"The program itself offers a lot of opportunities for growth, including a 2nd year program within the school of actually "seeing" clients (they have a full office space area just for this purpose with two way mirrors, cameras, and complete privacy for the clients) and you counseling those from the community that need someone to talk to, and a professor then meets with them as well, and you get feedback on how you are doing. Not a lot of programs I've visited offer this type of intense experience, most just have a 2nd year internship that they hardly gain actual experience into the clinical psych field,....
I have to agree with Ollie here. What programs were you looking at?! This is standard practice, this isn't an unusual specialized "program." Myself and every person I know in clinical programs throughout the county (including "big ten" research schools like Georgia and Michigan) are videotaped and supervised closely by faculty when we start seeing clients (almost always at the university walk-in clinic/counseling center). Although research is stressed over a clinical work at these programs, all of them do outside externships at local hospitals and clinics during their training. This is standard practice, even for heavily research oriented Ph.D programs. Who gave you the idea that these things were unusual?
"Plus, as you gain experience, you also get experience doing testing on people within the community as well, and this ultimatley is the best type of experience bc it teaches you full standerdization and complete practice with giving free or very cheap tests to individuals who may not have a lot of money to afford them if they went elsewhere"
I really do not understand this paragraph, especially the "full standardization" part. Again, externships at outside agencies are common practice during 3rd and/or 4th years in all Ph.D/Psy.D programs. And yes, they are important for breadth of experience in both therapy and assessment/diagnostics. As far as giving "cheap tests to individuals who may not be able to afford it", I suppose you would get that if you worked a local community mental health center, (where service are provided on a "sliding scale") although the variety of disorders one would see in this setting would be very limited. Generally speaking, a quality externship is one that is either highly specialized (neuropsych clinic, PTSD clinic, etc.) or one that allows for seeing a variety of patient populations.
"The post before about being afraid if it's not scientific, every student requires a full-research based dissertation that they all work very hard on and most present at the APA."
Again, anyone can pump out meaningless empirical crap. There is enough of that in psychology already. Any school can "do" research, doesn't mean that its any good, right? What a good applicant should ask is, "what is the nature and quality of the work that is getting done." Is it methodologically sound and furthering our science? From what Ive seen of the faculty and their short pub lists, nothing too impressive there. Second, dissertation is supposed to be high quality and research based, there is no other way to do it! Dissertations should be of sufficient quality for publication as well, presenting at APA is not very impressive honestly.Third, although some may have obtained internships at good academic hospitals, are they apa approved, and what is the overall match rate? (i.e., what are the chances of "you" getting one of those nice internships?) Being the good statistician, you have to take into account the base rates of the occurrence getting one of these good internships at this program. If the overall match rate is 50-60%, it can be done, but the reality is that, it's not very likely.
I honestly don't know much about him beyond his general rep. and the occasional soundbite that makes the news.
I've never understood the alcohol issue and religion too...when I grew up I got a healthy does of wine every Sunday when I took communion...