VA Internship Competitiveness

[leylablue]

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Hi! I’m looking for some advice on how to increase my competitiveness for internship over the next year. I’m currently a 4th-year student planning to apply for internship next fall, primarily to generalist tracks at VA sites. I plan to apply broadly and expect to have approximately 570–580 intervention hours and around 150 assessment hours by the time I apply. About 160 of the intervention hours and 20 of the assessment hours will come from my current VA placement, with the remainder coming from a community care setting. I am not really sure how many hours I will get during 5th year before apps are due.

Do you think these hours and experiences would make me competitive for VA internships? If not, are there things you would recommend doing over the next year to strengthen my application?

By the time I apply, I expect to have two VA experiences on my CV from my 4th and 5th years of training. This year I am in a BHIP placement, and I’m hoping to secure an inpatient practicum opportunity at a VA for my 5th year.

Thank you for any guidance you might have!

 

[AcronymAllergy]

You should be able to find some other threads via search from the relatively recent past about internship competitiveness, some of which may specifically speak to VA internships. That said, it seems like you're on the right track. The prior VA experience will definitely be a plus. Just try to get in whatever additional hours you can, and if you don't have any publications and/or presentations, do what you can to get some of those on your CV between now and when you apply.

 

[Sanman]

Not sure of the caliber of VA you are shooting for as they vary widely. Your site selection will matter more than anything else at this point.

Make sure you have a decent number of integrated reports with those assessment hours and also get whatever relevant experiences you can before application time.

 

[leylablue]

Not sure of the caliber of VA you are shooting for as they vary widely. Your site selection will matter more than anything else at this point.

Make sure you have a decent number of integrated reports with those assessment hours and also get whatever relevant experiences you can before application time.

Thank you! I am wondering what a decent number of integrated reports is. I have 11 now. Some of the assessments at the VA do not count as integrated since I did not include a cog measure or two personality measures (I normally only use one MMPI or MCMI). Also, some of my assessment comes from running participants with schizophrenia for research so no reports are involved, but we do psychodiagnostic testing with the participants.

 

[Sanman]

Thank you! I am wondering what a decent number of integrated reports is. I have 11 now. Some of the assessments at the VA do not count as integrated since I did not include a cog measure or two personality measures (I normally only use one MMPI or MCMI). Also, some of my assessment comes from running participants with schizophrenia for research so no reports are involved, but we do psychodiagnostic testing with the participants.

You should be alright with 11 if you are not assessment/neuropsych focused. I have seen too many folks in recent years with good assessment hours and only 1-3 integrated reports.

 

[leylablue]

You should be alright with 11 if you are not assessment/neuropsych focused. I have seen too many folks in recent years with good assessment hours and only 1-3 integrated reports.

Thank you!

 

[WisNeuro]

You should be alright with 11 if you are not assessment/neuropsych focused. I have seen too many folks in recent years with good assessment hours and only 1-3 integrated reports.

Do you still see people with a crazy number of integrated reports, but when you look at the measures they have administered, the math ain't mathing?

 

[RxPsych]

Do you still see people with a crazy number of integrated reports, but when you look at the measures they have administered, the math ain't mathing?

I saw this when we were reviewing applications. It was not uncommon to see the integrated reports align closely to the number of screening measures (PHQ or GAD most commonly). I think it would be helpful for APPIC to provide specific examples of what should not be considered an integrated report, because I have a feeling that certain programs do not inform their trainees of this. Of course, applicants could look at the definition and decide for themselves, but I have a feeling it is applied quite loosely.

 

[Sanman]

Do you still see people with a crazy number of integrated reports, but when you look at the measures they have administered, the math ain't mathing?

There are definitely those folks as well. The pandemic really did a disservice to assessment education overall and I have had to review some very basic aspects of assessment for interns and post-docs since 2020. A lot programs phoned in the numbers and passed people along.

 

[WisNeuro]

I saw this when we were reviewing applications. It was not uncommon to see the integrated reports align closely to the number of screening measures (PHQ or GAD most commonly). I think it would be helpful for APPIC to provide specific examples of what should not be considered an integrated report, because I have a feeling that certain programs do not inform their trainees of this. Of course, applicants could look at the definition and decide for themselves, but I have a feeling it is applied quite loosely.

When I was applying, and later reviewing apps, APPIC defined this fairly well. Do they not do this anymore?

 

[RxPsych]

When I was applying, and later reviewing apps, APPIC defined this fairly well. Do they not do this anymore?

