APPIC match when PhD program has APA accreditation site visit during interviews?

[pumpkinsoda]

Does anyone have any insight as to how internship sites may view people coming from a PhD program with an initial APA site-visit scheduled after internship applications have been submitted?

For context, I attend a large, R1, state university in a fairly new School Psychology PhD program (has existed for 4 years). APA has approved a site visit, but with all the backlogs it will not be until January-May of 2025. This would be after the Phase 1 match round. Although having a site visit scheduled does allow me to go through the APPIC process, I am worried about my match chances.

My university also has APA accredited clinical and counseling programs, so I am not super worried about my particular program. I do have experience in both in k-12 schools and a hospital setting doing counseling/therapy, psychoeducational testing, and psychodiagnostic testing. I also have unique fellowships and awards that may be appealing to some sites. That being said, would those sites take those experiences and reports into account at all?

Would I still have a chance at matching in Phase 1 next year (for the 2025-2026 application cycle) with a site-visit approval?

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[AcronymAllergy]

Does anyone have any insight as to how internship sites may view people coming from a PhD program with an initial APA site-visit scheduled after internship applications have been submitted?

For context, I attend a large, R1, state university in a fairly new School Psychology PhD program (has existed for 4 years). APA has approved a site visit, but with all the backlogs it will not be until January-May of 2025. This would be after the Phase 1 match round. Although having a site visit scheduled does allow me to go through the APPIC process, I am worried about my match chances.

My university also has APA accredited clinical and counseling programs, so I am not super worried about my particular program. I do have experience in both in k-12 schools and a hospital setting doing counseling/therapy, psychoeducational testing, and psychodiagnostic testing. I also have unique fellowships and awards that may be appealing to some sites. That being said, would those sites take those experiences and reports into account at all?

Would I still have a chance at matching in Phase 1 next year (for the 2025-2026 application cycle) with a site-visit approval?

Unfortunately, I don't know that a site visit will do a whole lot to change how your application is viewed. If the internship site (e.g., VA) requires that its trainees come from an accredited doctoral program, a non-accredited program with a site visit still may leave too much uncertainty. That being said, it does offer those sites at least the possibility you will be coming from an accredited program, so if the rest of your application is very strong, the sites may then opt to interview you and ask you to keep them informed if your program receives accreditation before the match deadline; this likely would not happen without a site visit.

But if your program hasn't received accreditation by the time the match deadline rolls around, the internship sites' hands will probably be tied and they wouldn't be able to rank you.

 

[summerbabe]

Agreed that if a site requires their applicants to come from an accredited program, you are probably out of luck. Program handbooks may specify whether this is a hard requirement so make sure you double check that as you build your list next year.

Otherwise, reaching out to training directors in advance to clarify when it comes to your application cycle might help you to save time/money on applications that won’t go anywhere, regardless of your personal qualifications.

I am on the faculty for a solid VA training program and while I’m not certain if we absolutely require this, we generally get enough quality applicants that somebody from an unaccredited program probably would not receive an interview from us since we already have to decline offering interviews to a decent number of average or better applicants each year due to lack of space (in addition to people who are a poor fit).

And matching to school based or even broader child-focused sites means that your competition will be much stiffer than if you were an adult generalist, without even accounting for program accreditation status.

Unless things have changed dramatically in the last 5 years since I graduated, there was a major imbalance between available non-adult options and people who wanted non-adult internships, especially if you want to compete with clinical psych students for pediatric focused internships in settings like AMCs whose training faculty largely came from clinical psych backgrounds and may be biased towards that modality of training.

Hell, I remember there being a handful of programs that I couldn’t apply to as somebody coming out of a research heavy Counseling program because those sites specifically wanted Clinical only applicants.

What type of advice or mentoring is your program providing regarding internship? How many cycles will have gone through internship prior to you applying? Are faculty/training director well versed in internship match or maybe potentially not so much (ie lots of young faculty)?

If your cohort is going to be the initial guinea pig cycle, that’s not ideal and where good mentoring and realistic advice would be especially needed.

And lastly, there are potentially fluctuations year to year in terms of how many applicants apply in phase 1/2, how many ultimately provide ranks and how many sites who typically offer spots withdraw all together, offer more spots than usual, or offer less spots than usual. If you end up applying during a ‘down’ cycle, I would imagine your odds increase a bit and vice versa.

 

[WisNeuro]

Unfortunately, I don't know that a site visit will do a whole lot to change how your application is viewed. If the internship site (e.g., VA) requires that its trainees come from an accredited doctoral program, a non-accredited program with a site visit still may leave too much uncertainty. That being said, it does offer those sites at least the possibility you will be coming from an accredited program, so if the rest of your application is very strong, the sites may then opt to interview you and ask you to keep them informed if your program receives accreditation before the match deadline; this likely would not happen without a site visit.

But if your program hasn't received accreditation by the time the match deadline rolls around, the internship sites' hands will probably be tied and they wouldn't be able to rank you.

Accreditation is one issue. The other issue is that it's a school psych program. Many internship sites do not take School Psych students.

 

[niceman]

If accreditation is a requirement, your application is likely screened out during the early phase so your other experiences won't matter much. There may be some flexibility at some sites so I agree with the above that you may as well ask. A clinical psych program I know of actually asked the whole first cohort to apply a year later because of a lack of accreditation, and two cohorts applied at the same time this year. While this is not ideal, at least you will be eligible to apply to a lot more sites.