Comments about Imbalance - Page 8

It was frustrating to work so hard and to know that in other years I might have been a competitive candidate, but to only be offered 3 interviews out of 15 sites I applied to. Especially knowing that people with the exact same credentials as me received triple the amount of interviews in previous years. What was particularly hard about it was that the information I got from my DCT throughout my program made it seem as though I should not focus on accruing hours, but given the imbalance this year, I feel certain that I would have gotten more interviews if I had given more time to clinical training, which I was pressured not to do. It felt unfair and misleading to receive this information only to be told when it was too late that I should have done more. This is not the fault of APPIC and I don't see anything they could do about it, but it certainly was frustrating.

I have voiced to my educational progam on many occasions that the influx of students and larger cohorts coming into the school continues to negatively affect those students who are approaching the internship match process. With the amount of students that enter each program, the chances of a high number of participants being matched declines. It is obvious that there are limited amount of openings for internships and if the schools monitored this better and were aware, especially at the administrative and admissions level, then they may respond to it more efficient manner. For me personally, not being matched was a devastating experience and not one that I nor many of my professors or fellow students expected. I felt that the level of competitiveness has increased because of the lower amount of positions available and entering into Phase II brought further stress as I came to the realization that almost 1000 applicants are competing for 300 positions. This needs to be addressed by the admissions departments who create too large of a cohort (100-150 doctoral students a year) and brought to the attention of those schools who do not appear to care about the number of accepted students until it is too late.

It seems that there are not nearly enough APPIC sites to meet the needs of all the students applying for internships. Perhaps schools need to enroll less students or more sites need to be recruited for APPIC status.

The imbalance between applicants and internship sites adds to the overall stress of the process. After spending 4-5 years in a training program the idea of not being matched is a very scary thought for psychology doctoral students. Psychology doctoral students already make a number of sacrifices over the course of their training. Not matching puts additional financial and personal strain on students. I think any small steps taken to improve the situation would be helpful.

It's a bad situation. I had no idea going into graduate school that there was a possibility that I wouldn't be able to complete my degree because of not matching for internship. I don't think it's appropriate or fair for programs to take more students than internship sites available, and obviously some schools take WAY more students than others. I think this should be addressed by APA and others. I have seen many of my peers who have not matched 1 or 2 times - it's very sad.

Although I was prepared for the disparity between applicants and APA-accredited sites, I was unprepared for the realization that sites that send encouraging emails (i.e., "you are a highly qualified applicant, please consider our site") may not even rank you. Although not against the rules, it does feel dishonest.

It has caused me great grief - I am a very strong candidate according to my supervisors and instructors, and yet I am unmatched. I am still in shock and worried about the financial burden this will cause for me. I regret pursuing a PsyD, because i feel I faced much prejudice during this process for being in a professional program.

I believe this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. The imbalance between number of positions available and applicants makes the application process more stressful, costly and time consuming. The application process is very involved as it is and with increased competition, applicants are applying to more and more sites in an effort to secure a site for themselves. This requires additional time and money, not to mention the stress and complications, such as difficulties with graduate and career planning, that can result from not matching and having to reapply the following year.

This is a significantly anxiety-provoking experience. There are not enough sites and applicants spend a lot of money, go further in debt, with a 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 chance of having to do it all again next year. It has gotten to the point where you have to go above and beyond your fellow high achieving students to gain more publications and work more practica. There need to be monetary incentives for sites to become APA accredited or open up intern sites.

I find it a large injustice to students that universities continue to increase their class size, knowing that there is a shortage of almost 800 sites. I personally did not match last year and this was a tremendous surprise to my professors as well as myself. I am in the top of my class and had a lot to offer. I felt that the huge imbalance in sites robbed me of my opportunity to match last year. I feel that it is necessary for university counseling centers and university clinics to band together and form consortiums in order to quickly open up additional sites. This imbalance is not seen in the medical field, and puts us a step behind them.

I am incredibly frustrated and disappointed by the current state of the imbalance and how many years it has been allowed to continue with absolutely nothing concrete being done to immediately change the situation. I believe that medical schools would never allow this to happen. It is the job of the accrediting agency to balance this situation by either limiting the accreditation of programs or actively recruiting and accrediting new internship programs on a much more timely basis. It is simply ridiculous how long it takes a program to get accredited. Tolerance and patience have worn thin, I am tired of all the talk and committees and want to see action. This is coming from an applicant that matched highly and came from a program where we had a 100% match rate this year.

Coming from a smaller professional school, albeit APA accredited, it was during this difficult process that I realized how unfair it is for training programs to continue "mass producing" psychologists, especially programs that are not even accredited. I feel that the APA should have a greater role in capping the amount of students admitted to training programs on a yearly basis in an attempt to protect the integrity of the profession but also to protect the graduate students who give so much of their time and money to fund an education that is proving to be very difficult to a) finish and b) provide equitable returns. I saw many talented, well trained graduate students get to the end of Phase I without a successful match and it pains me still. The statistics also highlight this trend, year to year. I guess my main concern is that this problem is not new, and is has not been addressed successfully. If the schools are not going to take action because doing so would be unprofitable, then the accreditation sources should step in and provide clear guidelines and requirements to get these numbers to more sustainable levels.

I am an international student, who is allowed to work in the U.S. for 1-2 years under Optional practical training. Many sites have a requirement for U.S. citizenship, which limits my options. I do not understand that if I can legally work under my student visa then why should I be discriminated based on my immigration status? Shouldn’t the requirement be waived? International students pay the most amount of tuition and have limited number of years in this country...either they should not be admitted into doctoral programs (a very bad financial decision) OR they should be given some security for getting internship. There is no awareness or support available for international students from the Psychology community. Publishing psychological research on their stress does not guarantee any respect within the community. Our lives are on hold...financially, psychologically, emotionally, relationally, and geographically. In fact, my previous practicum experience and master's degree in my native country is not considered of value here, even though I have had much higher quality of supervision in my native country. American elitism or should I say capitalism being practiced in American psychology? Secondly, many APPIC placement sites emphasize diversity and explicitly mention no-discrimination policy. But, most of my interview experience had been such that many programs have mostly Caucasian psychologists on the board and they were very skeptical of my abilities as a candidate because I am not an American.I speak fluent English with slight native accent. I learned lesson from this interview process- MINORITY APPLICANTS ARE DISCRIMINATED and are not welcomed because we cannot fit in to their team's culture. Most interviewers are looking for candidates who FIT well with their personalities and team culture. Sorry, but being an Asian I have obvious value and personality differences. Infact, I had explicitly mentioned my interest in Asian Psychology in my application but many sites do not have any psychologist who is as "multicultural" to supervise me. I am saying all this not just because i did not get matched for the APPIC internship, but it is my frustration from previous practicum sites as well. I should have heeded to the advice of my first American psychologist supervisor who told me this overtly "you are not suited for becoming therapist and you should do research", then I could have atleast saved struggle to understand American culture. I have consistently expereinced in my program and practicum sites a covert level of exclusion and non-acceptance.But, I am not going to be quiet now....the APPIC no match has opened the floodgates of my fury for the American Psychology. Hypocrisy is the word I recall. Who can fix that? My suggestion is that they should make it explicit that they do not want any Non-American to apply for these positions. Psychology continues to remain a western science and legacy.

