Predoc!!!

[OneNeuroDoctor]

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I know it is relative... What would be the highest rated predoctoral internship sites. Mentorship and supervisory characteristics seem highly important for intern satisfaction.

City characteristics also seem to increase satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the internship year.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I'm a bit confused by the question; are you asking about grad school or internship? And are you inquiring about a specific program (e.g., what would we consider to be "the best" graduate program or internship), or our thoughts on ideal characteristics for a training site?

Edit: Ok, much clearer after the edit, thank you. Although as the other folks have mentioned, attempting to rank internship sites would be difficult. I'd imagine supervisory support would sit near the top in terms of desirable characteristics, as would availability of a variety of rotation placements that provide true teaching rather than workhorse-like report generation. Available resources (e.g., office space) would also likely be important, and may sometimes serve as a bit of a proxy for how the internship program as a whole is viewed by the training facility as a whole.

As for city characteristics, the importance will probably vary widely from person to person. For me, it wasn't important at all. For others, it might be incredibly important.

 

[PsychPhDone]

This is incredibly dependent on what you want out of internship.

 

[DynamicDidactic]

There is currently no method or system for rating internships. Also, since everyone does one internship, an individual cannot even compare. I will say I did not enjoy my predoctoral internship.

 

[OneNeuroDoctor]

I know subjectivity is from personal accounts or experiences. I hated my predoctoral but really liked my main supervisor.

I believe interns complete a survey for APPIC or for the APA Accredited sites. Although APA Accredited indicates standards but some APA Accredited sites are not as good as others.

 

[EmotRegulation]

Some people love bananas, other people can't stand even the smell of them. I don't think there is a great way of denoting overall "good" sites versus others. There are probably some objectively *bad* sites (e.g., little supervision support, lots of hours, no training, just a "workhorse" site) but for the rest...."good" is going to be subjective. I know that even within my cohort of 10, some would have said the site was great (me included) and others would have said it was not so great.

A better question is what *factors* are related to satisfaction with the internship year so that prospective interns could ask about or try to gauge these things, but even those will be subjective to some degree, like location. I *loved* the location of my internship but I know not all my fellow interns agreed. We argued about it all the time.

 

[LETSGONYR]

This is incredibly dependent on what you want out of internship.

Totally agree. You can't compare adult sites to peds sites, or college counseling centers to VAs. Different people want different things, so what's best for one person may be terrible for another. I personally wanted to go into peds neuropsych; while I didn't particularly like my internship it fulfilled the role it needed to and made me eligible for a postdoc that fit my interests and personality.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I know subjectivity is from personal accounts or experiences. I hated my predoctoral but really liked my main supervisor.

I believe interns complete a survey for APPIC or for the APA Accredited sites. Although APA Accredited indicates standards but some APA Accredited sites are not as good as others.

Depends on how you define "good." APA-accredited sites have at least taken the time and dedicated the resources necessary to obtaining APA-accreditation. By that measure alone, I'd say they're doing the field a service relative to unaccredited sites that persist as such.