Mary Blendermann

an unofficial guide to applying to APPIC predoctoral internships in clinical psychology

This is a guide for current doctoral students in clinical or counseling psychology who will be applying to internship. It is not a comprehensive guide and should be supplemented with official APPIC information and guidance from your program. Rather, it is an insider’s guide, written by an applicant, full of obsessively detailed recommendations for each stage of the application process.

As a reminder: Matching is not guaranteed. There are many extremely qualified applicants interested in the same sites, tracks, and slots as you. However, you can maximize your chances of a successful match by identifying sites with outstanding fit to your interests and really selling that fit during interviews. It only takes ONE site to match! 

Some context before we get started

I pursued my PhD in clinical psychology at a large Midwestern university with a research-focused clinical science program. By the time I applied for internship, I was interested in a “clinician educator” career in a research setting (academic medical center or VA), where I would do a mix of direct client care, clinical supervision, and education of other healthcare professionals in an area of expertise I had developed. I liked data science and was willing to contribute to research efforts, but I didn’t want to be a PI or write grants – I wanted clinical care and education to be my main focus. Clinically, I was interested in evidence-based treatments for adults with trauma- and anxiety-related disorders, along with complementary modalities such as DBT and ACT for chronic pain. 

I applied to thirteen sites with adult psychopathology tracks – ten academic medical centers and three VAs. All my sites had either a dedicated PTSD track or at least one rotation focused on trauma. 

Compile your site list (May)

Start early! I recommend starting your site list in May of the year you plan to apply. It takes a long time to compile and you will change it many times, so start early and work on it little and often. 

Search the official APPIC participating internships site list for terms related to your clinical interests. For me, this was: adult, psychopathology, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, health psychology. I didn’t feel like I was finding enough sites, so I also scrolled through the entire list manually (over several days) and clicked on sites that sounded interesting or were in cities I liked. 

Read the program websites or brochures thoroughly! Make a spreadsheet of sites that interest you and update it as you go. Note down which track you would apply for, which rotations sound interesting, what a typical week might look like, their application due date and internship start date, and what their minimum hours are, if they list any. (But remember – minimum hours do not matter. We’ll come back to this.) 

Internship sites will often describe how clinically-focused vs. research-focused they are along a spectrum. Practitioner-scholar is the most clinical orientation. Scholar-practitioner is also clinically oriented, with a slightly stronger emphasis on research. Scientist-practitioner is more research-focused. Clinical scientist is the most research-focused. 

Draft your essays (June)

The four 500-word essays you have to write for internship applications are about to be the bane of your existence, so start early and get them drafted. I spent about three hours drafting each essay (about 2000 words of possible content each), and then gave each essay three one-hour rounds of editing. Psych Grad Corner has some good tips for writing internship essays. Here are my essays as an example.

Show your essay drafts to a few people who have been through internship applications and ask for their feedback. I got feedback from my research advisor and another clinical faculty member which was very helpful. Specifically, my research advisor suggested I talk about dancing in my autobiographical essay because it was something unique and interesting about me. Numerous interviewers commented on how much they liked reading that part. It’s good to include something that makes you stand out and turns you into a real person in their minds, not just another CV. 

I did not customize my essays to my sites at all. I took the perspective that my essays were about me, while my cover letters were about the sites, so I submitted the same essays everywhere but customized my cover letters extensively. 

Request letters of recommendation (August)

Reach out to possible recommenders in August to request letters of recommendation for your internship applications. Send them a link to the AAPI Standardized Reference Form (SRF) so they know what sections are required and how much space they have. Explain that they will submit their recommendation once and they can check a box to allow you to use their recommendation for all your sites. 

Make sure they know the date of your earliest deadline – usually November 1st. I recommend asking them to submit 3-5 days in advance, as there may be technical issues with the portal due to high user volume if they wait until the last minute. 

Who is a good recommender? I chose my PhD advisor and two clinical practicum supervisors with whom I had good relationships. Two research-oriented recommenders may be OK as long as they can speak to your clinical skills and growth areas.

To make writing their letters as easy as possible, I sent each of my recommenders copies of any evaluations of me they had written, summaries of the cases I saw under their supervision, my CV, a draft of my essays, and a sample cover letter for one of my top-choice sites. This helped to ensure their recommendations aligned with how I was presenting myself. I also recommend providing your recommenders with a list of growth areas (see section below), as this is one of the areas they must address on the Standardized Reference Form.

Reach out to your DCT about their letter (August)

Your director of clinical training (DCT) must also submit a letter on your behalf that does not count as one of your three recommendations. My DCT asked me to provide a list of growth areas to help her with this letter, following these instructions from the Standardized Reference Form: 

As growth areas are expected for all students, “N/A” is not an acceptable response. Also, Training Directors would most appreciate learning about student’s specific competency growth areas (E.g., Jamie is working on balancing their tendency to focus more on validation than change) rather than on experience deficits (e.g., Jamie could benefit from more experience in substance use treatment) which are already evident in other parts of the application.

