2010-2011 Internship Thread

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Someone I know heard from Dartmouth today...so far haven't heard much from anyone...this is such a drawn out process!
 
UAB and UF Health Sciences Center have offered interviews
 
I got an interview at NY-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in NYC!!
 
Has anyone heard anything from Brown or UIC? As an aside, I just got back from ABCT, and was a little disappointed in the programing. Anyone else have similar feelings?
 
hi everyone,
i am currently an intern at a competitive VA (i'd prefer not to disclose where). anyhow, i wanted to let you know that our site is contacting people with good and bad news in a pretty random order. so, some people will probably hear 1-2 weeks before others. this has to do with the fact that the applications get assigned to different faculty members to review. some faculty members are much faster than others, so the applicants they are assigned to may be notified sooner. also, last year, i heard from the majority of my sites in the last few days leading up to 12/15 and many on 12/15. i was freaking out, thinking nobody was going to interview me. in the end, i got 11 interviews at great sites!! so, i just wanted to let you all know that it's best not to read too much into the timing around notifications because you could really drive yourself crazy. good luck to you all, and hang in there!!
 
i've heard from the child clinical and ped psych tracks of nationwide
 
For everybody still waiting to hear about interviews, I just talked to a training director who said he was contacting and scheduling people who lived in his geographic location first and then contacting people who live further away. Just more proof that interview invitations are random. Its only a few weeks until December 15...hold tight.
 
cmuhooligan said:
Has anyone heard anything from Brown or UIC? As an aside, I just got back from ABCT, and was a little disappointed in the programing. Anyone else have similar feelings?
Click to expand...

I haven't decided if this forum is helping my anxiety or making it worse, but it is nice to get an idea of where other people are hearing from. Nothing from Brown or UIC - I know UIC is meeting this week, but not sure what that means in terms of hearing about interviews.

I have heard from Children's Minneapolis, University of Chicago, Children's Memorial Hospital, Mass General (child track), and Stanford Children's Hospital. The last three were all today.
 
Rejection emails from U of M Institute for Human Adjustment and Holcomb Behavioral Health Systems
 
srb12012 said:
I haven't decided if this forum is helping my anxiety or making it worse, but it is nice to get an idea of where other people are hearing from. Nothing from Brown or UIC - I know UIC is meeting this week, but not sure what that means in terms of hearing about interviews.

I have heard from Children's Minneapolis, University of Chicago, Children's Memorial Hospital, Mass General (child track), and Stanford Children's Hospital. The last three were all today.
Click to expand...

If you don't mind answering -- was your response from U Chicago positive? What track were you applying to?
 
I heard from the Nebraska internship consortium by email.
 
Rejections from Bay Pines VA & Greater Hartford Consortium.
Not sure what happened with Bay Pines.Last year I had an interview there and this year not only had significantly more clinical experience, but also received a grant and finished my dissertation. So I was a better candidate this year as compared to last year! :shrug:

This process makes absolutely no sense to me. It never has.
 
manko7 said:
Rejections from Bay Pines VA & Greater Hartford Consortium.
Not sure what happened with Bay Pines.Last year I had an interview there and this year not only had significantly more clinical experience, but also received a grant and finished my dissertation. So I was a better candidate this year as compared to last year! :shrug:

This process makes absolutely no sense to me. It never has.
Click to expand...

Although perhaps your application has improved, could it be that you didn't interview well last year, thus, even with your better "stats", they may not be interested in interviewing you again? I know that I sometimes find it hard to determine whether I had a good or bad interview. Who knows.
 
I'm sorry Manko...that's frustrating. Hopefully this coming week will bring you lots of good news!
 
cmuhooligan said:
Although perhaps your application has improved, could it be that you didn't interview well last year, thus, even with your better "stats", they may not be interested in interviewing you again? I know that I sometimes find it hard to determine whether I had a good or bad interview. Who knows.
Click to expand...

That's what I guessed cmuhooligan. Could also be that the sites divided up the apps and someone different from last year reviewed them. Could also be that the increase in research productivity and grant made them feel that I was not a candidate for that site. Could be that they found my research esoteric.

No one knows and thats the problem with the whole process. I hope your experience is working out better. I have 14 more sites left.

CMUhooligan- You are right. Some of the interviews were hard to read. Did you find some of the interviews absurd last year? I got the "What are your hobbies question" more times than I would have liked. As if I flew out 600 miles in January to talk about my hobbies. I could have easily explained those over the phone.

Piperhen- I just can't afford these interviews year after year. I would give back all my awards, the grant, and apa pubs to get even a bottom-tiered APA internship. I have no idea what constitutes excellence in this field anymore. My family believes I am a defective student. My department has lowered their regard for me. I'm going to be 30 next year and I'm too poor to get a girlfriend. I'll never start a family. Arrrrrrrrghhhhh!!!!!!