I matched, and so in the end, I am happy with that. However, this process has been extremely stressful, time consuming and draining not only emotionally but of my resources. Not only to me, but to my entire family. I applied to 17 sites and only received 2 interviews. Although I do not have a lot of publication experience, I have a good, solid clinical and testing background with far over the average number of intervention hours required by most sites...and again, only 2 interviews (an 11.7% interview acceptance rate!). I found that, as a Counseling student, most (if not all) of my peers in my program had difficulty receiving interviews as Counseling students. We all had varied experience, many of us had numerous publications in addition to solid clinical backgrounds, but in the end, still had difficulty. Although I did match, it was at a non-APA site. So although I worked through my Masters and PhD, I find that, in the end, I may struggle (again) to find a post-doc after this year and that is frustrating. I feel for my peers that did not match because, even if every spot available is matched with an applicant, there will be approximately 700 individuals who will have to put their lives on hold for another year in order to graduate and finally become a professional psychologist.

The current ratio between applicants and internship sites has made the internship application process much more stressful. Given the ratio of applicants to internship spots, my classmates and I all felt the need to apply to more than the minimum recommended number of sites. This increased our expenses significantly. I think that it is irresponsible of psychology programs to continue to take large (and sometimes increasing) numbers of students when these students do not have a reasonable chance of attaining an internship. Spending an additional year in school is costly and taxes the resources of the student and the program.

APA is clearly completely and totally disconnected from students and does not know/care nearly enough about the imbalance.

There needs to be more sites and training institutions need to be upfront with students about the difficulty in obtaining an internship. It was very stressful and I can only imagine the stress of those in match 2 when so many wont receive a site. People have to put their life on hold for another year while loans accrue interest. I remember getting the email about the imbalance a couple days before interviews and that really added to the anxiety. While I appreciate the upfront honesty, it would have been less stressful to know this several weeks before my interviews or after the fact.

The system is designed to have qualified candidates not match because there are too many students for sites. Plus most want APA accredited sites because completion of an APA accredited internships provides greater opportunity in the future. It seems a set up to be honest especially since most students in the match are well qualified and competent. It seems a shame that individuals have to settle just to get an internships.

The imbalance between available sites and number of applicants is a difficult problem because it is required to complete our degree. It seems to me that if APA is going to expand their accreditation of training programs they need to expand the number of accredited internship sites at the same time, and use their influence to do so. Not matching for an internship has not made me question my competence or readiness, but I have felt very frustrated with the system and availability of sites. Now I have to restructure my plans and the plans of my family for another year due to a system that is entirely out of my control. On one hand I see this as a typical career challenge that many people face in many different career fields. On the other hand, it is frustrating that people in our field did not have the foresight to see this HUGE problem when they went ahead with expanding training programs years ago.

Overall, it places undue stress on applicants. I only take home $1,000/month as a TA at my university. One interview (of my 10 in person) cost me $600 alone. I spent about $2,000 on travel, or roughly 1/6th of my yearly income. Could you imagine a job seeker looking spending $10,000 on job interviews if s/he makes $60,000/year? That would be unheard of. This process is still too expensive. It is such a great investment in time and money that has a very low return for the hundreds of students that don't match every year. I have to move cross-country for my internship, as I matched to one of my lowest choices. But given the mismatch, I'm thankful I matched at all.

I recognize that there is an imbalance between applicants and positions. It has not directly affected me or others I know largely because I attend a well-respected graduate program with a long record of successful matching. I believe the addition of professional schools of psychology in recent years has contributed to the imbalance. They also make it much easier to become a psychologist-- and actually make it difficult for consumers to determine the quality of training that a psychologist may have had.

The match imbalance has created undertones and overtones of additional anxiety in the match process. The imbalance and the realistic chance of not matching has caused my field (students, mentors, faculty, other psychological professionals) to treat the process like a fragile little bird that could break at any moment. This white glove treatment of the process makes us students feel additional anxiety and frustration. It's ridiculous. The process of applying, matching, uprooting your academic and personal life to move somewhere new is hard enough.... not to mention the fact that this process is essentially the culmination of ALL that we have done in our academic career and the experience and connections that we make on internship will likely set our path for our professional career. Pressure? Sheesh!

In my opinion, if an internship is required to graduate, it is unethical and exploitative to have a 1 in 4 chance of not matching once a student has invested 4 years of time and money in a PhD or PsyD program. It also creates a long-term problem for the field with too many, perhaps not-well trained, psychologists.

This is a horrible process; my life and all of the lives of those intern bound students have worked for nearly a year to get through Match Day. How is this fair, necessary, or appropriate? Schools need to STOP taking those students who are completely inadequate and unprofessional because they are making it more difficult for the rest of us. Unfortunately, most professional psychology schools are only interested in the dollar and not about what kind of students they are excepting and therefore promoting to go into such an amazing field. Restrictions should be placed upon the schools. The amount of continuous anxiety for all of those in the process is palpable and places undue stress on all of us personally and professionally.

My friends didn't all match and this is significant. We should have enough sites for students, as in the medical school model, or schools should take less students! Also, we are being paid garbage, and can't even find enough sites with so little money?!?!

Overall, the current imbalance created significantly more anxiety throughout the entire application process. Knowing that I come from a training program that successfully matches almost 100% of their applicants helped to ease this anxiety, but not by much, considering the imbalance has not been as great in the past as it is currently. It was very frustrating to think that although I have excellent training and much more than the required hours to apply, I might not have matched simply because of this imbalance. Lastly, my anxiety regarding the imbalance caused me to apply to many more sites that I would have initially, and to fly to each interview in order to create the best impression possible; this cost me a significant amount of money.

I think it's awful that no matter how hard a student prepares themselves for this process, that practically speaking there is a possiblity they may not get matched. If it were possible to make the process of creating accredited programs easier, then this should be pursued. Additionally, i think that programs should limit the number of incoming students they take per year to help with the imbalance.

I was fortunate to have matched my first time, but I have witnessed the experiences of highly qualified classmates and friends who did not match and it was very painful. Something needs to be done about the imbalance of internship programs versus number of students needing internships. At the risk of offending, I believe that Psy.D. programs that accept large cohorts of students are flooding the system, which may be part of the problem.

The current imbalance between applicants and positions has affected me because I was one of nearly 1000 who did not match to an internship. This is not only an inconvenience, it has negative consequences on my relationships, my financial solvency, and my ability to maintain purposeful enrollment in my graduate institution. It has been said that "something needs to be done" and that the APA and APAGS have issued statements and are seeking solutions to this imbalance. I have a suggestion, in the absence of an increase of intern positions that are APPIC and APA accredited, limit the number of students enrolled in doctoral programs so as to reduce the discrepancy and to correct the imbalance. The APA should reevaluate the accreditation process so that it may occur in a shorter period of time. That is not to suggest that standards for accreditation should be lowered, those standards should remain high. However, the fact of the matter is that many otherwise qualified applicants were denied an internship this year and in years past because there are simply too many students, many of whom have engaged in an academic/training/assessment "arms race" to stand out. In fact, I have nearly enough clinical hours, prior to internship, to meet the licensing requirements of most states. Simply put, the imbalance between applicants and internship positions creates significant stresses on all of our lives and is an impediment to the matriculation of many competent, qualified psychologists-in-training. Most academic programs have time limits (e.g., must complete the program within seven years). What will APPIC and the APA do about the imbalance when a number of otherwise qualified internship candidates who have fulfilled all other requirements begin to "time out" of their programs and are forced to graduate with a terminal masters degree?

I am feeling that there is a serious problem with the imbalance between number of positions and available training sites. I would tell programs like the University of Phoenix who graduate hundreds of on-line trained PhDs that APA accredidation is simply not available to them until they ensure there are enough new slots for them when their graduates are done. I would also tell every APA program they must have an equal number of slots in their own university program, or know where to find them (VA, CMH etc) to place their graduates. Failing the above, any program would be denied APA accredidation.

