Many students in clinical psychology programs start hearing about pre-doctoral internships as soon as they begin their programs. But what can you do to prepare yourself for the internship application process? Below, the SfHP Student Advisory Council shares tips for students from their first year of grad school, through Match Day and beyond!
Preparing During Early Years of Grad School
- Talk to older graduate students in your program about what rotations, classes, and extracurricular activities made them competitive for internships in health psychology.
- Attend SfHP’s Student Council’s Health Psychology Internship Q&A Panel at the annual APA Convention to get all of your burning questions answered by current and recent interns.
- During your first and second years, start thinking about which practicum experiences will help you develop a breadth of experiences in health psychology. Creating a plan early will allow you to cover a wider range of training opportunities.
- Track your assessment/intervention/support/supervision hours and patient demographics (age, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and any disabilities) in a secure Excel spreadsheet or use a service like Time2Track. Most health psychology sites list ~350 as the minimum number of intervention hours and ~100 as the minimum number of assessment hours, but it varies greatly. Many health psychology students aim for 450-650 intervention hours (not all need to be health psychology experiences) and 50-100 assessment hours by the time they are applying.
- Keep a running list of interesting cases and save your favorite integrated reports since they may be useful during your internship applications and interviews.
- Keep your CV updated each semester so that you don’t have to rack your brain about the prior 4 – 5 years when it’s finally time to apply for internship.
- Start building leadership experiences in your graduate program, SfHP, or other professional organizations to help you stand out from the crowd. Not sure where to start? Apply to become a Campus Representative!
Preparing for Applications
- Get connected to regular internship application updates by joining the APPIC INTERN-NETWORK listserv. Instructions for signing up can be found at www.appic.org.
- Read through Internships in Psychology: The APAGS Workbook for Writing Successful Applications and Finding the Right Fit written by some heavy-hitters in the internship world.
- Use your graduate institution’s online access to the free APAGS Portable Mentor and read Chapter 12: Navigating the Internship Application Process.
- Watch APA Division 53’s webinar, Applying to Clinical Internships: Insider Tips for Maximizing your Success!
- Read Digital Commons @ University of Nebraska’s article, The Internship Application Process: Advice You Might Not Have Heard, written by directors of clinical training (DCTs) with contributions from applicants.
- Read the article Advice on Applying for Internship, which includes an interview with Karen Oliver, PhD, who is the coordinator of the Health/Behavioral Medicine Track at Brown University’s Clinical Psychology Training Consortium.
Preparing for Interviewing
- Want to know 5 key questions to be prepared for in the internship interview process? Read gradPSYCH Magazine’s article, Answer These 5. (Note that this article is from 2011 and the match statistics it presents are a little outdated. However, the questions are still key ones!)
- Check out this comprehensive guide to virtual interviews from the University of Chicago.
- Read this list of “do’s and don’ts” for interviews from Monitor on Psychology, How to Avoid Interview Missteps.
Preparing for Ranking, Match Day, and Beyond
- Learn about recent match statistics from Monitor on Psychology, More Good News for Internship Seekers.
- Read up on tips for ranking your options via the gradPSYCH blog, Are You Ready to Rank? Seven Tips from Now Until Next Week.
- For advice on rankings, read the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy’s article, Mastering the Internship Application and Selection Process: Lessons from the Trenches.
- If Match Day goes your way, read gradPSYCH Magazine’s article, You’ve Matched! Now What? Hopefully you can follow step #1 and indulge in some well-deserved downtime.
- If Match Day brings disappointment, read gradPSYCH Magazine’s article, Didn’t Match? Move On, for advice from other students who have been there, including a to-do list with steps to get back on track.