NAAPTC began operating in 1979 as the first program in the USA to focus on development of psychologists with expertise in working with Asian and Pacific Islander populations.
NAAPTC began operating in 1979. It was originally funded by the National Institute of Mental Health as the first program in the USA to focus on development of psychologists with expertise in working with Asian and Pacific Islander populations. In 1980, our Doctoral Internship Program first received an APA accreditation, which it has consistently maintained ever since (the last APA re-accreditation site visit occurred in the summer of 2016; the internship has been re-accredited through 2023).
The clinical internship at RAMS is a full-time, year-long training program beginning the first week of September and ending the last week in August. The stipend for doctoral internship is $39,374. In addition, full health coverage, including medical, visual, dental benefits and life insurance are provided for the interns; spouses and domestic partners are eligible to purchase coverage through RAMS. RAMS also provides interns with access to its EAP, including psychological and legal counseling. The training year includes 192 hours of PTO and 10 paid holidays.
To verify the APA-accredited status of the NAAPTC Doctoral Psychology Internship, please check the American Psychological Association website: APA Accreditation or contact the APA Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation.
Address: 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242
Phone: 202-336-5979
Email: apaaccred@apa.org
The National Asian American Psychology Training Center’s Doctoral Internship is an experience-based training program that provides socialization into the profession of psychology and development of generalist entry-level psychology practice skills: proficiency for the clinical assessment and conduct of psychotherapy (individual, family, group & couples) across the life span, with a variety of patient populations, and in a broad spectrum of clinical settings. The hallmark of our internship training is development of informed clinical sensitivity to diversity (particularly, in regard to Asian American and Russian-speaking minorities) and building a repertoire of assessment/ intervention skills applicable to a wide range of clients, including the more disturbed and chronically troubled patient.
While receiving didactic and supervisory training, doctoral interns function as integral members of RAMS clinical staff. Our multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-disciplinary treatment team includes mental health peer specialists, vocational counselors, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, and psychologists. Because of the rich diversity of the client population and treatment team, doctoral interns have the opportunity to hone their clinical skills while consolidating their professional identity as a psychologist and developing advanced sensitivity to issues of race, culture, ethnic identity, religion, class, disability, gender, and sexual orientation.
The variety of clinical experiences offered through the RAMS Outpatient Community Mental Health Clinic, and the four available Clinical Rotation sites (CAAP Counseling and Pre-Vocational Services, Hire-Ability/Transitional Aged Youth Services, Peer Based Services, and Broderick Adult Residential Treatment Program) allows our program enough flexibility to accommodate specific learning needs of each intern. Interns have a chance to practice their skills with a wide spectrum of mental disorders, a broad range of clients (e.g. age, marital status, ethnicity, etc.), in various clinical modalities, and in an array of clinical and community settings. The formal training curriculum (didactic seminars, case conferences, individual and group supervision) is designed to parallel and complement this intense clinical exposure and to facilitate the interns’ growth as clinicians and professional psychologists.
The theoretical orientation of the NAAPTC internship is psychodynamic, with emphasis on the Object Relations, Interpersonal & Contemporary Relational Approaches. We train interns to function as participant observers: to avail themselves to input from clients (both verbal and communicated by impact) and to study it. The patient is viewed as a credible interpreter of the therapist’s experience in the “bi-personal filed” of clinical work. This helps interns to maximize learning from their patients and allows treatment to be conducted as a co-participant inquiry in order to better meet each client’s unique needs.
