APPIC thread?

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suzypep

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Hi everyone!

There's usually an APPIC thread going on around this time of year, right? I'm ready to bond with my fellow applicants this year. I am tired and nervous. How are all of you?
 
Ready to set something on fire. Seriously if I get one more complaint regarding changes APPIC made to the AAPI that are making more work for literally everyone that I have zero control over........its Zippo time.
 
How are people feeling about the re-vamped APPI website? It's mostly okay for me, except annoying that letter writers get multiple requests (one for each site) and I have to wait on them to submit my applications.
 
I don't know what the AAPI looked like before, but what we have now is terrible. Everything is way more work than it needs to be. Thank heavens I'm only doing this process once.
 
Hi everyone! I'm also applying and going crazy. Totally agree about the rec letters thing. I keep hearing (mainly from my DCT) that it's important to submit apps early/before the deadline (is that true?), but I don't want to hassle my writers to upload my letter. Good luck to all!
 
discolemonade said:
Hi everyone! I'm also applying and going crazy. Totally agree about the rec letters thing. I keep hearing (mainly from my DCT) that it's important to submit apps early/before the deadline (is that true?), but I don't want to hassle my writers to upload my letter. Good luck to all!
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I haven't heard from my DCT about benefits of submitting applications earlier than the deadline, but I have seen some indications on program brochures that they do review applications before the deadline (which may or may not be helpful if submitting early). But I'd also feel uncomfortable reminding my letter writers unless there was a reason to suspect they might be late.
 
discolemonade said:
Hi everyone! I'm also applying and going crazy. Totally agree about the rec letters thing. I keep hearing (mainly from my DCT) that it's important to submit apps early/before the deadline (is that true?), but I don't want to hassle my writers to upload my letter. Good luck to all!
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For any site that I have been involved in the internship process, it doesn't matter if it's early. Most people will not start reviewing apps until after the deadline. I would advise against submitting everything in the final hours prior to the deadline purely so that you can avoid technical issues that inevitably arise that you need to contact customer support for.
 
WisNeuro said:
For any site that I have been involved in the internship process, it doesn't matter if it's early. Most people will not start reviewing apps until after the deadline. I would advise against submitting everything in the final hours prior to the deadline purely so that you can avoid technical issues that inevitably arise that you need to contact customer support for.
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Thanks so much! very helpful.
 
suzypep said:
What a crazy time! I hope all of you are well and taking care of yourselves. I am applying to a larger number of sites, I think, so I feel like I'm drowning in cover letters!
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One of the most helpful suggestions I was given was to make a template for the cover letters. Some stuff is very consistent like whatever hook you use to sell yourself, the status of your dissertation, and what program you're in. If you're only applying to sites with specialty training then whatever you say regarding that will also be consistent. Then you have maybe one paragraph to change regarding why the specific site.
 
Spydra said:
One of the most helpful suggestions I was given was to make a template for the cover letters. Some stuff is very consistent like whatever hook you use to sell yourself, the status of your dissertation, and what program you're in. If you're only applying to sites with specialty training then whatever you say regarding that will also be consistent. Then you have maybe one paragraph to change regarding why the specific site.
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I totally agree with this and have found it very helpful. I have different paragraphs for different offerings/rotations (e.g., inpatient, assessment, etc.) and have been mixing and matching throughout my letters-it definitely gets easier and less time-consuming with each letter. QUESTION: I did not even think to talk about my dissertation status in my cover letter...are we supposed to? I come from a very clinical program and am applying to very clinical sites so is it different than for more research oriented sites? Thanks!
 
discolemonade said:
QUESTION: I did not even think to talk about my dissertation status in my cover letter...are we supposed to? I come from a very clinical program and am applying to very clinical sites so is it different than for more research oriented sites? Thanks!
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I do not know if its a supposed to kind of thing, but there is a reason I am doing it. I am only applying to sites that offer postdoc positions because if I don't have to move in a year then why would I. Of course I will be applying to other postdoc sites at the appropriate time, but I want the option to stay put. What I learned from prior interns is that some sites make those offers early (sometimes late Fall even) if you seem to be a good fit, but they are contingent upon dissertation completion. So it can be helpful to inform them of what is going on with dissertation so they know who they have the potential of making an early or on time offer to.

