Internship Rankings?

[LGPsychology]

Does a systematic ranking of internship programs exist anywhere, or is this something you just have to talk through with your mentor? Are internships too diverse in nature to be compared to one another? How do you know what's competitive, how do you know what's not?

Sincerely,
First Year Clinical Student Procrastinating Studying for Finals

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[AcronymAllergy]

Does a systematic ranking of internship programs exist anywhere, or is this something you just have to talk through with your mentor? Are internships too diverse in nature to be compared to one another? How do you know what's competitive, how do you know what's not?

Sincerely,
First Year Clinical Student Procrastinating Studying for Finals

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such comprehensive ranking for internship programs. In general, a program's competitiveness can be judged to some degree by the ratio of applicants to available slots, the eminence and reputation of its faculty, and the placements of its former interns. However, as with grad school, degree of "fit" with the site is of utmost importance.

It is possible to compare sites to one another in small groupings (e.g., research-heavy health psychology tracks at university-affiliated medical centers), by nationwide and all-encompassing rankings would be very difficulty to make.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

It would be quite difficult to formulate a ranking system that would adequately capture all of the important areas for the various "paths" people take from internship to post-doc/fellowship/etc, though within each type I think most people would agree on at least a handful of sites.

For the research heavy academics, there are probably 6-8 sites that are regularly mentioned as the "top" places. The same can be said for many other niche areas (pediatric neuro, adult neuro, etc), though there are also many "under the radar" type places that may not be a big name, but they regularly place their students in sought after positions.

I found it most helpful to ask professionals who are a bit farther along for recommendations. It was a bit of a crapshoot because most people had better recommendations for post-doc/fellowship than they did for internship sites....which I am assuming is partially due to the higher # of applications required for internship than post-doc/fellowship.

As an aside, SDN is currently expanding their residency feedback section to include clinical psychology internship sites, so we will have a place where applicants can provide feedback about particular sites. It won't provide an official ranking, but hopefully people will find it informative. I'm hoping it will be done so this year's applicants can add their feedback.

 

[Ollie123]

Yeah...not sure how such a thing could possibly exist, its only barely meaningful at the graduate-school level. Specialization is such that this is virtually impossible. It might be somewhat meaningful to rank say...sites that specialize in substance use, though even then I think it really only allows you to distinguish between broad categories (i.e. "Good" vs. "Bad") rather than being able to differentiate #1 and #2.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

When I went through my internship interviews, I made sure to ask: "What types of post-docs/fellowships do you interns attain once they complete their training?" While this is not fool proof, it gave me an idea of the opportunities I may (or may not) have if I were to train at each internship site.

 

[erg923]

Agree, not really possible because there are so many different types of training sites and their goals/foci maybe be completely different. Also, hate to break it to you, put they are all competitive. If you don't know about the nightmare that is the internship match imbalance, read up on it ASAP. As I was commenting early in another thread, although all are "competitive," certain programs are more competitive than others due to number of spots they have available, location (everyone want to live in CA, right?), and types of students they will attract.

For example, 200 apps for 8 spots is likely to be less competitive than 100 apps for 2 spots, right? Similarly, the applicants who apply to WPIC, MUSC, Palo Alto VA, and Mclean probably dont have the same training background/profile as those who apply to small community mental health centers in Utah. No offense, but a Psy.D candidate from Argosy is just not going to be competitive at sites like the Palo Alto VA because of the nature of the peer competition. And of course, you have to take into account your fit (both past experiences and future training goals) with the site when determining how competitive you will be within their pool of applicants. For example, having VA experience and having the future goal of being VA psychologist helps with many VA sites.

I agree that there is a common group of sites that are considered especially "prestigious." Not coincidentally, they are all very academic in nature (have mandatory or optional research components), have a reputation of providing high quality clinical training, and get tons of applications every year. Some of these are Brown med, Yale med, a couple of the Harvard programs (MGH and Mclean), Medical University of South Carolina Consortium, WPIC, UCSF med, University of Washington School of Medicine, Palo Alto VA, UCLA Semel, UCSD VA, Boston Consortium, University of Florida Health Sciences Center.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

To take the thread in a slightly different direction, I wanted to offer you a few "things I wish I had known during my first year of grad school" tips in order to help you better prepare for the internship application process:

1) Track EVERYTHING. Number and type of hours (e.g., individual vs. group therapy, treatment vs. assessment, supervision vs. client time), number and name of measures administered, demographic breakdown of clients (ethnicity, age group, sex/gender, sexual orientation), etc. It'll save you a lot of unnecessary stress and guesstimation when filling out your application.

2) As you progress in your graduate career, begin attempting to identify your niche(s) of research interest, and tailor your work accordingly. Obviously no one expects you to have this entirely figured out in your first or second year, but internship sites do want to know that you've a rough idea of what you'd like to study by the time you interview with them.

3) Vary your clinical experiences. I personally have a relatively limited number of research accomplishments, but I feel that my exceedingly varied clinical experiences (settings, populations, assessments, therapies, etc.) have allowed my application to be much more competitive than it would have been otherwise. If you match varied clinical experiences with a solid amount of quality research, then your app will truly stand out. This would obviously require a large time commitment, and will entail high levels of time management, including making sacrifices in other areas (in most programs' minds, the first area of sacrifice--to an extent--is academics; hence the whole "B = Ph.D" adage).

4) By the time you hit your third year, if you haven't already, you should definitely begin planning out your letters of recommendation.

5) Get started on your dissertation before applying, if at all possible.

Others can feel free to add key points I'm sure to have omitted.

 

[FionaGoode]

It would be quite difficult to formulate a ranking system that would adequately capture all of the important areas for the various "paths" people take from internship to post-doc/fellowship/etc, though within each type I think most people would agree on at least a handful of sites.

For the research heavy academics, there are probably 6-8 sites that are regularly mentioned as the "top" places. The same can be said for many other niche areas (pediatric neuro, adult neuro, etc), though there are also many "under the radar" type places that may not be a big name, but they regularly place their students in sought after positions.

I found it most helpful to ask professionals who are a bit farther along for recommendations. It was a bit of a crapshoot because most people had better recommendations for post-doc/fellowship than they did for internship sites....which I am assuming is partially due to the higher # of applications required for internship than post-doc/fellowship.

As an aside, SDN is currently expanding their residency feedback section to include clinical psychology internship sites, so we will have a place where applicants can provide feedback about particular sites. It won't provide an official ranking, but hopefully people will find it informative. I'm hoping it will be done so this year's applicants can add their feedback.

Just wondering if this psychology internship site feedback area ever came to fruition.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Just wondering if this psychology internship site feedback area ever came to fruition.

We were talking about it when I stepped down from being the mod here. I was swamped w. fellowship/job stuff back then, so unfortunately it was one of the many SDN things I didn't have time to follow-up on. The current mods can probably bring this to the powers that be (Lee & admins) and see if it can get some traction again.

 

[samIam47]

We were talking about it when I stepped down from being the mod here. I was swamped w. fellowship/job stuff back then, so unfortunately it was one of the many SDN things I didn't have time to follow-up on. The current mods can probably bring this to the powers that be (Lee & admins) and see if it can get some traction again.

Any updates here, current moderators?