The imbalance has affected me and created a more discouraging process. I am concerned that professional psychology schools have become less restrictive and enrolled too many students for the opportunity to make more money without fully understanding the negative consequences of so many graduates.

This is very distressing to many students. I wish I could say that I believed that it has helped get the "best of the best" out on internship and filtered out the rest, but it seems as though many of the criteria by which some are selected are arbitrary.

I believe it is extremely difficult. The process of getting a PhD in clinical psychology is lengthy as it is. The prospect of not being matched and having to wait an entire year to apply all over again is extremely concerning. It is worrisome as essentially you are going to be in limbo if you have completed all your requirements. Additionally, the lack of positions forced me to apply to a geographic region that my husband cannot come with me as he cannot find employment within his field. As a result we will be apart for an entire year. My internship year will no doubt be busy and what makes it even harder is that I will be without a support system. Had there been more positions available and very little chance of not being matched, I may not have applied so broadly and not have considered areas that would caused me to be socially isolated.

This issue has hugely affected my life. I was forced to hold off on applying last year due to health issues as well as issues with my dissertation, and as such placed a lot on getting an internship placement this year. When I did not receive any interview requests at all during round one, I was pretty disheartened. This experience caused me to doubt my abilities as well as my place in this field. I also struggled with depression and anxiety issues in the few months following the notification deadline and receiving all rejections from the sites I had spent months creating applications for. I wish I had received more support from my program along the way, as well as been informed about how strong or weak my application was. In retrospect, if I had known how challenging this process was early on, I would have sought out more experience to improve my application and make it more likely to get a placement. One major support was the friendship of my peers. It helped to know that many others were in the same boat, and also did not receive any offers in round one. They offered support, distraction, answered questions, and helped edit my materials. I was very fortunate to have such a group to support me during this time. I think that, as a field, we need to reduce the number of students being accepted into programs, as well as continue to rally for more sites. It seems unfair to let students spend time, effort, and outrageous amounts of money toward a degree they may never achieve. This process is emotionally taxing, simply due to the amount of materials that need to be collected, organized, and created, not to mention the soul searching that goes into critically examining your strengths, weaknesses, and future plans. There shouldn't be the added stressor of having a 1 in 4 chance of not placing at all. This process should be about matching qualified students with strong training programs that can meet the training goals of the student. While I believe this intent is present, the number disparity has forced students to overextend themselves, applying to sites outside of their goals and preferences to simply "get a site." While this may push students to expand their comfort zone, in this instance it goes too far, causing students to push way beyond their preferences to avoid not placing and being left without a degree and mountains of debt. I greatly appreciate the visible efforts of APPIC and APA for recognizing this disparity, and for making efforts towards understanding this phenomenon as well as its effects, so that we might move towards fixing this imbalance and making our field stronger and healthier.

In light of the healthcare provider crisis the nation is experiencing (particularly in rural areas), one would think that the APA, state and private universities and the myriad of supporting organizations and institutions (including APPIC) would be doing more to recruit and train an adequate number of practitioners. Instead, these organizations seem to be interested in only protecting their elitist status by maintaining artificially low numbers of doctoral students from a homogeneous population of applicants (upper-middle class, suburban, white, early 20s and female). From my perspective, this system is more interested in carving out a niche of intellectuals separated from reality by focusing on theoretical issues with little practical use than it is with actually producing quality practitioners. With that goal in mind, the universities and APA are doing a great job. If however, the intent were to develop professional psychologists capable of meeting our communities' needs, than they have failed. When one considers therefore the disparity between applicants and positions, it is really no wonder we are in the state we are in; after all, developing practitioners isn't really the priority.

How has my life been affected? It definitely increased my anxiety about the process of applying for internship, and students in my program are very concerned as they face the prospect of applying in coming years. Two students from our program were not able to match last year (out of about 9 applying), and did not find a placement through clearinghouse. Both re-applied this year and one of them again did not match. It is very upsetting to the individual students who don't match, as well as to people around them when they see highly qualified and intelligent people not matching. It is very difficult for students to go through this process more than once as so much time, money, and effort is invested, and people have other demands in their lives (e.g., kids, family, financial) that may prohibit trying again the following year. I think it may result in people giving up and not being able to complete PhDs in clinical even if they defend successfully. I don't think that training programs (such as mine) can continue to require students to apply only to accredited internships as there are clearly not enough to go around. However, it seems to be a stipulation by CPA/APA that training programs only permit students to seek accredited internships. I don't think it's possible to continue this way, seeing how the pool of applicants increases every year and it's ridiculous and shocking that PhD candidates in their final year cannot graduate in a timely fashion because of the inability to secure an internship.

It felt unreasonable to me that we, after going through competitive doctoral program application and 4 years of training, have to worry about securing internship training. However, I do not agree with "lowering" accreditation criteria for internship sites as it will eventually harm the overall quality of our service in the field. What about put weights on successful internship match rate of the students when APA accredites academic program?

As someone who has not matched for 2 years in a row, I feel that the current imbalance is a serious problem. Completing a PhD in Clinical Psychology is very challenging and to have this process prolonged due to no fault of my own is unacceptable. I know that I am a strong student and a skilled clinician and this provides one more hurdle to me doing what I love. This has not only been difficult for me personally, but also financially. While I am finished my coursework, I need to continue paying tuition while I wait for an internship and have spent thousands of dollars in the past two years flying to internship sites for interviews. As a student with loans, I have reached the maximum time allowed without having to pay interest on my loans though I continue to pay tuition. Not only has this experience been upsetting for me, it has been quite demoralizing for the junior students in my program who anticipate their own difficulties in obtaining an internship, despite the fact that our school provides excellent clinical training. As a school with intensive supervision (1:1), our number of direct intervention hours tends to be lower, however, I would argue strongly that we are better trained clinicians as a result of this approach to training. Given the current discrepancy, however, the requirement for a large number of hours appears to have increased.

I think the imbalance is a big and serious problem. It really creates the unnecessary stress and anxiety to the applicants. I understand the importance of having the internship experience before one obtains his/her PhD; however, it does not make sense to make it not guarantied but necessary for getting the degree. It does not make sense to produce so many applicants without providing enough positions. It is not only wrong, but also unethical.

Had I known about the match process and insufficient number of sites prior to starting graduate school I would have NEVER enrolled. Professionally, I am disgusted that this type of an issue exists; it is abusive and deceitful to incoming students all over the United States !!!!

This makes the stress level unbelievable. Why is APA accrediting schools when there is already this imbalance? Why are schools still accepting so many students when there is already this imbalance? Is there a corrective mechanism to take away the accreditation of schools that aren't matching enough students? The whole thing is a serious problem for the field and needs to be corrected.

It is unfortunate that many students each year do not get matched due to not enough positions available for all applicants. So many great students have their professional lives disrupted due to this and their reputation is stained the following year for not matching the prior year. It would be great if this issue was not perceived in this way by training directors. It would also be nice to develop more available positions to balance out.

Given that I did not get matched, I perceive the imbalance between applicants and positions to affect me in a very negative way personally and professionally. I would like to work as a health psychologist and it is very difficult to find health psychology postdoctoral training programs that do not require APA-accredited training. My program tried a few years ago to create a consortium program to become accredited. After 2 or 3 years of applying for accreditation and being rejected, my program withdrew the application and sought consultation from the APA. It appears that students that attend a Psy.D. program that does not have an APA accredited consortium program that is reserved for only trainees from that program, are at a disadvantage in applying for APA internships. It would help if the APA would make it a bit easier for programs to become accredited. Then there would be more APA internships available for applicants.

