Are you ready to rank? Seven tips from now until next week

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????If you are participating in APPIC’s internship match system, you have likely experienced a demanding few months. You may find yourself wondering if the exhaustion is a sign you did something right, or just the profession’s odd way of saying “thank you” for your hard work.

The good news is that the end of this process is in sight with just a few more hurdles to clear. Next up: Ranking. You have until Wednesday February 5th to submit your ranking lists for Phase I. Finally, something you can control. Feels good, right? Yeah right!

To help you in any way we can, APAGS compiled some tips for you, taken directly from the third edition of our Internship Workbook by Carol Williams-Nickelson, PsyD, Mitch Prinstein, PhD, and Greg Keilin, PhD.

  1. “The most important thing to remember is to simply rank internship programs in the order in which you want them. That is all you need to worry about” (p. 102). Rank the program you prefer most as number one, and so on.
  2. “Do not, under any circumstances, take into account such things as how you believe a site is ranking you, how well you think you have impressed a site, the feedback that you are getting from a site, and so forth” (p. 102). Even if a site violates Match policies and tells you that they’re ranking you their #1, if they are not your #1, don’t list them as such.
  3. The matching program is designed to favor you — to preference your needs and wishes — allowing you to rank sites as you would them, not the other way around. The system will strive to get you the highest ranked site possible from your list, not the other way around. A site will never learn where it stood on your list.
  4. Rank a site even if you’re not sure they will rank you. There is no penalty for doing so. The computer will skip over that site on your list with no reduction in changes of you actually matching. Even if you’ve learned from a site after you’ve submitted your rankings that they will not rank you, the same truism applies. No penalty.
  5. “You should submit [a Rank Order List] if you are absolutely, positively, 100% sure that you are ready to accept the internship to which you are matched” (p. 103). Because the decision is binding, you should think twice about ranking a site that you’d rather stay on campus instead of attending.
  6. The specific order of your rankings will only determine where you match, not whether you match (p. 80). In other words, if you match, it has nothing to do with your list. This also means that if you don’t match with list in ABCD order, you would not have matched with a list in BCDA order either.
  7. Remember when the lights went out on Beyonce’s halftime show at the Superbowl last year? Well, anything’s possible, including loss of electricity and internet. Don’t wait until the last minute! While you can change your mind and rank and recertify until the deadline, give yourself some peace of mind and celebrate knowing you got your choices in!

Best wishes. Breathe. Let us know in the comments what you are doing to take care of yourself this week!

Are we producing too many trainees for internship—but not enough for the nation?

The psychology workforce is a numbers game. Are we winning or losing? (Source: Numbers by Stimpdawg on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

The psychology workforce is a numbers game. But with the internship crisis, are we winning or losing? (Source: Numbers by Stimpdawg on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

Given that 1 in 4 students who enter the APPIC match do not actually match (and nearly 1 in 2 fail to match directly from APA accredited programs to APA accredited internships – see #11) it seems natural to entertain the idea that we have too many trainees. Or that we are producing too many psychologists who are flooding the market, cheapening the field, and so forth. But is any of this really true?

Researchers Parent and Williamson (2010) did find that some programs contribute disproportionately to the match imbalance by sending significantly more students on internship each year. That might be enough for some to jump to the conclusion that these programs are just too big. Although, I ask: too big for what?

See, I worry that the internship crisis is causing us to identify red herrings, or fake culprits. While lots of students are unequivocally a problem in the crucible of poor match rates and failed matches, this doesn’t say anything about the need for more or less psychologists in the workforce.

Whether you agree or disagree with Malcolm Gladwell, who said in his latest book that we should stop connecting class size with educational outcomes, it’s important to think through what a change in the number of healthcare providers means in the United States. As a baseline, I found that about 5,400 people sit annually for the EPPP, our profession’s licensing exam and on average, 3,800 pass the exam each year. And now I’ll provide three and a half data sources suggesting we may actually need more psychologists in years to come:

1)      New psychologists are finding jobs. According to the latest data we have available—the Doctorate Employment Survey (APA, 2011)—psychologists within one year of graduation had an unemployment rate of 6%, at least 2-3% points lower than the historical national average. More than two thirds of graduates had a job within the first three months of completing their programs and 72% said their current job was their first preference.

2)      NAMI estimates that 11 million people in the U.S. with mental illnesses lack insurance coverage. The Affordable Care Act (better known to some as Obamacare), combined with our earlier Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, will bring more people than ever before into our nation’s insured healthcare system, almost certainly increasing demand for mental health services.