The model for training at the NAAPTC Doctoral Internship is that of the Scholar/Practitioner (the Vail model). Consistent with this approach, which underscores preparation for professional psychology practice that is informed by science, our internship emphasizes the development of clinical skills through provision of many diverse types of direct patient care that are rooted in a knowledge-based foundation of theory, empirical data, and informed sensitivity to issues of diversity. Interns’ learning from this intense experiential exposure is supported by focus on the ongoing evaluation of the efficacy of their interventions and continued treatment planning to improve their clinical services. We teach interns to bring their professional knowledge base and scientific attitudes to their clinical work and to deal with each individual treatment as a unique research project that occurs in the context of the consultation room: to explore their own clinical and cultural biases, to generate clinical hypotheses and to verify them by empirical observations, to select interventions on the basis of case formulations, and to track the outcomes of interventions to support/modify clinical hypotheses. Coupled with the recognition of the value of local observations and local solutions to problems, this attitude of informed curiosity and co-participant inquiry enables interns to go beyond the unquestioned use of technique-based or empirically validated approaches to develop treatment strategies that are both rooted in the accumulated body of scientific and clinical knowledge and respectful of clients’ cultural and personal diversity.
The variety of clinical experiences offered through the RAMS Outpatient Community Mental Health Clinic, and the four available Clinical Rotation sites (CAAP Counseling and Pre-Vocational Services, Hire-Ability/Transitional Aged Youth Services, Peer Based Services, and Broderick Adult Residential Treatment Program) allows our training program enough flexibility to accommodate specific interests and training needs of each intern. Accordingly, interns have a chance to develop and practice their skills with a wide spectrum of mental disorders, a broad range of clients (e.g. age, marital status, ethnicity, etc.), in various clinical modalities, and in an array of clinical and community settings. Additionally, all internship training placements provide rich exposure multidisciplinary collaboration, which affords interns the opportunity to consolidate their professional identity as a psychologist. The required Scholarly Projects/Presentation of Professional Work are devised to further promote interns socialization into the profession.
The formal training curriculum (didactic seminars, case conferences, individual and group supervision) is designed to parallel and complement this intense clinical exposure and to facilitate the interns’ growth as clinicians and professional psychologists.
Whereas predominantly psychodynamic/systems in approach, Clinical Supervision is provided in a number of different formats (individual, group, teamwork meetings, and hands-on mentorship) and with different foci (outpatient psychotherapy cases, psychological assessment, rotation clinical work, and cultural competency projects). These varied supervision experiences establish a venue for didactic instruction that meets the particular needs of the intern group as it faces the unique populations served at RAMS.
The training year starts with an intensive three-week-long Orientation Program. After that, interns participate in three mandatory ninety-minute long weekly training series: Psychological Assessment Seminar/Group Supervision, Intern and Trainee Seminar, and In-service Training. Additional didactic trainings are provided at the rotation sites. Interns can also join one or both elective one-hour-long weekly consultation groups/seminars: Relational Work with Children and Families and Clinical Understanding and Sociocultural Considerations in Working with Community Mental Health Clients.
Both supervision and didactic seminars emphasize issues of comprehensive assessment and treatment for complex mental disorders and include a strong emphasis on cultural competency. This, coupled with the rich diversity of the client population and training staff, gives our interns the opportunity to build a repertoire of culturally competent assessment/ intervention skills applicable to a wide range of clients across the life span, including the more disturbed and chronically troubled patient. The hallmark of our internship training program is development of informed clinical sensitivity to and expertise in working with diversity (particularly, in regard to Asian American and Russian-speaking minorities).
Orientation and Weekly Supervision and Training Schedule
Orientation to the NAAPTC Internship Program, RAMS Outpatient and Rotation Clinical Work and the San Francisco Community Mental Health System. Three Weeks in the beginning of the year.
Clinical Work at the RAMS Outpatient Clinic (required)
The Training Center is located at the site of the RAMS Outpatient Clinic, a free standing mental health facility contracted by the City and County of San Francisco to provide community-oriented mental health services to families and individuals throughout life span. This is where doctoral interns spent most of their year.
While receiving didactic and supervisory training, doctoral interns function as integral members of the Outpatient Clinic’s diverse multi-disciplinary treatment team. Our multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-disciplinary treatment team includes certified mental health peer specialists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, and psychologists. This intensive exposure to multidisciplinary collaboration affords interns close familiarity with the specific roles psychologists play in the community settings, and provides the opportunity to consolidate their professional identity as a psychologist.