I also have learned that sites read applications differently. Some read everything and some just read pieces. So I have incorporated a mention of my dissertation in my cover letter, CV, and the research essay to hopefully cover how everyone will choose to read the application.

Some sites also offer protected dissertation time so mentioning the status will let them know who's actually going to want that time versus who might be open to using that time for something else. Given all the COVID-19 complications I imagine more interns will be using all of that time for dissertation rather than other projects. I also have the sense that sites that may not usually offer protected dissertation time may become more willing to do so.
 
Spydra said:
I also have learned that sites read applications differently. Some read everything and some just read pieces. So I have incorporated a mention of my dissertation in my cover letter, CV, and the research essay to hopefully cover how everyone will choose to read the application.
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That's a good idea, honestly. Thank you!
 
Spydra said:
I am only applying to sites that offer postdoc positions because if I don't have to move in a year then why would I. Of course I will be applying to other postdoc sites at the appropriate time, but I want the option to stay put. What I learned from prior interns is that some sites make those offers early (sometimes late Fall even) if you seem to be a good fit, but they are contingent upon dissertation completion.
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I definitely know of sites that follow this model and generally, they will make those offers early and ask for your commitment well before the deadline for their APPIC postdoc application ends (if they participate in the UPPD).

If so, you would be prevented from following through on exploring other postdoc opportunities since this offer will likely have been made months before any other postdoc applications are even due.

You could always decline the 'early' offer and apply through the regular competitive process but from my perspective, these internship + postdoc setups benefit sites much more than trainees since trainees have WAAAAAY more opportunity and leverage when it comes time for postdoc since formal postdocs aren't required.
 
discolemonade said:
I did not even think to talk about my dissertation status in my cover letter...are we supposed to?
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I would definitely mention it, especially if you've made significant progress. Dissertation is the largest single hurdle to getting your PhD/PsyD and generally speaking, quality candidates are more likely to be on top of their dissertation game, even if they are 100% clinically focused career wise.

Unfortunately, I know of multiple people who were never able to finish their PhDs due to issues with dissertation so this can be another small metric to determine who is more likely to be a quality candidate.
 
Hello fellow applicants! Nice to be on this thread with you. Regarding letter writers, I gave my letter writers the suggested deadline of Oct 26, and checked in w them a week after I sent my CV etc, and then again after I sent the AAPI request. The AAPI request landed in two of their spam boxes so I would definitely recommend that step. I know two of my letter writers will be very timely but I anticipate chasing one of them pretty hard starting on Oct 26...and will also check in with that person a few days before the suggested Oct 26 deadline. Admin is not this person's strong suit.
 
HPB2015 said:
Hello fellow applicants! Nice to be on this thread with you. Regarding letter writers, I gave my letter writers the suggested deadline of Oct 26, and checked in w them a week after I sent my CV etc, and then again after I sent the AAPI request. The AAPI request landed in two of their spam boxes so I would definitely recommend that step. I know two of my letter writers will be very timely but I anticipate chasing one of them pretty hard starting on Oct 26...and will also check in with that person a few days before the suggested Oct 26 deadline. Admin is not this person's strong suit.
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I hope you asked at least one more letter writer than you actually needed. That was another wise piece of advice I was given, if you need 3 LORs then recruit 4 letter writers. The first 3 in are what you submit with. Also doing your best to avoid asking people who have a track record of being slow might help.
 
Spydra said:
I hope you asked at least one more letter writer than you actually needed. That was another wise piece of advice I was given, if you need 3 LORs then recruit 4 letter writers. The first 3 in are what you submit with. Also doing your best to avoid asking people who have a track record of being slow might help.
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I hear you. This person is writing four classmates' letters this year and writes them annually. It just requires a lot of checking in. But I agree with your advice generally!
 
Chiming in to say good luck to all of us! And you don’t have to wait for letters to submit. The AAPI Help pages say so. All you need is the minimum 2 recommenders—but I didn’t trust that and went ahead and added my 3rd person to all just in case. I also told them ahead of time they’d get a barrage of emails. They only need to submit the letter once and can designate it to automatically attach to the rest of your applications. I’m confident it’ll be in before the deadline.
 
