PhD/PsyD Goals for Top Neuropsych Internship Sites?

[fellwynd2]

Hi all, I’m currently in my 3rd year in a clinical psychology PhD hoping to go into neuropsychology. The first two years of my program were fairly structured but now I’m at a point where I have a lot more flexibility and can now change course to shore up weak spots. I’ve seen a lot of things out there about minimum and average expectations for neuropsychology internship sites, but I’ve been curious, what should I aim for in order to get into top sites? 1,000 assessment hours? 10+ pubs? I guess what makes a 95th percentile applicant to sites?

For reference I definitely don’t think I’m that guy, at least right now. I have around 180 intervention hours and 260 assessment hours and have written 32 reports. I only have one publication at the moment but I have one revise and resubmit and am hoping to have at least 4 either published or under review by the time I apply. However now that I have some more flexibility I want to know what I can aim for and accomplish with the time left in my program. I’m also more interested in research heavy sites, but I’d be interested to hear about any top site experiences people have had- research or no.

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[summerbabe]

have around 180 intervention hours and 260 assessment hours and have written 32 reports.

I'll add this comment as a generalist involved in VA training and then let the neuro people chime in:

Make sure you also get adequate intervention hours.

Predoctoral internship is still generalist training and even at the most research and neuro heavy sites, you'll spend the majority of your internship year doing non-neuro stuff (as far as I know but I've been a VA lifer).

And people evaluating your application will be mix of neuro and non-neuro people with there likely being a lot more non-neuro reviewers.

So gaps in intervention experience (like zero group therapy hours, low supervision hours for intervention specifically) could hurt your application and potentially get you ranked below somebody who has a worse neuro CV than you.

You don't need to go over the top with intervention since that's not your focus but make sure to get some good mentoring regarding future placements options and have a balanced plan of how to round out your overall training while fine tuning your neuro foundation. Good luck!

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I agree that you don't want to ignore the intervention hours component, although you'll probably also want to aim for 500+ assessment hours. Your number of reports is probably fine, but the breadth is also important, so just keep building on that and branching out to work in different settings/with different populations.

It's been a little while since I've reviewed applications for internship, but 4 publications will probably put you in the upper echelon other than against folks who are hoping for an academic/straight research career.

For internship, there's a "rule" that used to get passed around (maybe still does) that it needs to be 50+% neuro-focused to be in line with Houston Conference guidelines and ABPP requirements. That's false. The 50% guideline, IIRC, came from a paper back in maybe the 80's or 90's, might've been by Reitan. AITCN sites are required, I believe, to be 50+% neuro-focused, but if you don't get that amount of time in neuro on internship, it won't bar you from applying to fellowship or for board certification. However, you definitely want to get some neuro training on internship. Also, a lot can depend on how much neuro experience you have in grad school. If a lot of grad school was neuro-centric, then you have some leeway for a more generalist internship. If you didn't get much neuro training in grad school, you'll probably want/need a neuro-focused internship.

 

[RxPsych]

For reference, I'm applying to only neuro internships this year. Here are some of my stats: about 260 intervention, 480 assessment, and 100 integrated reports. I have 2 pubs, one first author and the other 3rd author. None are neuro but are psych assessment related. 4 more pubs in progress, with 3 under review, 2 being neuro.

I have heard feedback from supervisors (including one ABPP-CN) that I should at least get interviews at most sites since I'm applying to a wide geographic range and of varying competitiveness. I think the most important thing in your spot right now would be getting clinical experiences across a variety of practicum settings and figuring out the types of experiences you want during internship, which will affect what sites you apply to.