Adult cases are assigned through the RAMS Adult Outpatient and Prevention (AOP) Services and child cases are assigned through the RAMS Children, Youth and Family (CYF) Services. Combined, these two outpatient programs cover the full range of diagnostic groups throughout the life span; a substantial percentage of these patients suffer from severe and persistent mental illnesses. Culturally, the client population is extremely diverse, which affords interns a rich exposure to clinical work with minority clients, particularly, with Asian Americans and Russian-speaking immigrants.
In this setting, interns have the opportunity to hone their clinical skills while exercising flexibility in the use of clinical theory and methodology to account for matters of diversity and to accommodate the needs of the more disturbed and chronically troubled patients. Interns are expected to build a repertoire of culturally competent psychotherapy, clinical evaluation, psychological assessment, and clinical case management skills applicable to broad variety of clients and situations across the lifespan. Because of the nature of the client population, interns also learn counseling related to trauma, mourning and adaptation to major life changes. Through close collaboration with other RAMS programs and a broad variety of San Francisco community mental health agencies, medical clinics, social services and educational organizations, interns gain knowledge of the place and function of the outpatient clinic-based treatment in the community mental health system and the overall system of care. At the Outpatient Clinic, doctoral interns are expected to provide about 12 hours of various direct clinical services per week, including: initial clinical intakes (1 hr on average); administration of psychological assessments (2 hrs on average); individual, family and dyadic psychotherapy with adult and child clients (8 hrs on average); collateral work, consultation to other providers, and clinical case management (1 hr on average). Non-direct casework (initial/ongoing clinical assessment & treatment plan development, multidisciplinary teamwork, etc.) and clinical documentation (charting, billing, utilization reviews, etc.) are conducted as required (2 hrs per week on average).
Clinical Rotation Training (required)
To diversify interns’ clinical training experience and to provide comprehensive exposure to the system of community-based mental health services, RAMS doctoral interns are assigned to two consecutive External Clinical Rotations. In addition to working with adult and child clients at the RAMS Outpatient Clinic, each intern spends one day a week at a rotation site delivering clinical services and receiving on-site training and supervision, which is provided both individually and in the form of a treatment team consultation. The two rotations are selected from four options that represent different levels of mental health treatment and prevention embedded into a “non-mental-health-focused” system:
Vocational Rehabilitation Support Services: CAAP Counseling and Pre-Vocational Services
Residential Services: Broderick Street Adult Residential Facility Services
Professional Development and Empowerment Services: Peer-Based Services and Hire-Ability Vocational- Transitional Aged Youth Services
Clinical Supervision (required)
Whereas predominantly psychodynamic/systems in approach, Clinical Supervision takes a number of different formats. For their work on outpatient therapy cases, interns receive two hours of weekly Individual Supervision with two different supervisors and one hour of group supervision with an external Delegated Supervisor. Their assessment work is supported by a weekly 2-hour–long Group Supervision/Seminar on assessment cases and weekly half hour of individual supervision on assessment cases with Assessment Supervisor (plus the ongoing support on report writing via phone/email as needed). Weekly hourlong group supervision with Director of Training focuses on interns’ work Cultural Competency Projects; in the last two months of the training year, after interns complete Cultural Competency Projects, the focus of this meeting shifts to Professional Issues: processing of various aspects on interns’ experience and professional development within the framework of legal, ethical and professional standards. At rotation sites, interns receive one hour of weekly individual/group supervision, supplemented by ongoing hands-on modeling and mentorship (formats differ at different rotations). Additionally, interns have a choice of joining one or both elective one-hour-long weekly consultation groups/seminars: Relational Work with Children and Families and Clinical Understanding and Sociocultural Considerations in Working with Community Mental Health Clients.