As a student, this process has been a difficult one, knowing that a large number of students will not match for internship this year. It is difficult to know how to address this issue. It seems that something should be done to reconcile the number of students and available internships, but how should this be regulated? Perhaps more stringent acceptance criteria within graduate programs is the answer, as one cannot simply create the resources required to offer students an internship placement (office space, supervision, stipend, etc.).

Yes. I think it's unethical to make a requirement that about 1,000 students cannot fulfill annually due to the imbalance of sites and students. Students work very hard during their doctoral training and are forced to add another year to their training that they wouldn't have otherwise.

The current imbalance between applicants and position has had an enormous impact on me both professionally and personally. I believe It has and will affect my training, and I also believe it has had and will continue to have a detrimental effect on the field and the individuals comprising it. With so many applicants, it is understandably impossible for sites to sufficiently review applications. Given the ease of filtering applicants based on specific variables (such as intervention hours), I am sure that the pressure to quickly sort through the huge volume of applicants in many cases, I would imagine, leads to otherwise qualified applicants being eliminated based on one or two variables that may or may not have any bearing on their abilities. Furthermore, the intense competition for a limited number of sites often likely leads applicants, to place inordinate emphasis on such criterion variables, perhaps even leading to overstatements (minor or major); this further reduces the odds of an appropriate match. I am also extremely concerned about this issue as a rising professional in the field. I had been warned that the field of psychology was saturated, but I had no idea to what extent. Beginning with internship match, the applicant/site imbalance decreases the odds (if only statistically speaking) that qualified applicants will receive the training they need and deserve. This in turn affects consumers, who then receive services from under-qualified individuals, and other clinicians, who may be driven due to economic pressures (resulting from supply/demand issues as well as the massive debt associated with education, especially if this education is prolonged by internship). I fear what the current internship imbalance means for the future job market. The internship/student imbalance also, I imagine, could (or perhaps has) affected training programs who may relax their training standards given that applicants are being driven to accept internships simply for the sake of taking an internship, regardless of the training or their fit for the site. Given (growing) costs of education and training, had I known the realities of this situation, I would have seriously reconsidered my decision to pursue a degree. I think this is particularly true for PsyDs, given their growing numbers, the higher costs of tuition, and the potential for lower quality training (given that many, though not all, PsyD programs operate on business models emphasizing tuition revenue, in which cases class size is most important rather than internship match or quality of training). I believe the solution for this rests largely (though not entirely) in publicizing the outcome data for training programs (have you ever tried to find a ranking of PsyD programs, based on any criterion?), the standards to which programs are held in order to achieve accreditation, and more adequate dissemination of information regarding this imbalance. I did not match in Phase I and I realize that this has negatively affected my perceptions. I am also a PsyD. However, I believe my program has trained me more than adequately, and I am also very confident that I am more than qualified for many internships. Whether or not the results of my match were or will be (in Phase II) influenced by the imbalance, I believe these issues are true to at least a certain extent.

This experience has been very stressful, knowing that you could do everything right and still not match. I know that increasing the number of internships from the provider (program) perspective is difficult due to funding and resources. However, I feel that the increase could come more quickly on this end. It would be very difficult to decrease the number of students applying. The only option might be to restrict applications by APA/CPA approved to students who are from programs that require accredited programs to complete their degree. There is also a concern surrounding the number of professional programs flooding the system with students who have a different skill set (often with less research) than students from academic programs. I do not know how to fix it, but I know that this led some students to apply to upwards of 25 or 30 programs increasing the burden on programs that had to sift through more applications. These applicants were often strong and received a very large number of interviews placing a financial burden on them and possibly taking away spots from other well-qualified students.

Unfortunately, this is a major problem in our field, which mainly stems from too many students being accepted into doctoral programs. I do feel very passionately about this issue and have every intention of ensuring that quality training is provided to future interns--that is, I aim to become a supervisor and/or training director or otherwise "pay it forward" to future applicants. The imbalance between applicants and positions makes the environment very difficult for students. I found myself constantly questioning my abilities and competence. I also noticed that I told many people about this imbalance so that, just in case I did not match, I might be able to reduce my sense of shame. The process is very rough on applicants' self-esteem. Many skilled and well-qualified applicants do not end up matching, and despite efforts to attend to their needs, it is still damaging to not match and feel that sense of rejection. Conversely, the mysterious nature of the match process leaves me still feeling unsure of my desirability and skills because I have no way of knowing how much I was "wanted" by the site(s) that did rank me.

This process is rough! Despite being a highly qulified applicant, I found many aspects of the process to be arbitrary. Some sites I believed I would be a great match for did not consider my application, while other sites I did not expect to contact me offered me interviews. Overall, I was dissapointed with the number of interviews I received. Most of the sites I applied to were in my city, and I was dismayed when I received only 2 interviews in my city (from a site I previously trained at, and a non-APA accredited site, neither of which I was truely interested in). Because the applicant numbers are so high, and sites are bombarded with applications, it sometimes seems random as to who gets an interview. The process made me feel like it had more to do with luck (whose application even gets looked at) than qualifications. This is likely because most of the applications are highly- and similarly- qualified! Ultimately, I was successful in the match and am very excited for the coming year. However, until notification day, I remained unsure if I would match at all. This produced undue anxiety around my competence as a theapist, as well as personal stress around the likelihood of relocating. The competition, discouraging statistics, financial burden, personal and professional implications, and lack of control are a recipie for intense anxiety, even among the most zen.

I personally have felt an extreme amount of anxiety and stress due to the imbalance. Personally, I believe this process favors students who are dishonest and punishes students who are honest. Why? Honest students may report lower hours (like myself) and some dishonest students dramatically inflate their hours. I have been made aware of several students from other programs who admitted lying on their applications about their clinical hours. At some interviews, some PhD students indicated that their programs were so research heavy that they would get upwards of 5-10 publications but then they would not have time to complete clinical hours. Some students stated they would just lie about their hours. They stated that their DCTs were unaware, but it was the only way that they felt they could get an internship. This is truly unfair to those of us who are honest about our hours. Due to the internship imbalance of applicants to slots, I think the field of psychology needs to approach this issue differently. Perhaps like the medical field, we should be able to graduate from our program with our degree, and then complete an internship similar to a medical residency. Thus, we would be doctors when attending internship. Also, maybe programs that have a large number of students should be required to create internship slots over the next 5-7 years.

The discrepancy between the number of applicants and the number of positions is, by far, the most problematic issue of the entire internship application process. Applicants from my program are well aware of the imbalance, and we, as a cohort, have processed our concerns about this issue in various settings (training seminars, practicum classes, therapy groups, etc.). Even so, because we are aware of the odds of qualified and personable applicants not matching with a site, the entire application process is complicated and anxieties heightened. Personally, I have shed tears on behalf of my friends who didn't match--recognizing that they were just as qualified, if not more so, than I am. I feel angry and frustrated at the accrediting bodies who flooded the system by accrediting professional school training programs, seemingly without considering what such actions would do to the pool of applicants all vying for internships at a limited number of sites. Unfortunately, I don't have suggestions for how to improve this situation, but something must be done.

I feel that the imbalance between applicants and positions affects everyone applying for a psychology doctoral internship. It increases the already intense anxiety of the Match process and often results in great candidates being left unmatched.