3)      As of January 1, 2014, the United States counted 3,896 known, designated mental healthcare professional shortages across the country. These are shortages of core professionals—psychologists included—that by definition cannot meet the basic mental health needs of whole geographic areas, specific facilities, and/or underserved groups before there are so few practitioners relative to the population. Every state has a demand for more mental health care in some way or other. 

3.5)     As of this month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates increased employment of 18,700 psychologists by 2022. They say, “Employment of clinical, counseling, and school psychologists is projected to grow 11 percent from 2012 to 2022, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Greater demand for psychological services in schools, hospitals, mental health centers, and social services agencies should drive employment growth.” Notes: This estimate doesn’t cleanly separate the need for doctoral-level psychologists from those with Masters training, and also includes non-health-service psychologists. This data point only gets a “3.5” instead of a standalone “4” because the newly released BLS numbers are not as strong as they were a month ago (a 2010 to 2020 projection), and I’m curious to see what this means for workforce demand. You can see how projections are calculated here.

If you are quick to ask for smaller class sizes, especially in light of the internship crisis, it is crucial that you have some understanding about how this could impact our nation’s ability to care for its people. For what appears to be a problem in one light may actually be a solution in another.

My data points are by no means a substitute for a workforce analysis, and one is needed to definitively answer the question: Just how many psychologists do we need?  (An even better analysis would tell us where in the country to send providers based on their training.) If we come to find that we actually need more psychologists than there are internship positions, what else can we do to responsibly get rid of this bottleneck in the internship match? That’s the real million dollar question.

Apply for an APA Graduate Student Public Interest Policy Internship

The American Psychological Association’s Public Interest Government Relations Office (PI-GRO) is seeking two graduate student interns for the 2014-2015 academic year.  Graduate student interns will gain first-hand knowledge of the ways in which psychological research can inform public policy and the roles psychology can play in its formulation and implementation. The graduate student intern will spend one year working with PI-GRO staff to influence legislative and regulatory activities impacting populations and issues, such as: aging; children, youth, and families; disabilities; ethnic minorities; individuals with HIV/AIDS; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons; socioeconomic status; women; as well as social concerns (e.g. media; or trauma, violence, and abuse). The intern’s activities include participating in legislative and advocacy work, such as assisting in the preparation of testimony and briefing papers and attending congressional hearings and coalition meetings.  Applications are due on March 21, 2014.

 

Click here for more information on the internship and application materials please visit:

Are the Courts in Our Future?

Vintage Balance ScalePsychology doctoral program at Argosy University Denver held responsible for lying. University ordered to pay millions to its students.

The State of Colorado and its Attorney General prosecuted Argosy-Denver on behalf of 66 students who enrolled in Argosy’s EdD in counseling psychology (EdD-CP) program. According to the Attorney General’s Office, “Argosy is accused of deceiving, misleading, and financially injuring students seeking doctorate of education in counseling psychology degrees in violation of the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. Under the settlement terms, Argosy will pay approximately $3.3 million in restitution and fines,” of which approximately $2.8 million will go directly to the aggrieved students.

What happened?!

Argosy students were explicitly and implicitly led to believe that their EdD-CP program was seeking APA accreditation, when in fact, the program was not. “Argosy-Denver’s EdD-CP program would ultimately fail to fulfill a promise made to its students – eligibility to become licensed as psychologists in Colorado,” the Attorney General’s Office stated in its Complaint to the Denver District Court.

Students’ attempts to challenge their schools through the court system have historically been unsuccessful, until recently. The Argosy case is not the first occasion in which students were fruitful in seeking redress by the Courts. Here are four examples, with a fifth new case:

1. In Russell v. Salve Regina College (1989), a nursing student was dismissed on the basis of her obesity. Her academic performance was satisfactory except in one course where her grade was related to weight, not performance. The Court ruled that the college had breached its contract with Russell and awarded her monetary damages.

2. In Elliott v. University of Cincinnati (1999), a doctoral student who failed his oral examination claimed breach of contract because only four committee members were present at his examination; the Graduate Student Handbook required a five-member committee. The court found that the Handbook was contractually binding on the university, and that a four-member committee violated that contract. The university had to give the student another oral exam.

3. In Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences (2000, 2008), a fourth-year medical student was dismissed after failing his last course in medical school. Sharick sued the university for breach of contract. After dismissal by a trial court, reversal by the appellate court, and a hearing by a second trial court jury, Sharick was awarded $813,000 for past lost earnings and $3.5 million for lost future earnings.