Teamwork Meetings (required)
Monthly one-hour-long Training Group Meeting with the Director of Training (includes practicum trainees); monthly inter-program Clinical Grand Rounds at the Outpatient Clinic (includes clinical staff, interns and trainees from multiple RAMS programs); weekly multidisciplinary team meetings at Rotation Sites; quarterly All RAMS Meeting with the RAMS CEO and representatives from all RAMS programs.
Didactic Seminars (required)
Interns’ training year starts with an intensive three-week-long Orientation Program. After that, in addition to the didactic trainings provided at the external clinical rotation sites and the “interns-only” weekly Assessment Seminar and Cultural Competency/Professional Issues Seminar, there are two weekly mandatory ninety-minute training sessions where interns are exposed to clinical and diversity issues within the context of a multidisciplinary treatment team and training cohort. One, which is held on Tuesdays, is a Trainee and Intern Seminar, and the other is held on Wednesday as an In-service Training open to the entire RAMS staff.
The Intern and Trainee Seminar (Tuesday, 10:25 am-11:55 am) involves doctoral psychology interns, psychology practicum trainees, and interns from other mental health professions (i.e. Marriage & Family Therapy and Social Work). This seminar is structured and timed to parallel and facilitate trainees and doctoral interns’ progress and to follow the development of yearlong treatments they are conducting. Correspondingly, in the course of the training year the seminar goes through several distinct stages. The initial sessions, part of the orientation program, provide a historical overview of treatments for the poor mentally ill and an introduction to the specifics of conducting therapy in the Outpatient Clinic. They are followed by a series of trainings designed to lay the foundation for culturally informed psychodynamic therapy with the poor, minorities and severely mentally ill in the context of a community mental health center. The next training series is designed to help trainees and interns foster greater cultural self-awareness in the clinical context. At this stage, training is mainly experiential and consists of individual presentations and group discussions of cultural biases and predilections that influence how interns and trainees conceive of their work and how they experience their clients. (For a list of suggested questions to address in one’s cultural presentation, please click here.) Later in the training year, the Intern and Trainee Seminar becomes a four-months-long weekly Clinical Case Conference. Toward the end of the training year, the focus of this forum shifts again, this time toward emphasis on terminations with clients and the training program and on related professional development issues.
In addition to participating in this seminar alongside practicum trainees, Doctoral Interns are expected to act as co-facilitators of the case conference and peer-supervisors vis-a-vis their less experienced colleagues.
At the In-service Psychotherapy Seminar (Wednesday, 9:10 am-10:30 am) interns and trainees participate with RAMS staff in a training program of invited speakers, presenting on specific clinical, cultural, and professional development topics that are pertinent to work with RAMS client populations. This series also includes three yearlong monthly clinical case conferences: Clinical Grand Rounds, Adult Case Conference and Child Case Conference).
The didactic module of the in-service training feathures issues of comprehensive treatment for complex mental disorders, social and cultural factors that influence symptom manifestation and treatment course; biological symptom management and the use of medications; evidence-based treatment strategies for specific disorders; and culturally responsive approaches to working with minority populations. Being a psychodynamic program, most presentations emphasize contemporary psychoanalytic theories and psychodynamic treatment principles as they apply to severe mental illness and working with minorities.
As part of this series, Doctoral Interns are required to present at least one adult and one child case to the entire clinic’s staff and to an invited discussant (usually, a psychoanalyst or a psychodynamic therapist practicing in the community). This is also setting where the doctoral interns present their Cultural Competency Projects at the end of their internship year. In this way, interns have the opportunity to conduct a professional presentation to a group of colleagues with advanced experience and training, and it is our way of introducing them to the role that psychologists play in contributing to and advancing our understanding of the human experience.
Additionally, interns can choose one or both elective one-hour-long weekly consultation groups/seminars: Relational Work with Children & Families and Psychodynamic Conceptualization in Working with Severely Mentally Ill Adults (open to doctoral psychology interns, psychology practicum students, and postdoctoral psychology fellows).
To see the current Wednesday In-Service Schedule, please click here.
For previous RAMS Training Sessions, please click here.