Ok i'm better now!
 
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manko7 said:
CMUhooligan- You are right. Some of the interviews were hard to read. Did you find some of the interviews absurd last year? I got the "What are your hobbies question" more times than I would have liked. As if I flew out 600 miles in January to talk about my hobbies. I could have easily explained those over the phone.
Click to expand...

Yes, I had my fair share of similar questions. Or even worse, interviews that solely consisted of me asking questions (for 45 mins, that can be a bit much!)
 
cmuhooligan said:
Yes, I had my fair share of similar questions. Or even worse, interviews that solely consisted of me asking questions (for 45 mins, that can be a bit much!)
Click to expand...


I also experienced this as well cmuhooligan. I sometimes wondered if the sites had already found their candidate. In some interviews I received the distinct impression that from the onset the site had already picked their candidate and the interviewer was just going through the motions.

I appreciated all the in-person interview requests I received at the time but in retrospect I don't think they were useful. Going to see a site was helpful in only one case- Emory University. After going there and interacting with staff I had the visceral impression that I would not be a good match with their site. We simply had different ideas on directions for future research.

I had some favorites for other sites and some that were not that high on the list. But let me tell you folks, with the tremendous imbalance going on right now in the field should "fit" really be a top concern?

In the interviews most sites never conveyed a lack of fit and talking with interns there and interns past I certainly would have been able to complete the work anywhere. The question is rather I would have been "happy" at those sites.

I can say with incontrovertible conviction that I could stand anyplace for 1 year and you probably could as well. 1 year goes by quickly when one is busy and post-doc is right around the corner.

In retrospect I wish I did not receive all those interviews. It was tremendously expensive and I wasted all my vacation time from my current job in order to participate.

To DCTs I would say the following: Given the economic hardships of this year, please do not send out so many in-person interview requests unless you are absolutely, 100% serious about the applicant. Instead of a 10 to one interview to position ratio at many sites I would cut that in half from 5 to 1.
 
manko7 said:
I also experienced this as well cmuhooligan. I sometimes wondered if the sites had already found their candidate. In some interviews I received the distinct impression that from the onset the site had already picked their candidate and the interviewer was just going through the motions.

I appreciated all the in-person interview requests I received at the time but in retrospect I don't think they were useful. Going to see a site was helpful in only one case- Emory University. After going there and interacting with staff I had the visceral impression that I would not be a good match with their site. We simply had different ideas on directions for future research.

I had some favorites for other sites and some that were not that high on the list. But let me tell you folks, with the tremendous imbalance going on right now in the field should "fit" really be a top concern?

In the interviews most sites never conveyed a lack of fit and talking with interns there and interns past I certainly would have been able to complete the work anywhere. The question is rather I would have been "happy" at those sites.

I can say with incontrovertible conviction that I could stand anyplace for 1 year and you probably could as well. 1 year goes by quickly when one is busy and post-doc is right around the corner.

In retrospect I wish I did not receive all those interviews. It was tremendously expensive and I wasted all my vacation time from my current job in order to participate.

To DCTs I would say the following: Given the economic hardships of this year, please do not send out so many in-person interview requests unless you are absolutely, 100% serious about the applicant. Instead of a 10 to one interview to position ratio at many sites I would cut that in half from 5 to 1.
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, some sites do know whom they are going to rank ahead of time. I attended an APA med school internship last year, and the interview process was just going through the motions. The site ALWAYS ranks the graduate students who did their externship there in the top slots. I saw the backroom dealing going on the whole time. The only way prospective interns on the outside of the process become interns there is if the pre-selected applicants don't rank the med school high

At my graduate program, I also had to extern at an APA internship. The site served as a back-up internship site for students from my program. For example, if you did not want to spend the $$ to interview at out-of-state sites or if you wanted to stay in the area, you would simply tell the site's director and you knew where you were going to end up. Despite all this, the site still held interviews to outside candidates, lol!

These types of things are very uncommon, though. When I interviewed, I could tell most of the sites were still trying to make up their minds regarding who to rank. The key is that you have to make yourself stand out in a good way. The interviewers hear the same canned responses all day and, unless you have strong, unique responses, you will be forgotten the second you walk out the door..
 
manko7 said:
I appreciated all the in-person interview requests I received at the time but in retrospect I don't think they were useful. Going to see a site was helpful in only one case- Emory University. After going there and interacting with staff I had the visceral impression that I would not be a good match with their site. We simply had different ideas on directions for future research.
Click to expand...