I found the process of answering this question really helpful! In hindsight, I would have included my growth areas in the materials that I sent to all of my recommenders. As an example, here are the growth areas I listed:

Draft your cover letters (September)

In September, your site list should be close to finalized and you can start drafting your cover letters. In my program, it was standard for our DCT to meet with each of us and review our site lists. Asking your DCT to go over your site list with you can give you important insight into which sites may be a good fit from a program standpoint. For example, my DCT recommended I remove three clinically-focused sites (e.g., at private hospitals) from my list, because she knew our program had a reputation for being a clinical science (research-focused) program and she thought that more clinical sites would not give me serious consideration. Looking back, those sites also would not have been a good match for my training goals, so I’m glad I took her advice and removed them. 

Once my site list was more or less finalized, I started drafting my cover letters. I customized them meticulously to each site. 

I spent approximately two hours writing each letter – one hour to draft, one hour to edit. I aimed to make my cover letters one to one and a half pages each – making a clear case for what rotations I would do at that site and how those rotations fit with my overall training goals, but not too long or verbose. Here is an example of one of my cover letters.

Some sites have special instructions for their cover letters buried in their application instructions. Read their instructions carefully and thoroughly!

Be sure to describe your career aspirations and your desired balance of research vs. clinical work in each cover letter. Here are some possibilities:

Obtain supplemental materials (September)

I applied to thirteen adult psychopathology sites and only two required supplemental materials. Both sites asked for a comprehensive treatment summary. 

Give yourself some lead time if obtaining any materials that were in a client’s record. I asked my supervisor from a VA practicum to send me some notes for a client I had seen there so I could reference them while writing up my treatment summary. She had to deidentify the notes and get them cleared by the VA privacy office before they were released to me. Your DCT may also want to review any supplemental materials before you submit them to ensure they are appropriately deidentified. 

Tabulate clinical hours (October)

Time2Track is designed to import your hours directly into AAPI (the centralized application system, aka CAS), so if you use Time2Track to track your clinical hours, this should be fairly straightforward. I don’t like proprietary systems, so in my first year of graduate school, I looked up the AAPI hours categories and made my own spreadsheet to track my clinical hours. You can find a free template on Google Sheets here.

AAPI only accepts the clinical hours you have completed through October 1st for your application. There is also a section where you can include projected clinical hours if you have any ongoing clinical experiences. 

On October 1st, I tabulated my hours using my spreadsheet, made a free Time2Track account, and uploaded my hours to AAPI for DCT verification. It was no big deal but it did take most a day.

Interlude: Minimum hours don’t matter

Many sites list a “minimum” number of clinical hours on their APPIC page. A common one for adult psychopathology tracks is 500 combined hours – 400 intervention, 100 assessment – but you’ll see all kinds of wild minimums, including 800 intervention hours, which is almost impossible to accrue during an average graduate school timeline. This hints at something important – the minimums exist to scare away applicants who are worried their applications won’t be competitive for other reasons. 

Minimum hours do not matter. They just don’t. Don’t be scared away! If you think you’re a good fit for a site and you don’t have as many clinical hours as they say they require – apply anyway. The number of direct clinical hours you have is often not a reflection of the quality of your training. For example, practica that offer a lot of supervision and not as many intervention hours are often a better training experience than those where you do a lot of intervention hours with little supervision. 

Anecdotally, I applied to two sites where I had fewer than 500 intervention hours (their minimum) and I didn’t mention it in my cover letters. Both sites invited me to interview. 

Create an internship CV (October)

Edit and reformat your CV with your most up-to-date accomplishments. Depending on what you want to emphasize, you might move research or clinical content closer to the top. If your dissertation proposal has been approved, I recommend including the date it was approved with your dissertation title at the top. 

Assemble application packages for each site (October)

For each application on AAPI, you will need:

Be sure to name and organize your files very clearly so that you upload the correct materials to each site! I uploaded all of my materials as PDF files because I think that is the most professional, although AAPI allows many different file types.

Submit applications (by November 1st)

Once everything is drafted, edited, compiled, tabulated, formatted, and ready to go…upload it to AAPI and hit submit! There is an application fee – if you are getting reimbursed by your department, be sure to save a copy of the receipt. 

From mid-August to mid-October, I spent 6-10 hours a week just working on my internship materials. It was intense, but I’m proud to say I was able to submit my applications on October 25th and then relax during that final week leading up to November 1st. (Though I did also spend some time communicating…politely with my recommenders to ensure they submitted their letters on time.) 

Prepare for interviews (November)

This period can be really difficult. You are a proactive and motivated student, and you’re supposed to just sit around and wait for interview invitations? That’s tough!

If you haven’t heard from a site, you are still under consideration. I cannot emphasize this enough. Competitive sites receive an extremely high volume of applications, up to 400 or more. It can take weeks for a selection committee to read through all of them and choose which applicants to interview. Try to relax and take some time to recharge before interviews start. 

