PhD/PsyD New PhD student with internship questions

[Autumn Plains]

Hi everyone. I just started year one of my PhD in clinical psychology this year. Everything is going reasonably well so far, but I'm already interested in making myself competitive for internship placement a few years down the road. My program has a good reputation and pretty strong internship placement rates (typically 80+%) so I'm confident that I'll make it in if I put in the time and use what resources I've been given, but I'd like to hear what benchmarks I should shoot for from people who have gone through the process. With that in mind, here are my questions:

1. How much does GPA matter as a PhD student? Faculty in my program tell me "It really doesn't matter at all as long as you're passing your classes," and "It doesn't matter at all as long as you're getting mostly A's, so shoot for above a 3.5 and you're fine."
2. How many publications should I be aiming for? Does it matter how many I'm first author on versus second or third?
3. How many clinical hours should I be aiming for?
4. Anything else I should know?

Thanks a lot! This board was very helpful about this time last year when I was looking around for places to apply, so thanks for that, too!

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[erg923]

GPA is not a factor. Publications matter to some internships but not others. Between 600 and 1000 face to face hours.

 

[WisNeuro]

Well, GPA is not a factor as long as everything isn't the minimum grade. We also might be slightly worried if prac grades are low. But, in general, it's negligible as long as they're ok. As erg said, the pub thing depends on where you go. The mode is 0, so if you have 1, you'll be looking good for many sites. If you want to go full on research, better have a few in the bag. Ditto erg on hours, if you're going neuropsych though, make sure a decent number are made up of comprehensive evals.

 

[CheetahGirl]

Search old threads. Someone asked (back in Spring 2014) specific questions of those of us who had just gone thru the internship process (like hours, # of interviews, type of interviews, etc.). It was a well-constructed thread with lots of feedback from SDN members. You'll probably get more info there than trying to amass similar info all over again. I know I personally gave a detailed reply (w/ hours, research interests as it applies to internship sites, # of pubs, etc.)

Oh! I think futureapppsy2 started the thread.