This is true for many sites, particularly those in a different type of geographic setting (big city v. rural v. suburban). On my interviews last year, there was a night and day difference between certain sites, and I didn't fully realize this until I was on site.

manko7 said:
I had some favorites for other sites and some that were not that high on the list. But let me tell you folks, with the tremendous imbalance going on right now in the field should "fit" really be a top concern?
Click to expand...

It really is, both for the site and the applicant. The point of internship is to provide the student a solid training, often filling in gaps that will help them be a well-rounded clinician, and if you need training in group work, and the site only offers individual work....that doesn't help either side. I found during my interviews that the sites really were concerned with the fit, because no one benefits from a bad fit. Some sites often recruit for post-docs and/or afterwards for jobs. I know at my site there are a number of current staff members who were interns who either stayed or came back after a few years.

manko7 said:
To DCTs I would say the following: Given the economic hardships of this year, please do not send out so many in-person interview requests unless you are absolutely, 100% serious about the applicant. Instead of a 10 to one interview to position ratio at many sites I would cut that in half from 5 to 1.
Click to expand...

Some sites probably have a ratio of applicants they invite (based on prior years), while others probably do more on "fit"...and roll the dice that they pick good candidates that will rank the site high. Even though applicants feel like they are at the whim of the DCT, the DCT is under pressure to find good people who fit in with the staff, as well as students who could best benefit from the training.

At my site the interns are involved in the first step of review for applicants, and the biggest focus was on, "how would this student fit at our site?" As interns, we know what is needed to do well at our site, and it doesn't help anyone to invite someone who won't fit at the site. We aren't in a big city, most of our veterans live in rural areas, and the Midwestern culture is very different than other places. Looking back at some of my interview sites, I think I probably could have gotten by, but I don't think I would have had nearly the experience if I "compromised" on the fit.
 
edieb said:
Unfortunately, some sites do know whom they are going to rank ahead of time. I attended an APA med school internship last year, and the interview process was just going through the motions. The site ALWAYS ranks the graduate students who did their externship there in the top slots. I saw the backroom dealing going on the whole time. The only way prospective interns on the outside of the process become interns there is if the pre-selected applicants don't rank the med school high

At my graduate program, I also had to extern at an APA internship. The site served as a back-up internship site for students from my program. For example, if you did not want to spend the $$ to interview at out-of-state sites or if you wanted to stay in the area, you would simply tell the site's director and you knew where you were going to end up. Despite all this, the site still held interviews to outside candidates, lol!

These types of things are very uncommon, though. When I interviewed, I could tell most of the sites were still trying to make up their minds regarding who to rank. The key is that you have to make yourself stand out in a good way. The interviewers hear the same canned responses all day and, unless you have strong, unique responses, you will be forgotten the second you walk out the door..
Click to expand...

I appreciate your candor Edieb. One of the things I regret this year was not asking if a site has had former externs that are now applying. I would steer clear of those sites if I only knew. My girlfriend has the lock on a particular site for the same reasons you stated.

I had a boring response to "what are your hobbies." I said running. My new answer will be "I like to pick fruit in southeast Asia." That should be unique.
 
Therapist4Chnge said:
It really is, both for the site and the applicant. The point of internship is to provide the student a solid training, often filling in gaps that will help them be a well-rounded clinician, and if you need training in group work, and the site only offers individual work....that doesn't help either side. I found during my interviews that the sites really were concerned with the fit, because no one benefits from a bad fit. Some sites often recruit for post-docs and/or afterwards for jobs. I know at my site there are a number of current staff members who were interns who either stayed or came back after a few years.

.
Click to expand...

But Therapist4chnge if the point of internship is to fill gaps, then what is the criteria the site uses to select a candidate? The candidate with the most gaps? The least gaps?

There is no doubt any intern will learn SOMETHING while on internship. Heck, if you take a new job anywhere you will learn something new. So what does a site get out of "teaching" an intern with gaps?

Many sites that I encountered didn't seem to want to fill gaps. They are looking for students who already have experienced the types of therapies/populations they are seeing. Hence if you have experience working at a VA then would interning at a VA fill more "gaps" than interning at a medical center or trauma center? In this case there would be a great deal of redundancy in experiences.

It seems to me that an internship site is more interested in attaining cheap labor.
 
manko7 said:
But Therapist4chnge if the point of internship is to fill gaps, then what is the criteria the site uses to select a candidate? The candidate with the most gaps? The least gaps?
Click to expand...