Peer Supervision (expected & encouraged)
Doctoral interns are expected to hone their proto-supervisory and consultation skills by providing feedback, guidance and advisement to psychology practicum trainees and masters-level interns. The Intern and Trainee Clinical Case Conference provides the formal setting for this practice. As the case conference progresses, interns are expected to take on more leadership (under the guidance from the Director of Training) and, during the second half of the case conference series, they are encouraged to independently facilitate one case conference session each.
Additionally, interns may choose to engage in several optional training activities:
Clinical Case Conferences (required)
At the RAMS Outpatient Clinic, we have several ongoing Case Conferences, each with a different focus and a different audience:
The monthly Adult Clinical Case Conference is conducted as a Staff In-Service Training (10:30-12:00 on the first Wednesday of the month) and involves interns, trainees, and the staff of the Adult Outpatient Clinic. The Director of the Adult Outpatient Clinic and the Director of Training oversee this conference.
The monthly Child Youth and Family Clinical Case Conference is conducted during the Wednesday Staff In-Service Trainings (9:10-10:30 on the last Wednesday of each month) and includes interns, trainees, outpatient child therapists and school-based clinical staff. The Director of Children, Youth & Family Services and the Director of Training oversee this conference.
Both In-Service Case Conferences usually involve an external discussant who provides an in-depth analysis of the clinical case presented and moderates the discussion. Typically, the discussants represent psychodynamic approach to therapy, however, depending on the nature of the case and requests of the presenter, other arrangements can be made. RAMS clinicians take turn presenting their cases and each Doctoral intern is expected to present at least one adult and one child case in this format.
Another monthly in-service case conference is the Clinical Grand Rounds (9:00-10:25 on the first Wednesday of the month). This is a cross-program teamwork-oriented clinical forum: Staff, interns and trainees from multiple RAMS programs gather to take part in a free-flowing conversation on a pre-selected clinical topic relevant to their work or for a clinical discussion focusing on a particular client/family who receives services from multiple RAMS programs. The conversation is moderated by one of the program directors and is lead by a group of clinicians (both staff and interns) who are the clinical case presented or have a particular expertise with the clinical topic under consideration.
The Intern and Trainee Clinical Case Conference is held at 10:25-11:55 every Tuesday in the second half of the training year (during the first semester, the Intern and Trainee Seminar is run as a didactic clinical training and a seminar on cultural self-awareness in clinical settings).
This conference is overseen by the Director of Training and involves practicum trainees and Doctoral interns only. Each participant is expected to deliver one formal case presentation. This includes a comprehensive clinical case write-up (clinical work with a client of their own choice described from a knowledge-based perspective grounded in theory, empirical data, and informed sensitivity to diversity), an hour of process notes from a recent therapy session, and an oral presentation of a case to the group of peers. In addition to offering another opportunity for developing competency at professional presentation, Intern and Trainee Clinical Case Conference also gives doctoral interns a venue for trying their hand at peer-supervision and for practicing their proto-supervisory skills. Doctoral interns serve as co-facilitators of this case conference; towards the end of the training year, each intern has a chance to facilitate one session of this case conference on their own.
Scholarly Projects/Professional Presentation of Work (required)
For completion of the internship, the program requires three types of scholarly products that integrate empirical clinical material with the body of professional literature.
Requirements for Completion
For successful completion of the internship, interns need:
NAAPTC Doctoral Interns are entitled to 192 hours of PTO and ten paid holidays. However, any leave time is to be subtracted from the supervised professional experience hours that interns accumulate towards licensure.
Should an intern, due to an illness or for another medically verified reason, need to take time off beyond the allowed amount of leave time, the internship will be extended to allow any missed training to be made up (to be completed in no more than 24 months from the original internship starting day, without additional compensation).