The whole internship process is well managed and straight forward. Nevertheless, it saddens me to see that after 5+ years of education in my field of choice, intense research and clinical training, numerous classes and hours of work that go above and beyond what i have seen other graduate students outside of clinical psychology do, we are still not considered worthy and need an "apprenticeship" year. This is like someone spending 80+ hours/week learning how to fix cars and researching car fixes, and 5 years later being told that they need a one year low paid 40 hr./week car fixing experience to really be a car mechanic. As a PhD candidate, it communicated to me that my field does not trust my ability and training and made me question the point of my education. The more time I spend in this field, the more concerned I am about what is communicated to students, new researchers and new professionals. Hard sciences pay people to interview for graduate school, psychology does not. We work 10 times harder and still have to jump through numerous hoops, many of them unclear for what purpose to get to the point where we need to prove ourselves again worthy of an internship for which we must pay money to apply for, must travel out of our own pockets to and must work full time in for petty close to no pay such that we can graduate to have 1000 hours still to go and an exam to take to be licensed. Yet a life coach, which in the eyes of the public is not much different from a psychologist, can just add that to a resume and be done with it. I really hope that the powers that are in charge of defining what makes a psychologist can take a step back and evaluate exactly how much is asked of students, and what the point of it all is. Of course, the more one learns, the better one is, but are we really in need of everything we are required to do to be considered a psychologist? How many of the people making the decisions now had to go through so many steps, and how many graduated in few years, and still had amazing research and clinical careers and did wonderful things for our field? Also, evaluating how much students are valued and how this is communicated to them is needed. While my faculty has been fantastic in being supportive and pushing me forward, the requirements for classes, hours, programs, travel, internships, interviews, philosophy and world views clearly indicates to me that I can’t by myself figure out what I need to be a good psychologist and must be forced through a well defined path to get there. What I think is needed is that if after 5-7 years of hard work we’re still considered incapable of being PhDs or PsyDs, at least it should be made easier for us to do the required step of internship. Applying to 15+ places, traveling to interviews and having to pay for it, when most programs have in town or in house internships, is ridiculous. If my graduate school is a good fit for me, why try to find yet again a fit for a required year at the end of my program as opposed to doing the required work in house? Why do I need to prove myself again worthy and fitted to do something that I have to do? It’s like being required to take a class but then only getting to take it if you prove to be a good match for the class, write essays to get in and make sure your philosophy aligns to your professor’s. Lastly, if you have students be full time employees for one year, paying them 0-30 000 after again 5+ years of intense training is denigrating. There ar

The application process was Incredibly emotionally draining. I felt completely unprepared for many of the random requirements that the various programs had. As someone with 4 years of practicum training, I was shocked and dismayed that I only received 3 interview offers out of 15 sites that I applied to. The requirements of internship programs are becoming ridiculously high for the training and compensation that they offer. Luckily I ended up matching at my top choice, but there must be ways to have graduate programs communicate to the students more effectively what specifically will make them competitive applicants for internship so that applicants don't realize their application deficits at the last minute.

The imbalance of applicants and positions was a constant source of anxiety throughout the process. I worried that if I did not match then the process would only be more competitive the following year. Despite my best efforts to produce an application that reflected my experience and dedication to the field, I still felt that much of the outcome was out of my control simply due to the volume of applicants and loss of funding/loss of positions that sites faced. I feel very blessed that I matched at an amazing site, but am very concerned for those that entered Phase II. I was shocked to see the disparity between the positions available and the remaining applicants. I worry that this disparity will only increase as time goes on and will leave many highly qualified applicants unmatched.

The current imbalance between applicants and positions caused a bit of anxiety; however, because I knew I was a very strong candidate, I was not too worried about it. The imbalance, though, has impacted some of my colleagues who did not match this year or the previous year. Although they restricted themselves due to financial and/or family considerations, they are still highly qualified applicants. In my opinion, the solution is not to create more positions. Instead, I believe that there needs to be tighter controls on acceptance rates into doctoral programs, ESPECIALLY free-standing Psy.D. programs.

It has made the application process a lot more stressful. I often doubted myself and wondered if I had enough of what was needed to land an internship. I know for many of my classmates it has impacted their decision to prolong schooling and take an extra year in order to increase their number of clinical hours. That is a whole year of extra loans taken out and extra debt accrued. During the application process I wondered a lot if I should have done that and felt like I was a less desirable applicant because I had not. My hours were a little lower because I had completed my program in the alloted time, four years. I just hope that sites look at applicants who have completed everything in four years and take that into consideration. I think applicants are so desperate to get an internship that stipend is not really a huge factor in applying or deciding where to apply and how to rank. I would encourage sites to open up more internship slots, even if this means lower the stipend or not being able to offer one. I think people would still apply.

I HATE that the field is in such a crisis like this. I feel that programs are money hungry and instead of protecting the integrity of the field and careers for their students, they insist on accepting hundreds of more students each year than there are spots for. . . I blame selfishness and money. . . my school, which accepts ~120 students a year would CRUMBLE if they cut the enrollment by even half and that's still 60 students! I wish we could all think with more integrity and foreshadowing. . . our field is so saturated. . . . but money unfortunately has a bigger voice than moral standards:(

I was pretty angry at various points in the process when I thought about the shortage of sites. I could not imagine the loss of the money, time, skill, etc. that would have resulted in my having to "sit out" a year. I was lucky enough to have it work out, but I would feel that someone should compensate me for such loss had I not been matched. I have no idea about how to correct such imbalance, but I believe some type of compensation is due to many individuals.

It has created a significant level of stress and concern about not matching. My husband has put his life on hold in order for me to complete my education. We have had to prepare foro several years knowing that the stipend would be so low. The financial impact of obtaining an advanced degree is quite significant and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to pay some of my tuition as I have worked through school. However, there are many students who are graduating with over $100,000 worth of student loan debt. To not have enough positions for students to complete their program only increases the debt load as students are required to pay continuous enrollment fees. I also remain concerned about the post-doctoral hours required for licensure. With the practicum hours and internship hours, why can't these be considered towards the post-doc hours? That would assist most graduates to "get on their feet" faster after school.

I think the imbalance problem has as much to do with certain graduate programs accepting too many applicants as it does not having enough internship slots. In other words, it seems that everyone is focused on the "demand" side of the problem, but we (as a field) should also address the "supply" side of the problem. It makes no sense to me that programs are allowed to accept 20+ people into one cohort, especially if they don't provide any accredited internship positions.

While I matched successfully, and was pleased with the outcome of the process, I was surprised by the high number of applications I needed to submit in order to get a decent number of interviews. The process is competitive. Starting it knowing this is helpful.

The education and training community and APA have totally failed in insuring that valid programs have enough openings to meet the demands of current students need for internship. This has been a highly frustrating, demoralizing experience for me. Rather than knowing I am reviewed and ranked for my abilities, it feels like a random role of the dice. I was told by sites rejecting me for an interview that they were "overwhelmed" by applicants. I wonder how effectively they can process large volumes of applicants without making some personal judgments about who "fits" for them. APPIC/APA need to follow the medical school model: if you have 10 students then you have 10 openings for residencies. Everyone gets a seat at the table.

It is horrible that students are allowed to attempt to achieve a degree that may or may not be within their reach within a specified amount of time due to the internship imbalance. More coordination is needed among programs that require internships of their students, and the programs providing training. One way to help achieve a balance would be to only admit the number of students into programs for which there were slots. All students requiring an internship should be able to receive one. All have worked hard, and if someone isn't able to finish their degree, it would be better for them to not start a program. Though this is just a "brainstorm" maybe forcing programs to pay a fee to allow students to use the APPIC service so that only students in the APPIC system are competing for internships offered?

