Facts and Figures
More than 80 percent of this year's predoctoral internship applicants were matched to internship sites, according to data from the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC). These matched applicants made up 90 percent of the 2,713 available internship positions.
In addition, about four out of five students who were matched with internships received one of their top three choices, a figure that is consistent with last year's placement.
What generally happens to the almost 20 percent of applicants who are not placed as of Match Day? For the past four years, the APA Research Office has attempted to answer this question. The office has been collecting data on the demand for predoctoral internship placement in response to the perceived imbalance between the demand for and supply of predoctoral internships.
Data gathered from the 1999 Demand for Predoctoral Internships Survey--which surveyed graduate psychology chairs about their students who applied to internships--found that 71 percent of students not placed on Match Day obtained subsequent placement sometime between Match Day and last August. The remainder of students either dropped out of the placement process (21 percent) or were still awaiting placement (7 percent) several months following last year's Match Day.
The top reasons for nonplacement last year were:
Geographic restrictions (32 percent).
Applying to all highly competitive programs (14 percent).
Applying to too few programs (12 percent).
Geographic restrictions have consistently been the most common reason for nonplacement over the past four internship cycles, especially in clinical and counseling psychology programs.
For school programs, 35 percent of chairs indicated that their students sought school-based internships and that 25 percent did not apply to either APA-accredited or APPIC-member internship sites. Other reported reasons for nonplacement included poor letters of recommendation and poor interviewing skills.
The majority (61 percent) of internship applicants were in clinical psychology programs, while one-fifth came from counseling psychology programs. The rest were in school psychology programs (16 percent) or combined programs (2 percent).
Last year, female and minority applicants fared well compared with their counterparts. Female students and minorities represented 70 percent and 16 percent respectively, of those who sought internships for the 19992000 academic year. Fourteen percent of female students seeking internships were not placed on last year's Match Day, compared with 18 percent of male students who also did not match. Thirteen percent of minority applicants were not successful, compared with 15 percent of their nonminority peers.
Finally, 91 percent of all students placed on Match Day were placed in paid internships, 3 percent in unpaid internships and 7 percent had an unspecified funding status.
APA's Research Office continues to collect aggregate data about intern applicants from the graduate programs and during fall 1999 launched a survey that asks intern applicants to provide information on their demographic characteristics, educational backgrounds and aspirations. The report, "1999 Demand for Predoctoral Internships Survey: Summary of Results," is available on APA's Web site at http://research.apa.org/99predocreport.html.
--RICARDO GUERRERO
APA RESEARCH OFFICE
