Several people here talked about applying to same 3-4 Bay Area schools, but no one mentioned CIIS (Cal. Institute of Integral Studies) and JFK University, both APA-accredited PsyD programs. Can I take it that it is not worth applying to those two? Could it be that their reputations are worse than Argosy's? (based on what's been said about this school)
I go to school in the Bay Area, so I feel like I can provide a more personal opinion on the general reputations of the programs in this region. PGSP/Stanford tends to have the best reputation overall, and the students from this program are usually considered first for practicum positions throughout that Bay Area over the other programs. They also have some exclusive contracts with certain sites (E.g. Palo Alto VA) where only the students from that program are considered for the open positions. They also are typically viewed to have better case conceptualization skills than students from other programs, and often complete supplemental research and/or clinical practicums at Stanford or PAVA labs, which can help give a leg up on networking and a credible name to add to CVs. However, the class sizes are huge (I.e. around 70-80 students for each entering class in the PhD program and 30-40 for the PsyD program), which likely has a negative impact on the overall training as compared to R1 programs or those with <10 students per year.
Alliant is probably next in line, and there are many practicums that end up with a mix of PGSP and Alliant students who work together. However, I would say the variance of the students from Alliant is much broader in the sense that some students out of that program are excellent, while others are quite poor. I've heard numerous supervisors allude to the fact that when they take a student from Alliant, they feel like they are taking a big risk because they just aren't sure what they are going to get. Alliant also appears to have less support than PGSP/Stanford related to professional development or research pursuits.
There are varying opinions on the Wright Institute, just because they have such a psychodynamic lean, and the West Coast tends to favor more CBT-based approaches. I haven't heard many people say the training at the Wright Institute is subpar, just that you are ending up with very specialized training that is psychodynamically-oriented so often times students from this program aren't even being considered for the same types of practicum/internship positions as students from the other programs. The class sizes also seem to be much smaller than those say of PGSP, therefore they just have a much lesser presence in general throughout the Bay Area.
Argosy probably has the worst reputation of all the professional schools. It seems as though it would be difficult to be in this program due to lack of training opportunities, as many of the practicums available are going to be going for students from virtually all other programs before this one. Furthermore, I have never heard of any Argosy students ending up at any of the top-notch training facilities (E.g. UCSF, PAVA, SF VA etc.), whereas students from PGSP/Stanford and Alliant do end up in those programs. So while I can't speak to the specific level of training, the lack of opportunities alone would make obtaining an internship/postdoc/job seemingly much more difficult.
The only people that I have ever met or heard about from JFK opted for the Master's degree track and are intent on only doing general therapy at community mental health centers or private facilities. I've not heard anything particularly bad about their program, but they just don't seem to have much of a reputation at all.
Over the course of 5 years, I have never once heard of CIIS, so I guess that is telling...
Mind you, these are all just my personal interpretations after living/working/studying in this area for the past few years and hearing what various people have to say about these programs. It is quite possible (and probable) that other individuals would have some different insights. Also, to echo the sentiments of some of the previous posters in this thread, ALL of these programs are professional schools, which obviously come with certain broad-stroke assumptions from those in the field. Basically, every student coming from any of these schools is going to have an uphill battle when it comes to competing for internships/postdocs/jobs against students coming from traditional psychology programs.