The imbalance is terrifying to me because I can’t devise any way that would reduce the growth rate of applicants. The schools have pure financial incentive to take more students each year. More students means more federal loan money and more tuition into the institution. And site supervisors are somewhat disincentivized to create more spots. Another intern requires another stipend (usually, more on that in a minute), and more supervisor time. I personally think that these costs are a bargain for the level of work received, but that does not make them any easier to scrounge up. There’s a considerable hurdle to overcome. As far as I can figure, there’s no easy way to stem the tide of one while jump-starting another. Asking someone nicely to not make as much money as you can make simply does not work. Asking countless someones who compete with each other for money to not make as much money as they otherwise could is a recipe for disaster. So, I don’t know how to solve this problem and am grateful that I’ll never again have to deal with the internship process. I don’t envy those whose job it is to “fix” this problem. The imbalance, numbers-wise, really heightens and makes salient the power imbalance between applicants and sites. As applicants, we are working countless, countless hours to prepare and submit these applications. And at every step of the way we’re all trying to come up with a way to stand out or be noticed, or be important, and this isn’t easy. You spend months in a state where you’re trying to get inside the heads of training directors, and after a while you forget to know what your head feels like. During my search, if given the option, I would always pick applications over personal happiness, my partner’s happiness, or my education. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to; if I didn’t, one of the other 4,000 applicants would. It’s an arms race to come up with more and more that we can do to get noticed. And, like other arms races, there’s no way to win, and playing the game makes you miserable and paranoid. I will look back on the past 8 months as some of the most miserable in my entire life. The stress, the pressure and the numbers being against me all provided me not only with the most intense stress I have ever felt, but the most prolonged, drawing my uncertainty out over months and months. I hope that nothing I ever do will be this infuriating. Lastly, let me just say that sites who offer unpaid internships are absolutely vile. We, the students, have been scraping by on nothing but debt for years. We’re well-trained, and have good experience and should be paid for our work. The stipends are small and I understand the reasons for that, but offering an unpaid internship is cruel. The APA Ethics code protects our clients against coercion, but somehow, year after year, licensed psychologists offer powerless students the chance to continue their careers if only they’re willing to plunge even deeper into debt and poverty. And, as the disparity between applicants and sites grows every year, the pressure to cave and accept an unpaid site grows greater and greater. I am shocked that labor laws do not protect against this behavior (and in fact, they might) and frankly disgusted that APA, APPIC and anyone else condones it. As psychologists (and psychologists-in-training) we should know best the impact that this sort of financial stress can have on individuals and strive to eradicate it from our own practices. If a site can’t

I felt very anxious applying. I would like to tell them that it is unfair for so many PsyD students/programs to have all those applicants taking up positions when other programs (i.e. counseling & clinical psychology) have few students applying from their program compared to the massive amount from PsyD programs. It is an unfair imbalance because the PsyD programs have their students start counting clinical hours as of their 1st year in the program when programs like counseling psych make students wait until the 2nd year after they've received a year of training & coursework. My hope is that this would change and that students from PsyD programs be limited to counting their hours from the 2nd year onward so that the hours are at least more comparable to the Counseling/Clinical psych programs. This would make it a more equal playing field for all applicants. Another thing would be to give preference for people applying to sites in their homestate. I was very worried that as a Californian living out of state in WA for my PhD program that I would not be able to return to California for internship due to the large quantity of out-of-state applicants who were not native Californians as myself that apply each year to my home state. As a doctoral student, I have spent years away from home and family to pursue my doctorate in counseling psychology. When thinking of internship sites, my only choice was California, in fact I applied to 14 of 15 sites all in California. I knew this was risky since it's so competitive to get a placement in CA, but with my strong desire to be closer to home and aging parents, I had no other choice than to return to my home state of California. I would hope that consideration be given to applicants trying to return to their home state. Meaning if an applicant is equally qualified from another applicant that is out-of-state & not native to that state they're applying to, I feel it's fair to hold that spot preferrably for the person trying to get closer to home. It makes sense also because the person wanting to return to their homestate likely wants to practice there. For networking & future job opportunities, it makes more sense to get an internship in the state the applicant hopes to work in.

The imbalance is a significant stressor in the training process. I have chosen the make the sacrifice of living in a different state than my family in order to be able to complete an internship. This has caused personal and financial stress. I am very concerned that students are spending more time in training before entering their careers due to the internship imbalance.

Overall, this is the only main problem I saw in the whole matching process. The two main causes of this that I see are the huge number of applicants from the Psy.D. programs and the number of non-APA accredited sites. I realize that I have very limited knowledge of the intricacies of the system, but potential solutions that I see are possibly limiting the number of students that can be accepted to Psy.D. programs each year so that they are comparable with Ph.D. programs (i.e., approximately 10 students compared to 100), having separate internships for Ph.D. and Psy.D. students, or making the accreditation process easier for programs. On a personal note, I feel that this issue causes huge amounts of undue stress for applicants and it seems extremely unfair that something that is required for us to receive our degrees requires such a competition. Even though I matched, it was amazing how knowing the odds had such an effect on me both mentally and emotionally. This is where I feel that numbers have to be limited when entering doctoral programs rather than at the internship stage. If someone is not accepted into a doctoral program, there are still multiple options and possibilities for them and different paths to follow. However, if someone is not accepted to an internship program, this puts their life on hold for at least a year until they can go through the process again and add to the already huge number of applicants. I really hope these aspects are taken into consideration during the next year so that next year's applicants can have a more rewarding matching experience.

The match imbalance has created a huge amount of anxiety and what I believe to be unnecessary competition. I believe that programs need to reduce the amount of students they admit each year if they don't place all their students by the amount of unplaced students OR pay for the unmatched student to have an internship. It is, in my opinion unethical to admit more students than you can reasonably place in quality internships, especially with the HIGH cost of doctoral training.

The imbalace between applicants and positions is extremely frustrating. As a student I wonder why institutions are taking in so many students if there are no places for these qualified students to go for internship. After going through 4 years of a doctoral program, 3 years of practica,passing all qualifying exams, and going over $120,000 in debt, I find it disgusting that there is still a chance one may not match to a site.

I felt that this process was unfriendly to participants that are married. I, unfortunately, was geographically restricted because my husband is in the military and cannot relocate. Now in the phase II process, I am having to conside moving away for the next year or so. Although a year is not too long, my husband deploys frequently and it would be ideal for us to live together when we are able to. As much as I have sacrificed for this degree, I wished that my time with my husband would not have to be sacrificed as we have very few opportunities to live together outside of military obligations.

It has no effected me. Given that I was offered 9 interviews (out of 14 sites to which I applied), I felt confident I was going to match.

I certainly think that those involved in the day-to-day workings of the match are doing all they can to help mitigate the effects of the imbalance, but this is clearly a HUGE issue which I feel the APA is not sufficiently addressing. I recently read a letter in the Monitor which, to me, captured the heart of the issue... we are simply matriculating way too many students into the field, many of whom may not be adequately prepared for doctoral study. Most of this growth appears to come from the for-profit professional schools. In addition, relying upon these schools to help develop more training opportunities seems to be like bailing water out of a sinking ship. They should be forced to let in fewer people, but as long as they have a profit motive (and no real consequence from the APA), they will continue to flood the match process with too many students, enriching themselves while continuing to water down the profession.