The information is there. Per APPIC: "The definition of an integrated psychological testing report is a report that includes a review of history, results of an interview and at least two psychological tests from one or more of the following categories: personality measures, intellectual tests, cognitive tests, and
neuropsychological tests"
and,
"This section should NOT include reports written from an interview that is only history-taking, a clinical interview, and/or only the completion of behavioral rating forms, where no additional psychological tests are administered."

 

[R. Matey]

There are definitely those folks as well. The pandemic really did a disservice to assessment education overall and I have had to review some very basic aspects of assessment for interns and post-docs since 2020. A lot programs phoned in the numbers and passed people along.

I know this is shouting into the wind, but assessment (not the act but also the perspective that comes with psychological testing) is a fundamental component to being a psychologist.

 

[WisNeuro]

I know this is shouting into the wind, but assessment (not the act but also the perspective that comes with psychological testing) is a fundamental component to being a psychologist.

Unfortunately, too many people only want midlevel training, but also want to be called "Dr."

 

[R. Matey]

Unfortunately, too many people only want midlevel training, but also want to be called "Dr."

You would think more people would just want to know what the **** they're doing.

 

[WisNeuro]

You would think more people would just want to know what the **** they're doing.

I would hope so, but in my experience, most don't. Just practicing off vibes.

 

[JustNoticing]

When I was applying, and later reviewing apps, APPIC defined this fairly well. Do they not do this anymore?

yep, APPIC does provide the definition, and people are clearly misrepresenting themselves anyway. I have gone to our internship TD on a few of the more egregious ones asking to change the scoring when the candidates reporting improbable numbers of integrated reports based on their experiences.

 

[WisNeuro]

yep, APPIC does provide the definition, and people are clearly misrepresenting themselves anyway. I have gone to our internship TD on a few of the more egregious ones asking to change the scoring when the candidates reporting improbable numbers of integrated reports based on their experiences.

Yeah, the ones that did this poorly usually had other red flags and were weeded out early. In some of the iffy cases where the application was otherwise good, we would always ask them about it on interviews, and that would sometimes get their applications thrown out. I'm sure some of the purely generalist sites will let this pass, but if neuro is involved, we're going to notice weird stuff with your assessment reporting stats.

 

[oliversacks4thewin]

yep, APPIC does provide the definition, and people are clearly misrepresenting themselves anyway. I have gone to our internship TD on a few of the more egregious ones asking to change the scoring when the candidates reporting improbable numbers of integrated reports based on their experiences.

I have some major beef with all of the people who misrepresent this, as it actually negatively affected me during internship applications. I had a significantly large number of integrated reports, due to the fact that when I applied I had already been at 4 different neuropsychology training sites within AMC's that were very busy and routinely would have me involved in writing. Interviewers genuinely thought I was misrepresenting my report numbers and a few sites directly asked if I had just done PHQ-9's and GAD-7's. I had to endure getting grilled (which was fine, I had the experience to speak to) about my experiences, because I think they thought I was lying about having been exposed to a number of psychological measures. Part of me still wonders if I missed things in interviews, because I had to spend soooo much time justifying that I had actual experience with full measures and not jut screening tools.

 

[cara susanna]

I got a VA internship without any VA experience and, while my research background was apparently the main reason, I also think that my assessment numbers helped quite a bit.

 

[WisNeuro]

I got a VA internship without any VA experience and, while my research background was apparently the main reason, I also think that my assessment numbers helped quite a bit.

Likewise, no VA prior to my internship. But I had pretty strong assessment numbers and knew some of the faculty.

 

[R. Matey]

I kinda wish I had applied to the VA., at least for training. I had quite a few integrated reports, but our TD at the time told us that we wouldn't get a VA internship without a VA prac.

 

[WisNeuro]

I kinda wish I had applied to the VA., at least for training. I had quite a few integrated reports, but our TD at the time told us that we wouldn't get a VA internship without a VA prac.

We admitted interns and postdocs (neuro and general tracks) all the time without VA pracs in grad school. Having it definitely give an application a slight boost, but we'll make an offer/highly rank a stellar application over a mediocre one that has VA experience. Sorry your TD gave you poor advice.

 

[R. Matey]

We admitted interns and postdocs (neuro and general tracks) all the time without VA pracs in grad school. Having it definitely give an application a slight boost, but we'll make an offer/highly rank a stellar application over a mediocre one that has VA experience. Sorry your TD gave you poor advice.

Thanks. It all worked out in the end, but my UCC internship was miserable and I had to spend time in postdoc demonstrating competence in medical settings. I think the transition would've been easier if I had come from a VA.

 

[cara susanna]

To be fair, when I evaluated internship candidates at my post doc site, past VA experience was weighted, and I'm pretty sure that's why I didn't get an interview there back when I applied. So it can hurt you at some places.