. I know how frustrating it can be if you can't get help from you home institution's administration. I hope this is helpful and I'm sure you'll be fine next year.