If you need something to occupy your brain, you can practice answering interview questions! I have provided a list below of questions I was actually asked during my individual interviews (with faculty, supervisors, postdocs, and current interns). I recommend choosing one question at random each day and delivering an off-the-cuff answer to your roommates, pets, or houseplants. Focus on speaking slowly, breathing between sentences, and relaxing.  

The case summaries you sent to your recommenders are also a handy reference as you are practicing for interviews. You should be able to give examples from different clients you worked with and know what their treatment outcomes were. 

Be sure to prepare questions to ask your interviewers – it’s a matching process and you are also evaluating them. Gather as much information as you can to determine whether the site is a good fit for you. Prepare questions as if every individual interviewer will allocate at least half the time for you to ask them questions.

Interview! And rank as you go (December-January)

Interviews are an information gathering mission. Take detailed notes throughout the interview day and after every individual interview. What were your impressions? Did you like the supervisors you talked to? Enough to spend 3-5 hours a week with them for a year? How did the current interns feel about the training program? How does the stipend compare to cost of living for the area? Make your notes humorous, critical, brutally honest – whatever helps you remember your genuine impression.

I highly recommend ranking sites as you go. Even before your first interview, create a list of the sites ranked by how much you like them. At the end of each interview day, review your notes and update your ranking list. This will be extremely helpful when it comes time to actually rank them for the Match. 

Interview logistics

It is now standard to conduct internship interviews via Zoom. This means you have to prepare for one or more four-to-eight hour days spent staring at a screen. Here are a few things I did to make this process as bearable as possible:

Wear something professional and memorable. The majority of applicants I saw wore a black blazer over a black top. Remember that your interviewers may be interviewing 50 or more applicants over the course of interview season. It doesn’t hurt to stand out.  

Create your ranking list (January)

Congratulations! You’ve made it through the hard part (applications) and the really hard part (interviews), and now there’s just one last step before going into Phase I of the Match – creating and certifying your ranking list.

Get out your spreadsheet with your internship sites and update it with information you learned during interviews. I made a column showing what rotations I would do at each site and with which supervisors, if I had met them during the interview day. I also made another column with pro/con lists for each site.

Things on my “pro” lists included:

Things on my “con” lists included:

When it came down to it, I had a pretty strong sense of which sites were at the top of my list, and which sites were at the bottom. Ordering within the top sites was based on how much I liked the supervisors I talked to, and their postdoc placement rate (I wanted to be confident of finding a position after internship). 

I did flip-flop two sites that were in the middle of my list. They both had fairly strong fit to my interests, with a variety of rotations that I liked, and supervisors that seemed decent, if a little hit-or-miss with cultural humility. However, one site was in a city that I was familiar with, where I already had friends and would enjoy staying for postdoc. I ranked that site above the one in a city I had never visited before and where I did not know anyone. 

Feedback is super helpful here too! I reviewed my ranking list with the same three mentors who gave me feedback on my application essays. They were all supportive of my rankings, but talking through my reasoning with them helped me to feel confident and grounded in my decisions. I had one mentor who had spent some time at one of my sites, and she agreed with my perception that the institution was elitist. However, she also pointed out that they offered outstanding training, and she thought I would really like the city it was in. That helped give me confidence to rank that site higher than I might have otherwise. 

APPIC Match News will send out emails explaining the ranking process and debunking common misconceptions. The gist is: the algorithm prioritizes YOUR preferences, so you don’t have to strategize your rankings based on which sites you think may rank you higher. You just put your favorite site first, and so on. (The algorithm is honestly pretty cool – it won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics.)

One key point: Do not rank a site that you would not want to go to, were you to match there. I ultimately decided not to rank one site that had a pretty unfortunate combination of cons: it was in a city I didn’t feel enthusiastic about, where I didn’t know anyone and would not want to stay for postdoc, it didn’t have rotations – I would see a full outpatient caseload in the same clinic every week all year – and one of the supervisors who interviewed me misgendered a client I described in a case example (right after describing her commitment to cultural humility). I also learned that this site had a “quota” of clinical hours that interns had to meet each week. I left that site off my ranking list to ensure I wouldn’t end up there. 

Wait for Phase I Match results (February)

The two weeks between certifying your rank-ordered list through APPIC and receiving your match results are agonizing. This process is so full of stress and anticipation and trying really hard, and now everything is out of your hands and you’re waiting to be told what the next year of your life will look like. 

A few things to remind yourself of during this time:

Internship interview practice questions (from real interviews!)

Your fit and match with the site

Career goals

Research

You as a professional

You as a real human person

Clinical orientation/styles/values

Professional conduct examples

Case examples

Your clinical interests

In my case, this was trauma and PTSD – customize to your interests and practice accordingly.

Questions for you to ask them during internship interviews

Most individual interviewers (good ones) should allocate at least half of the interview time for you to ask them questions – it’s a matching process, so you are also evaluating them and they know that. Here’s what I asked: 

Questions for supervisors/faculty

Things that should have been covered in the overview presentation, but ask if needed

Questions for current interns