Despite receiving consistently positive feedback from faculty, supervisors and clients, casting as broad a net as possible during the application stage (sites up to 5 hours away from home), and being offered a respectable number of interviews each year, I failed, twice, to secure an internship (for '08/'09 and '09/'10). Ruling out those factors that would have also resulted in not being offered an interview in the first place (i.e., assessment hours, "unknown" school, I worked in private practice part-time for 10 years after getting my Master's, did an "academic" dissertation, etcetera), it seemed likely that I was performing poorly somehow during interviews. I worked closely with a faculty member for an entire semester, revising my essays, practicing interviewing, and so on, to improve my chances prior to the third go-round, and still did not secure an internship position I desired. I matched this time, but to a "desperation" site (they were ranked 11th of 12 on my list). Not only a poor fit with my long term goals (I want to work in a hospital), this match (a college counseling center) also deprives someone who truly desires to work in such a setting what might be the opportunity of their dreams. If it were not for the fact that this year, I reluctantly ranked two of my school's non-accredited but-APPIC-member Consortium slots as a fail-safe, I would have not matched again. I cannot hope to accurately articulate the increasingly magnificent psychological crises each match result initiated. While I'm determined to make the absolute most of my upcoming internship, I'm beyond dispirited. I feel cheated, betrayed, lied to, helpless, and defective. I feel foolish for getting my hopes up and for believing any of the positive feedback or any of the match "hype." (It's not "be all you can be;" it's "we might let you be something.") On the one hand, I've been told I'm talented, smart, and "good." On the other hand, the statistics don't bear this out. If it were true, I'd have been able to secure an internship I truly wanted. Even my lowest-ranked hospital site would be a better outcome than this -- I don't know if I will ever be able to land a hospital job now. Platitudes just infuriate me. If I hear "many well-qualified students did not match; they just somehow missed the bus" one more time, my heart will truly rend itself in two. It is understandable for me to be hurt and angered at the world and it's systems, to no longer wish to be a member of the club, since they clearly don't wish to have me as a member. It's understandable, too, that I need to grieve for what will never be (we only get to do one internship). It is fortunate that I have the maturity, fortitude and generally good-natured optimism to be certain that at the end of my internship, I will have learned a lot and grown a lot as a professional, most definitely in ways I cannot yet anticipate. I'm thankful for the certainty that once I sit down with someone in pain, it will probably not matter to me so much whether I'm working in a hospital or a counseling center, but I would have liked to have a little more say about the "where." It is life's unkindest cut yet to have not the slightest inkling of "why" my application to the club I had my heart set on joining has been repeatedly rejected. I wish something could be done to address this, but I don't know what. If I were undesirable on paper, I probably would not have been offered so many interviews. If

I believe the predoctoral internship should not be required for the doctoral degree, but instead, should be required for state licensure. This way, applicants who want to persue research/academia endeavors do not have to complete an internship, as they would not need the face-to-face client hours because they do not need to be licensed. I believe the removal of such applicants would lessen the imbalance between applicants and positions. Furthermore, the dissertation would be completed by internship, which would free up intern time to focus on their internship duties and professional development.

The imbalance between sites and students mocks the process as Appic knows many qualified persons who need internships won't have them and rather than making the rectifying of this imbalance a priority Appic puts up a pseudo serious attitude about the integrity of the rules and regs of the Appic match etc but the reality is that Appic does little to make real opportunity possible. My experience with your organization has been one of an elitist and unfriendly organization and in general the details and statistic aspect of the application is dehumanizing...I could say more but this survey also does not offer anything back for my time such as entering my survey into a raffle etc. but it the way your agency appears to work take and demand from grad students and deliver little in return. Your application was composed how many years ago.it is out of date hard to use but it would cost your org something to change it. it appears that you take much money from all of us to run algorithms that you paid for years ago etc. The capic application process and their staff are much more person friendly...maybe you can learn something from them..

I applied for the match this year as a highly qualified candidate from a competitive PhD program. I remained unmatched following the Phase I results. The imbalance of applicants and positions has impacted my financial status as I am left without funding for next year at my graduate program and without an internship. If I do not match in Phase II, the financial burden to me personally will equate to between $10,000 to $30,000, plus the cost of applications and interviews for the next year. It delays my career another year as well which is a continued financial burden. The psychological stress of not matching is also high as I was the only unmatched candidate from my program. This imbalance is a crisis and I feel that doctoral programs need to offer a comparable amount of internship positions to the amount of graduate students they enroll in order to balance this concern.

I think it is very stressful because you enter this process in the summer, and it takes approximately 6 months. The possibility to go through all of that time, energy, and money but have nothing to show for it is very stressful for not only the applicants but family, especially spouses, as well. Even though I did match, my family still felt the stress of the possibilities of me needing to move or go through the process again. I am thankful that I matched, and can't even imagine how those who didn't feel.

I have considered myself an excellent internship applicant and yet I received very few interviews considering the number of sites to which I applied. When peers and faculty in my program reviewed my application, they all agreed that I am, indeed a good candidate. Given the skewed ratio of applicants and internship positions, I feel that it was very difficult for my application to be adequately reviewed by many of the sites to which I applied (given sheer numbers of applicants and limited time for review). As APA-accredited sites are highly coveted, but dwindling in number in the face of rising numbers of applicants, the selection process seems to have become even more unfair. Many of my peers, whom I consider highly qualified candidates for internship, had similar experiences in which they received interviews only at non-accredited sites. As accreditation affects future professional goals (becoming licensed, etc.) this is becoming a significant problem. I do not know how this could be corrected, but know that it somehow needs to be for the good of the field and future internship applicants.

The imbalance caused a lot of stress among myself and other applicants from my programs, and fear that we would be the first in our program not to match. That did not end up being a problem. Our program is very small and has not grown in size in many years, and we have some resentment for programs which are constantly increasing the size of their applicant pool. It seems that programs should have some limit on how many students can apply to internship in a given year.

Do the paucity of training sites, my family was significantly impacted. So much so, that either I leave my four-year old and husband for a year, or my husband quits his job to move all the way across the country for a year to a place that has no job opportunity for him. I'm thankful I was matched at all, because a number of students will not be so lucky; however, I had to expand my options to include far away places and ones that were not accredited in order to match. While I understand and respect that some school need/desire to have captive internship for their students; had I been allowed to attend one nearby, it would have significantly impacted the outcome. Ultimately, the accreditation process is too expensive, and many sites don't take the time to apply through APPIC. I wonder if more advertisement, even just pamphlets, were put together and provided to schools and students even, then it might be possible for programs and students to go recruit APPIC sites. Anything that can streamline the process might encourage more programs to apply to APPIC.

It will now be another year until I am awarded my doctorate unless I am lucky enough to match in Phase 2. This is now another year that my boyfriend and I will have to be long distance, another year until I can get a job and support myself. I feel like my life has been put on hold for yet another year.

The current imbalance has taken the excitement out of the internship process and made it more stressful for those participating. Moreover, individuals participating in the internship process seem more likely to care about getting any match rather than if the setting(s) are a good fit.

I was lucky, in that I was matched. The imbalanced caused me great anxiety, as I realized that if I didn't match this year, the imbalance would be greater and the process more difficult next year.

I think the biggest problem is that, too often, it seems that the people who get matched and those who don't get matched seem to be rather random. Because there is no one "right path" to increase your chances of being matched, it is difficult to know what to tell other students to work on. This is, perhaps, a benefit as well as a drawback, because it allows for many different ways to succeed in graduate school, but it also makes the process all the more stressful. I wish I had more answers or ideas, but I don't know what the solution(s) is/are, aside from setting aside some sort of national quota of the number of students that programs could accept. Unfortunately, there are too many programs and schools for this to be an easy endeavor, so I don't know what the answers are.