The psychological assessment training is an integral part of the NAAPTC doctoral internship. It consists of a weekly two hour Assessment Seminar/Group Supervision and a half-hour Individual Supervision on testing cases. This program involves both theoretical learning and practical application of assessment skills, with an emphasis in Cross-Cultural Assessment and Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment. Each intern is required to complete four in depth testing batteries during the training year, and the core didactic curriculum is supplemented with didactic training covering issues that arise as students deal with their assigned assessment cases and/or issues related to students’ particular areas of interest.
The practical part of the training consists of comprehensive collaborative/therapeutic assessment of at least four clients: clarifying the referral questions; collecting historical information; administering and scoring assessment measures; interpreting the data; writing reports and feedback letters; providing feedback to the clients and referral sources. At a minimum, each in-depth assessment battery includes a thorough Mental Status Exam, a basic neuropsychological screening, WAIS-IV/WISC-IV or Ravens’ Coloured Progressive Matrices, RAVLT, RCFT, D-KEFS Trail Making Test and Verbal Fluency, and the Rorschach (R-PAS system) or TAT and MMPI-2 or BAI/BDI. Typically, these assessment techniques are supplemented by other measures pertaining to specific referral questions. Given the diversity of the populations served by RAMS, the trainees have some latitude in selecting their testing cases, including the opportunity to test adults and children with a variety of diagnoses, cultural backgrounds and languages, and to provide consultations on assessment and treatment plan development within the outpatient and residential treatment settings.
For more information about the Assessment Report Outline, click here.
The development of clinical sensitivity to diversity is a hallmark feature of the NAAPTC internship. The NAAPTC understands diversity as all differences related to culture, ethnicity, race, national origin, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and physical condition. It is an aspect of clinical work and professional functioning that permeates the internship’s learning environment.
Through exposure to a diverse client population, training cohort, and clinical staff, interns are faced with their assumptions about various cultures. This creates an opportunity and demand to address one’s own cultural biases and limitations in tolerating diversity. In this environment, the interns’ cultural sensitivity is demonstrated in the overall context of their professional responsibilities. Clinical aspects of diversity are discussed in supervision, case conferences, and didactic seminars on an ongoing basis. The Intern and Trainee Seminar also includes a focused four-month-long Cultural Self-awareness Module. In addition, interns can utilize the experience and expertise of diverse training cohorts and staff who are not core training faculty. In this way, peers and staff act as cultural consultants to cases with particular diversity issues, and supervisors often encourage interns to seek consultation on those cases.
A structured part of the NAAPTC diversity training is the required Cultural Competency Project, which is designed to provide structural scaffolding for, and to facilitate the development of, clinical sensitivity to diversity. The project comprises a clinical study that explores an intersection of clinical and cultural/social issues in light of interns’ own cultural biases and predilections. It must be of sufficient scope and depth that four weekly hours allotted to this work over the course of nine months are needed to complete it.
The director of training supervises interns’ work on their projects during the weekly hour-long Cultural Competency Project Meeting. It is conducted as a combined psychodynamic group supervision/clinical seminar where interns discuss their work, process various aspects of their internship experience, and help each other consider a variety of clinical, systemic, and training phenomena through culturally-informed lenses.
With help from their peers and supervisor, each intern identifies a specific cultural bias that may be affecting his/her clinical work, and chooses a relevant aspect of psychological functioning in the selected group’s culture on which to focus. As interns plan their individual projects and consider how they want to test their biases, they present their nascent ideas at the meeting and collaboratively ponder relevant clinical, cultural, and professional examples.
Throughout the course of this work, exploration of cultural biases is informed and shaped not only by feedback from the other members of the group, but also by cultural aspects of the group process. Supervision is focused on enabling interns to draw their own experiential conclusions. The director of training helps interns reflect on their functioning in diverse professional environments; facilitates discussion of cultural issues present in their clinical work and in the group process; assigns readings to bridge interns’ own insights with the accumulated body of professional knowledge; and helps find “cultural consultants.” As such, this forum provides a working model for considering intersections between cultural and clinical issues.
