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Online AAPI Testimonials University
of Texas Medical BranchJeff Baker, Ph.D.,
ABPP
Professor & Director
Psychology Training Program | 
Before
an online application |
Dear APPIC Members:
I want
to write in support of the implementation of an APPIC online application system
for psychology interns. During the time that I was training director for an internship
at the University of Texas Medical Branch, I used my own online system. It was
very simplistic, but allowed me to sort and track applicant information in a timely
manner. That program included an opportunity for students to directly upload their
materials (AAPI and letters of recommendation). We were about 80% paperless. We
still got some letters of recommendation in the mail as some faculty were still
not comfortable in sending attachments back in 2002. I received nothing but positive
comments from applicants stating that it saved them incredible amounts of time
and money. Support staff were able to spend their time in other areas as I went
from one year where they had to open over one thousand pieces of mail to opening
less than 200 the year following our change to an electronic system. I have looked
at different online systems over the years and the one that APPIC is offering
will be very user friendly and offer all the options that were not available to
me at the time we used our system. I strongly believe it will save your program
time as well as time and money for the applicants. There will be a bit of a transition
as staff begin to become more comfortable reviewing online. As a former APPIC
Board member, we were always concerned that the timing had to be right for our
membership, and the online program had to actually save time and money. I believe
the time is now for the approval by membership to move this forward.
The
Children's Hospital, Denver
Jason
Williams, Psy.D.
Training Director
On-line AAPIOur
online application is a web-based program that helps to automate the application,
and the review and interview processes. It provides applicants with a simplified
means of applying to our program and provides our program with tools to more efficiently
process applications, while reducing communication problems. BENEFITS The
program automates the application process in numerous ways. The key benefits include:
- Enables applicants to fill out the application online and allows
both the applicant and agency to print out a PDF version of the application.
- Provides
an electronic version of the entire Part I of the AAPI which can be easily printed
and imported into our own internal database programs for review, analysis and
reporting to faculty.
- Allows us to review and rank applications online
using an efficient interface of drop-down lists with automatic scoring using pre-determined
weights. The information from the AAPI is displayed next to the weighted score
in order to increase accuracy among raters. The faculty can also recommend an
interview or match suggestion which can later be downloaded into a report.
- The
process is secure while allowing us to view individual applications for all applicants.
- After
our final decisions about which applicants to interview, email lists of accepted
and rejected applicants were generated from the web application by simply clicking
on a box.
- The on-line application allows us to review information or to
obtain telephone numbers, emails, etc. during the interview process.
- The
online application includes data validity checks to ensure the application is
accurate and complete.
- We are able to notify applicants that their application
was complete via an automatically generated email to both the applicant and the
TD.
- We are able to create reports internally to use during the internship
review and interview process-including faculty comments, paper review scores,
interview scores and comments, languages spoken, the average number of hours,
etc…any variable in the APPI can be pulled out and analyzed or a report generated.
- We are able to run statistics to determine better interrater reliability
among faculty, as well as run reports such as the average paper review score and
interview score, determine a cutoff score for interviews, view individual and
group faculty ratings, and high and low scores. (I even created graphs for our
Division Chair).
- We are also able run demographics and other analyses
of our application pool to make comparisons between applicant years.
- We
are able to cross reference applicant interest across our specialty rotations
(the interns match on these) allowing us to see how many applicants we have in
each area and the interest of a particular applicant.
- We are able to add
in two additional essays to the application and view them along side the other
essays.
- We are able obtain information about applicants and matched interns
for APA's annual reports and self-studies.
- Our faculty were able to review
applications when it was convenient for them (one faculty member talked about
reviewing applications in her PJ's at home).
We were not able to be
completely paperless as we did not build an electronic AAPI Part II and did not
create the ability to upload documents (i.e. testing reports, letters of recommendations)
or the ability to receive transcripts. If these features were in place we would
have no need for a paper file. Some of our faulty still wanted the ability to
read the paper application, so we created the ability for them to download a PDF
version for them to print and review at their leisure.
13
March 2008 | |
