PhD clinical psychology Ponce health sciences university

[Herself]

Any information,recommendations, Reviews, and or Thoughts on the PhD clinical psychology program at Ponce health sciences university in Puerto Rico ?is this a good program? It is APA accredited. I couldn’t find anything on their program. Thanks for your help!

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[AcronymAllergy]

It looks to be a relatively new program, so it could be tough to say. The internship match numbers aren't great for the first 4 cohorts, but that's not necessarily unexpected if the program wasn't yet accredited; they've shown some improvement for the past two years. Licensure rates aren't horrible, given the relatively small sample (40 of 45 graduates). Class sizes and years to graduation seem good. Tuition looks high to me for a Ph.D. program ($15-17k/year), but that's still half of what's generally typical for an unfunded program. If there are assistantships available to take care of some or all of the tuition (assuming they aren't already included in the program cost data), that would be good.

 

[StellaB]

The whole island is in an awful state of disarray right now, and Ponce (south side of the island) has been hit very hard with back-to-back earthquakes in the past month and a half. Recently a large crowd marched to the governor's mansion with a guillotine, angry over hurricane and earthquake relief aid that was stalled up in a storage facility due to the general chaos caused by years of mismanagement, recurrent natural disasters, and poverty exacerbated by PR's essential colony status with the US that does not bequeath benefits of either statehood or independence. Electricity is not a given, nor is clean water. Also, you would have to be fluent in Spanish, as a large portion of the population does not speak English.

 

[Ollie123]

Met a few graduates from there throughout my time. Seemed like solid clinical training, but mediocre research training. Literally all of them were also PR residents who intended to continue living/practicing in PR. Not sure I would attend if your goal was to return to mainland US unless you had very specific goals where it might be appropriate (e.g. spanish-speaking populations). I think you can do much, much worse but I'm not sure I'd strongly endorse it.

I also know one faculty member (not in clinical psych) who left. Spent 1-2 months without running water after the hurricane while he and his wife had a newborn baby, said screw it and got a job elsewhere.

For whatever reason, they opened a campus in St. Louis now.

 

[GradStudent2020]

I’ve met students from Ponce, they seemed to have good clinical training and were overall happy with their education there. They did not have any difficulty landing internships they wanted. The ones I know do not intend to return to PR post licensure.

 

[WisNeuro]

PhD looks good from a match perspective, PsyD still seems to struggle to match, so, if you stay with the PhD, should be good.

 

[Herself]

Thank you all! this has been very helpful!