Staff clinicians and therapists in the community are available to work formally as mentors to interns as well as informally as sources of advice and support. In the summer, interns present their Cultural Competency Projects to the entire staff at the In-service Clinical Training. A written version of their presentation is added to the training library as a resource for staff and future interns.
For the list of Cultural Competency Projects conducted by the RAMS interns since 1997, please click here.
For a paper co-written by a cohort of RAMS internship graduate about their experience of working on Cultural Competency Projects, please click here.
Dr. Alla Volovich supervises the cultural competency projects during her weekly group meetings with the interns; she also has the responsibility for securing resources that interns need in order to fulfill their learning goal. Staff clinicians are available to work with interns formally as mentors as well as informally to advise and support them in completing their goal. Interns present their projects to the entire staff at our Wednesday In-service Seminar, and they submit a written version of their presentation to be used as a resource for staff and future interns.
NAAPTC Doctoral Internship in Clinical Psychology is accredited by the American Psychological Association and a member of the Association of Psychology Post-doctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC).
To verify the APA-accredited status of the NAAPTC Doctoral Psychology Internship, please check the American Psychological Association website: http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation or contact the Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation.
Phone: 202-336-5979
Email: apaaccred@apa.org
Address: 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242
Students who are preparing for a Ph. D. or Psy. D. in clinical, counseling, or school psychology are eligible to apply.
APA accreditation of the applicant’s graduate program is not required, but is much preferred; clinical psychology training is preferred.
In order to be considered, applicants must have a minimum of three years of graduate training and meet all their school’s standards of internship readiness before application deadline. Additionally, by the start of the internship, applicants must possess an equivalent of master’s degree, have comprehensive exams passed and have their dissertation proposal defended and accepted.
The minimal previous clinical training requirement is 500 hours of Supervised Intervention Experience expected by the start of the internship. Applicants who have higher amount of practical training and those with especially pertinent clinical experiences (similar patient populations, modalities of treatment, theoretical approach, etc.) receive more favorable ratings.
All applicants are required to register for the APPIC Match and submit their applications online according to the procedures adopted by APPIC.
In order to be considered, each application should include the following:
For more information on what we are looking for in an assessment report, feel free to consult the Assessment Report Outline at our website at Psychological Assessment Training
The application deadline is November 1
A typical interview is conducted by two internship faculty members. It takes about an hour, and is rather informal. Interviewers ask applicants about their past training and clinical work, as well as career goals. Experience of working with clients of diversity and applicants’ understanding of the role their own culture plays in the clinical encounter are often discussed. Other topics of the interview may include applicants’ experience in working with the underprivileged and with the severely disturbed as well as applicants’ theoretical orientation and their own ideas about how therapy works. Applicants are expected to be ready to present a clinical case to illustrate their style of work and to demonstrate clinical cultural and theoretical competency.
Please note that while we give some preference to applicants who have experience or demonstrated strong interest in working with minority clients and/or are bilingual, the National Asian American Psychology Training Center and RAMS, Inc. are Equal Opportunity Employers and do not discriminate on the basis of race, culture, religion, ethnicity, nationality, class, physical ability, age, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
We abide by our agreement with APPIC for participation in the APPIC Match, including the APPIC policy that no person at this training will solicit, accept or use any ranking-related information from any intern participant.
The applicant is notified of acceptance or rejection according to the procedures adopted by the APPIC; the interview notification date is December 20.
Please note that we do not routinely notify applicants of the receipt and status of their applications and are unable to respond to any inquiries regarding this matter.
Should you have any questions, please email Dr. Flora Chan at florachan@ramsinc.org or Dr. Shlomit Gorin at shlomitgorin@ramsinc.org.
The criteria listed below are those that are typically used for rating applicants during the interview and considered in our ranking of the applicants. This information is provided to you in hope that it will help reduce the interview stress. It is not necessary that all areas apply to each applicant.
You can find information about APPIC Match Policies and Schedule as well as the APPI form at https://www.appic.org/Internships/Match/Match-Policies