Those of you who have already submitted — are y’all neurotically refreshing your email, staring at the calendar, and waiting until notifications start rolling in?? No? Just me?:nailbiting:

The gray area between submitting and mid November/ early December is hell.
 
jmdarling19! said:
I received a response from one of the sites I applied to yesterday, so for me the craziness has already begun! 😵
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Dang that is fast! Idk if that’s more motivation for me to submit today or less [emoji23][emoji23]
 
I thought I'd have at least a couple of weeks off in November are you kidding @jmdarling19!
 
jmdarling19! said:
I received a response from one of the sites I applied to yesterday, so for me the craziness has already begun! 😵
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Oh wow, do they say they do rolling reviews? I applied to one site with rolling but I didn’t submit early enough for it to matter lol
 
Anyone else wake up panicked at 4:30am convinced there was a typo in one of their essays?! Well I did and I found it! Fixed that then checked all of the other essays for seemingly the millionth time and finally improved that one paragraph that had been driving me nuts. Then I checked everything else for the millionth time, uploaded everything to the portal, and now just need to hit submit.
 
ccpsych16 said:
Chiming in to say good luck to all of us! And you don’t have to wait for letters to submit. The AAPI Help pages say so. All you need is the minimum 2 recommenders—but I didn’t trust that and went ahead and added my 3rd person to all just in case. I also told them ahead of time they’d get a barrage of emails. They only need to submit the letter once and can designate it to automatically attach to the rest of your applications. I’m confident it’ll be in before the deadline.
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Do you mean that when you submitted you were able to select which letter writers to attach to the application? I have been getting very conflicting information about this.
 
ccpsych16 said:
Oh wow, do they say they do rolling reviews? I applied to one site with rolling but I didn’t submit early enough for it to matter lol
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They did not say that they do rolling reviews but they must because their application deadline was not until 12/01.
 
Spydra said:
Anyone else wake up panicked at 4:30am convinced there was a typo in one of their essays?! Well I did and I found it! Fixed that then checked all of the other essays for seemingly the millionth time and finally improved that one paragraph that had been driving me nuts. Then I checked everything else for the millionth time, uploaded everything to the portal, and now just need to hit submit.
Click to expand...
As I downloaded the final PDFs post-submission I found a mistake in one of my cover letters. Shouldn’t be too bad, it wasn’t a typo but I repeated the same sentence in 2 consecutive paragraphs. I’m sure that won’t disqualify me!


Spydra said:
Do you mean that when you submitted you were able to select which letter writers to attach to the application? I have been getting very conflicting information about this.
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I mean that after I submitted, I could still add additional recommenders. You can’t submit without having at least 2 on there. Once they’re there & the letters are uploaded, you can’t remove them. I wanna say you can’t remove them even before you submit if they’ve uploaded their letter. I submitted all my apps last weekend/early this week, but I threw in one yesterday and I don’t think it let me delete them after I added their name/email because they all had uploaded their letters. Does that answer your question?
 
jmdarling19! said:
They did not say that they do rolling reviews but they must because their application deadline was not until 12/01.
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Interesting. I applied to one with a December deadline and a projected turnaround time of a few days later, so I imagine they might do the same and review earlier. Now I’m thinking I could hear from them anytime! I checked last year’s interview thread and jotted down the dates for my sites, and that one didn’t seem to notify any earlier than their stated date. But, most applicants aren’t on SDN!
 
ccpsych16 said:
As I downloaded the final PDFs post-submission I found a mistake in one of my cover letters. Shouldn’t be too bad, it wasn’t a typo but I repeated the same sentence in 2 consecutive paragraphs. I’m sure that won’t disqualify me!

I mean that after I submitted, I could still add additional recommenders. You can’t submit without having at least 2 on there. Once they’re there & the letters are uploaded, you can’t remove them. I wanna say you can’t remove them even before you submit if they’ve uploaded their letter. I submitted all my apps last weekend/early this week, but I threw in one yesterday and I don’t think it let me delete them after I added their name/email because they all had uploaded their letters. Does that answer your question?
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If one typo disqualifies you then you probably don't want to go there anyway. Your observations of being unable to delete LORs after they've been uploaded is what I'm also experiencing but my DCT swears we can delete the ones we don't want/need. Good thing I am always checking elsewhere.
 
Spydra said:
If one typo disqualifies you then you probably don't want to go there anyway. Your observations of being unable to delete LORs after they've been uploaded is what I'm also experiencing but my DCT swears we can delete the ones we don't want/need. Good thing I am always checking elsewhere.
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It doesn't appear possible to remove once they are uploaded, so I hope the sites that accidentally receive 4 LORs from me or anyone else won't hold it against us. A few of mine will because I thought I could put them in and remove one based on our TDs instructions.
 