In practical terms, not matching to a site has delayed my anticipated graduation date and has thereby delayed my entry into the workforce. This has reprecussions in terms of paying back loans and beginning my career. It also means that I must delay my personal life in terms of getting married and having children as I will need to take a year and potentially leave to attend internship. The experience of not matching has also led me to question my abilities as a clinician and as an interviewee. These moments of self-doubt have made the Phase II process even more difficult and have maimed my self-confidence for future interviews.

Not being matched to an internship site, at least for now during Phase I, has personally affected my self-confidence and sense of self-competence. I need to remind myself that I am one of those highly qualified students that fell through the system's cracks and was just not lucky. Professionally, I fell behind on my timeline and so that entails falling behind economically as well. I cannot imagine the hard time it must be for those applicants who have a family to provide for.

I do think it is frustrating to have spent many years in a graduate program and to know that the odds are against you w.r.t whether or not you will be able to progress.

I felt that being a caucasian female hindered me and that I was excluded from opportunites because of being a caucasian female.

As a result of my failure to obtain any interviews, I have spent the past three months wondering why and knowing that I am powerless to answer that question. I am confident that I am well-prepared for internship, and yet I will be delayed by one year's time, another year without a paying job, and another $12,000 in debt. (You could ball-park the personal cost to me of not matching at a minimum of $50,000.) Yet, I can only guess as to why I failed to obtain any interviews. My guesses are the following: that my hours did not meet unstated minimums for the mainly medical center sites to which I applied, that my inaccurate "expected" dissertation proposal status prevented my application from being reviewed at all, that my inability to accurately assess program "fit" led me to apply to programs that did not match my experience, that my lack of access to specific training opportunities (e.g., experience with the Rorschach or intensive inpatient experience) omitted me from consideration from certain sites altogether, or that my training program lacks the professional relationships with internship sites that would facilitate my receiving interview offers. I believe that the imbalance between applicants and positions has forced internship programs to "raise the bar" just so that they can reduce their list of considered applicants to a reasonable number. As a result, qualified applicants such as myself may not be considered. Because this problem will not be resolved quickly, APPIC bears a responsibility to facilitate an application process that is as fair and transparent as possible. In order to accomplish this, the information provided by both applicants and internship programs should be as clear, straightforward, and standardized as possible.

The current imbalance leaves significantly fewer AAPIC and APA accredited sites in the geographic region that I live in compared to the number of students seeking an internship. Therefore, in order to obtain an accredited internship I applied to many sites that were far from my home. I have been matched to a site and will relocate to a place that is over 4,000 miles away from where I live. Although I am extremely pleased to have matched to an APA accredited internship, it is unfortunate that myself and so many other students must move so far away from our families, friends, and homes in order to receive adequate training.

This process was incredibly stressful and mainly due to the disparity between students and slots available. Fellow students and I reported feeling significant anxiety largely related to the fear of not matching at all because of the seemingly high probability of this. We discussed how strange it is that this issue is unique to psychology programs (to our knowledge).

Although I am personally not affected by the current imbalance between applicants and sites offered - I was successfully matched to my second choice, and APA-site - I do feel for the students that submitted application after application without getting even an interview. I know several people who have not received an interview offer in phase do. Certainly, some application materials may not be up to standards, yet there are indeed many talented students out there who will walk away with nothing. In regards to the policies of some states that plan on accepting only APA-accredited internship for licensure, I wonder how this is to work when there is not only a shortage in APA-sites, but in sites overall? Maybe some schools should stop their doctoral psychology programs for a while until all students currently enrolled have found a position to graduate from their programs. I also think that the funding for certain programs prevent them from applying for APA-accreditation. I applied at some sites that were really good, APPIC-members, but I did not rank them as I wanted an APA-internship only.

Due to the significant imbalance between applicants and internship positions available, there was a good deal of stress, personal and professional concern and pressure, and what I feel was too much necessity for back-up planning. Thankfully, I matched to a wonderful site but, until the exact moment that I opened that email, it was a steadily building feeling of overwhelming stress.

I am deeply concerned about our profession (e.g., counseling psychology). It already does not pay the best, so why would someone go into a field where they might be saddled with an extra year or so of school just because there were not enough spaces for them? That said, I know the problem is actually the for-profit non-APA accredited schools which turn out 50 or 60 people for the match each year. I was particularly pressured to match at an APA-accredited school, because I want to be a professor. All of my friends and colleagues told me that not having an APA accredited internship would make it nearly impossible to teach at an APA accredited school, despite having a PhD from an APA accredited school. Thus, I think there needs to be more restrictions on students coming from for-profit PsyD programs. We need to restrict APA accredited sites to APA accredited students only. Although many counseling centers are already doing this, many other sites are not.

TAKE FEWER GRAD STUDENTS. (Though my own school is an example of how difficult it can be to do this: apparently they set out to take ~25% fewer students last year, and made ~25% fewer offers; but so many more offers were accepted than normal, that they actually ended up with a larger class than usual.) I realize that APPIC has little leverage on this issue (not to mention that schools have a financial interest in increasing the number of students they take) -- but perhaps APPIC could threaten to limit the number of students allowed to apply from a given program? Alternatively, require programs to provide APPIC internships, perhaps in some proportion to the number of students they accept.

My only concern besides the level of devotion required to complete a doctoral level program is the lack of positions. I believe, including my own school, that incoming classes of PhD and PsyD students are increasing despite the decreasing profession positions open in today's economy. Internship sites are down and students are up. This whole process and numbers can be very frightening. Also, the amount of money it takes to complete a graduate program greatly outweighs any amount we will receive in internship, post doc, or our years in practice. If I had to do it again, I would probably not have chosen to complete my doctorate degree due to the financial strain and the financial strain that will loom over me for many years to come. I would have completed a masters program where I could still do clinical work and have cut my debt significantly. It would be nice if less students were admited into programs to allow more sources of grant, stipend, and future jobs.

The imbalance between applicants and positions increased the anxiety level leading up to Match Day. Two members of my cohort did not match (the second year for one of them) and they have been devastated since. I think because of the imbalance I was much more flexible when deciding which sites to apply to. I think flexibility was very important to my successful match.

This internship process has been extremely stressful. I do not think that any amount of advice, feedback, etc. could have prepared me for the strenuous task of completing the applications, meeting the deadlines and going on the interviews. While I was extremely excited that I was able to obtain several interviews, traveling to attend them (especially in the winter/snow) was exhausting. I appreciated the ease of completing AAPIC online except for reporting the number of hours for practicums, etc. That was tedious. Overall, and perhaps this is because I was able to match with my first choice, I thought the instructions from AAPIC and the notifications from Greg Klein were very helpful and on time. Thank you.

There has been a lot of talk on list serves and such about child clinical applicants. When are these statistics going to be shared? Are there less child clinical sites and more child clinical applicants? Many issues are not simply APPIC but rather the interaction between the imbalance and what programs are capable of doing to make students more competitive. It is unacceptable that students can spend 5, 6, and 7 years in a program, obtain over 1500 total practicum hours, and then not match - especially from APA accredited PhD programs. Why are doctoral students who want academic careers and do not intend to get licensed even participating in this process? Why don't we get our PhDs before internship as MDs get before residency so internship can be for those who want to get licensed? Everyone in my program from first years to sixth years dreads this process and that is very sad.