4. In Gauthier c. Saint-Germain, Boudreau et L’Université d’Ottawa (2010), a student sued her university for educational malpractice after failing to receive her doctorate. The appeals court ruled that if the case was pleaded with specific evidence of what the contracts and breaches were, her claims could lead to an award of damages.

5. Similar to the Argosy-Denver case, five former and current Globe University/Minnesota School of Business students filed a class-action lawsuit against their school on October 2, 2013, claiming that Globe misled students about its accreditation and post-graduate employment rates. Judgment TBD.

What do these cases mean for you, the Psychology Graduate Student?

What the above cases teach us is that there is a contractual relationship between students and schools, and both sides must work to fulfill the explicit and implied promises they make to one another. Just as schools should make sure their students work hard and attain programmatic goals and competencies before graduating and becoming psychologists, students should feel empowered to make sure their schools are living up to their end of the bargain by providing students with high quality education and training experiences, as well as an avenue toward graduation and licensure.

Would a student win a case against his or her school for losing accreditation, providing inadequate supervision, or failing to place students in externships or internships? That may be for the Courts to decide.

Hopefully, students and schools can resolve these and other key issues collaboratively, making legal recourse unnecessary.

This article was co-written with Lawrence N. Meyerson, JD, EdD.

APA in Cuba

Buy the ticket, take the ride. A phrase coined by a very good friend and an itinerant traveler in his own right, the words and underlying meaning were never truer than on my recent trip with APA to Cuba.

When I first received the email alert back in February with subject line: “Psychologists to travel to Cuba,” I was excited beyond words and a bit resigned to the fact that my efforts to save money (I had just decided to give up my apartment in downtown Palo Alto and move back in with my parents) would be temporarily put on hold: there was no way I could miss this trip.

As an undergrad at UCLA, I minored in Latin American studies; Cuba, in particular, was one of my favorite topics of study. I was fascinated by this group of revolutionaries that had overthrown their government in order to make a vast departure from the political structure of the western world. I had also learned about their first-rate education system, with literacy rates higher than those of the United States, and socialized health care despite having little to no access to many goods and services.

The opportunity to travel to learn about their health care system as part of my current training inclinical psychology seemed like it would be an invaluable aspect of my professional growth; even though I knew that I would be in the midst of internship application deadlines at the time of the trip, I had to go.

Landing in Cuba really was like going back in time 50 yearscuba neighborhood – old Fords and Plymouth convertibles, no advertisements for any goods and services except for those promoting public health and supporting ‘la revolucion’, and crumbling architecture representing the remains of both Soviet and colonial influence.

The week consisted of visits with psychologists from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, investigators involved in community based participatory research, and practitioners at local clinics and community mental health sites, where we learned in-depth about the comprehensive model of Cuban health care. An opportunity to see the famed Buena Vista Social Club perform live was a special treat and very moving.

As the only graduate student on the trip, I found myself among established psychologists from all over the country – professionals working in VA medical centers, hospitals, universities, private practice, and various capacities for APA – and inspired by the range of their experience and depth of their careers. At the end of each day’s activities, trip leader and Past APA President Suzanne Bennett Johnson would facilitate a debrief session on the thoughts, impressions, and questions that remained with us from the day. Hearing how my fellow group members crafted their questions, provided feedback, and articulated their interests and impressions of the trip, gave me a glimpse into the thought processes of these highly trained, well experienced clinicians, researchers, and doctors. And for the first time I found myself in an interaction with psychologists that wasn’t supervisor/supervisee or advisor/student, but rather as a peer and junior colleague. Being a Spanish speaker and having studied Latin America, I had much of my own unique knowledge to bring to the group, which was a really important moment for me in my development as a psychologist in training – a ‘taking-my-place-at-a-seat-at-the-table’ kind of feeling.

Upon my return, I shared my experience during my Spanish-speaking group supervision at one of my current training sites – a community mental health clinic which provides services to monolingual Spanish speakers. Intrigued by my account of the week, my peers asked how I became involved with the trip and whether my attendance had to do with membership in any particular APA division or group. I explained that while I am a member of APA, in this case, the trip came about just from noticing an email. To which, one of my colleagues responded ‘La moraleja de la historia: lea los emails’.
Buy the ticket, take the ride, and read the emails.

APA group with Cuban researchers at the Center for Psychological and Sociological Investigation

APA group with Cuban researchers at the Center for Psychological and Sociological Investigation