I think it varies by site. Some sites are looking for someone to step in and hit the ground running. It seems that many of these are the "sweat shop" places people talk about once in awhile. The positions function more like a job, and less like an internship....which some people are fine with. There are also sites that put a major emphasis on training and supervision. I can't really say how each site sets their criteria, but I think a strong generalist training + an opportunity to grow (in core training areas offered by the site) is probably pretty high on the list.

manko7 said:
There is no doubt any intern will learn SOMETHING while on internship. Heck, if you take a new job anywhere you will learn something new. So what does a site get out of "teaching" an intern with gaps?
Click to expand...

Some supervisors really enjoy the mentorship process. It offers an opportunity to pass on knowledge, as well as help shape the next generation of clinicians. It also offers them the opportunity to train possible colleagues, or at least ensure that clinicians coming from their program will be a positive addition to the field and represent the site well.

manko7 said:
Many sites that I encountered didn't seem to want to fill gaps. They are looking for students who already have experienced the types of therapies/populations they are seeing. Hence if you have experience working at a VA then would interning at a VA fill more "gaps" than interning at a medical center or trauma center? In this case there would be a great deal of redundancy in experiences.

It seems to me that an internship site is more interested in attaining cheap labor.
Click to expand...
That definitely happens at some places. When interviewing, I'd ask about the time split for various aspects of the site. Any site that has 80%+ contact hours is probably closer to a "sweat shop" than a training facility. My site is probably 40% direct contact hours, 25% supervision and didactic training, 20% report writing, 10% administrative, and 5% research (for people who don't elect a research rotation).

I have a friend at a counseling center, and I think her expectation for direct contact hours is at least 30/wk, which to me sounds insane. Obviously not all counseling centers are like this, but it is definitely important to understand the expectations of each training site.
 
James Madison University just started sending out email rejections two minutes ago.

<sigh>
 
srb12012 said:
I haven't decided if this forum is helping my anxiety or making it worse, but it is nice to get an idea of where other people are hearing from. Nothing from Brown or UIC - I know UIC is meeting this week, but not sure what that means in terms of hearing about interviews.

I have heard from Children's Minneapolis, University of Chicago, Children's Memorial Hospital, Mass General (child track), and Stanford Children's Hospital. The last three were all today.
Click to expand...


Did you get an interview from Children's Memorial? I have not heard from them yet...So far I have interviews at UAB child track and Children's Hospital of Michigan
 
uespm said:
Did you get an interview from Children's Memorial? I have not heard from them yet...So far I have interviews at UAB child track and Children's Hospital of Michigan
Click to expand...

I did get an interview. The only place I have heard from this week is Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, which emailed yesterday. Still waiting for most of the other Children's hospitals on the east coast. Have you heard from any of them?
 
I am still waiting on a lot of the east coast and west coast children's hospitals. I will post as soon as I hear from more!
 
SteelMariposa said:
James Madison University just started sending out email rejections two minutes ago.

<sigh>
Click to expand...

My friend just received a rejection from them. 🙁
She has considerable experience in collegiate counseling as well has several publications. Not sure what a good "fit" is there but its obviously not someone with a substantial amount of collegiate counseling and exceptional publication count.

They were recently mentioned in the latest issue of the GradPSYCH magazine if anyone is interested.
 
Anyone heard from the Baltimore VA? Their TD reported that we would know by "late November"; given that today is the 30th, I was hoping for some news!
 
cmuhooligan said:
Anyone heard from the Baltimore VA? Their TD reported that we would know by "late November"; given that today is the 30th, I was hoping for some news!
Click to expand...


Nope not yet...aside from that generic letter we got a while back saying which tracks we are being considered for...:luck:
 
NYU/Bellevue (child), and Mercy First have send out interview invites (at least some, don't know if all)
 
PiperHen said:
Nope not yet...aside from that generic letter we got a while back saying which tracks we are being considered for...:luck:
Click to expand...

Hmm... I can't remember if I received this letter.

Has anyone received an invite from UC San Francisco? I understand their interviews are next week.
 
manko7 said:
Hmm... I can't remember if I received this letter.

Has anyone received an invite from UC San Francisco? I understand their interviews are next week.
Click to expand...

Yes, I got an invite on the 19th. Interview is Monday the 7th 😱
 
Got an interview with Duke for mid Jan. Any one hear from other BMed or Health Psych sites (on east coast)?
 
manko7 said:
Hmm... I can't remember if I received this letter.
Click to expand...

Sorry I should have said email, not letter. Mine came on Nov 10 and was very brief; just mentioned that they had received my application and that I was being considered for the child tracks.

Had good news from Kennedy Krieger Institute over the phone today. They said they will be calling to offer interview invites over the next few days.
 
Just wondering if anyone has heard from Institute of Living: Hartford Hospital yet...their brochure says they notify by the 1st...
 
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