John Dory said:
It doesn't appear possible to remove once they are uploaded, so I hope the sites that accidentally receive 4 LORs from me or anyone else won't hold it against us. A few of mine will because I thought I could put them in and remove one based on our TDs instructions.
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*sigh* I get things are crazy, but misinformation is not helpful. I added a line to my cover letters explaining the issue and called it a day. I do not want anyone assuming I cannot follow directions. And I do not want to be penalized for overpreparing given everything going on. That's all I can do so I submitted them all.
 
Psy880 said:
I had this issue too. I thought we could pick and choose once they were uploaded but it locks and you can’t delete them it appears. What I noticed though is you can just remove and add the site again, pick your letter writers again, and only select three that time. If a writer opted to automatically send their letter to all your sites they should automatically populate.
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I am glad this worked for you. I didn't want to risk trying that in case it didn't work right and then deal with the outrage of anyone having to resubmit at the last minute.
 
It’s been a few years, but I recall that you choose the cover letters, essays, materials, and recommendations at the time you certify the submissions (in other words, when you officially send the application out).

That may be why you can’t get rid of a recommendation. But yes, assuming things haven’t changed, you can choose which of the 4 recs to send out
 
ExecutiveDysfunction said:
It’s been a few years, but I recall that you choose the cover letters, essays, materials, and recommendations at the time you certify the submissions (in other words, when you officially send the application out).

That may be why you can’t get rid of a recommendation. But yes, assuming things haven’t changed, you can choose which of the 4 recs to send out
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This year there's a completely new system. We received a MATCH NEWS email today that stressed that TDs and DCTs are also confused about the whole process and encouraged to take that into consideration that we are also confused.

With this year's portal, we had to individually upload each piece of the application for every site--which is a huge pain for the CV and essays which shouldn't really change per site. There was nowhere for us to just upload materials and choose later (if that's what you're describing, and this would've been a nice feature).
 
ccpsych16 said:
This year there's a completely new system. We received a MATCH NEWS email today that stressed that TDs and DCTs are also confused about the whole process and encouraged to take that into consideration that we are also confused.

With this year's portal, we had to individually upload each piece of the application for every site--which is a huge pain for the CV and essays which shouldn't really change per site. There was nowhere for us to just upload materials and choose later (if that's what you're describing, and this would've been a nice feature).
Click to expand...

Oy then ignore me. Good luck. I hope (and somewhat expect) that people will be understanding if there are widespread technical issues.
 
And don't forget that this was the first year that AAPI required hours only be submitted through Time 2 Track, so those of us with terrible DCTs who made no mention this was even being discussed spent the entire month moving our hours manually into Time 2 Track to even apply.
 
matryoshka_brain said:
Those of you who have already submitted — are y’all neurotically refreshing your email, staring at the calendar, and waiting until notifications start rolling in?? No? Just me?:nailbiting:

The gray area between submitting and mid November/ early December is hell.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's hard! I made and perfected my "potential" interview calendar and preferred dates just to have that over and done with. Trying to look at this period as the calm before the storm and to enjoy it as a break. In my view, the applications were probably the biggest piece of work and now interviews are more of a chance to meet people, learn about the site, communicate your excitement for said site, and show that you don't have a personality disorder. 😉
 
clinpsychperson2016 said:
Yeah, it's hard! I made and perfected my "potential" interview calendar and preferred dates just to have that over and done with. Trying to look at this period as the calm before the storm and to enjoy it as a break. In my view, the applications were probably the biggest piece of work and now interviews are more of a chance to meet people, learn about the site, communicate your excitement for said site, and show that you don't have a personality disorder. 😉
Click to expand...

And we should all be mindful that we have a huge advantage over applicants in past years. We do not have to travel so we don't have to plan for late flights, lost luggage, travel related sleep deprivation, accidentally forgetting something important, fewer time change screw ups, etc. We have a greater chance of showing up to our interviews fresh faced, appropriately dressed, and with whatever else we might need available.
 
I submitted everything yesterday and am already checking my email every half hour. I guess I'll have to throw myself into some distracting hobbies this November.
 
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