Greater Washington Clinical Psychology Programs Council Externship Guidelines for 2024-2025
For Externship Site Directors and for Students
The Greater Washington Clinical Psychology Programs Council (GWCPPC) collaborates to support the externship matching process for clinical psychology graduate students in our programs. For the 2024-2025 Academic Year Externship Application Cycle, the Universal Acceptance Date (UAD) will be Friday, March 8, 2024. Clinical psychology doctoral students enrolled in participating GWCPPC programs may not accept an externship offer prior to 9:00 a.m. EST on that day.
In 2017, the GWCPCC surveyed clinical psychology doctoral students from participating programs, and learned that many were experiencing pressure to accept offers before fully completing all their interviews. We also surveyed externship directors and found that the majority of externship site directors of clinical training, along with doctoral students, were interested in exploring an improved match process, including one that did not necessitate a computerized match with fees. Since 2017, we have adhered to the following process with adjustments made each year as needed.
The following guidelines are put forth for externship site directors of clinical training (henceforth, “externship site directors”) and clinical psychology doctoral students from GWCPPC participating programs (henceforth referred to as “students”):
- GWCPPC participating programs adhere to a Universal Acceptance Date (UAD) approach. Specifically, our students will not accept any externship training offers prior to the designated UAD of Friday, March 8, 2024, 9:00 a.m. EST.
- Before or at the time of interviews, externship site directors must inform students of all anticipated meeting times/durations at the training facility for which externs will be required to attend (e.g., staff meeting every Thursday from 9-11 a.m.; group case consultations each Monday from 10-11:30 a.m., etc.).
- Externship site directors and students enrolled in participating GWCPPC programs do not attempt to elicit information from each other regarding their status or ranking prior to the UAD.
- Externship site directors should notify applicants when they are no longer under consideration as soon as possible in advance of UAD. This allows students to review and make other considerations regarding prospective sites.
- Externship site directors are encouraged to make externship training offers prior to the UAD, at the latest by 9:00 a.m. one day (24 hours) prior to UAD; this will give students ample time to consider offers and training goals and will smooth out and expedite acceptances of offers more quickly on UAD.
- Students may decline externship training offers or withdraw from consideration before UAD.
- Students may hold only one externship training offer at a time. If students receive more than one offer prior to UAD, students will decline offers of their lower-ranked externships as soon as possible, to make these training slots available to other trainees.
- Students who receive an externship training offer before UAD have until 9:59 a.m. on UAD to accept or decline the offer and must inform the designated externship site director of clinical training as soon as possible. Externship site directors cannot rescind an offer made to a student prior to UAD and may not move to the next student on their list until after 10:00 a.m. on UAD.
- Beginning at 9:00 a.m. EST on UAD, students must select and hold only one externship training offer at a time from all offers received – that is, decline less preferred offers within one hour and accept the most preferred offer within one hour up until 5:00 p.m. Externship training offers made after 4:00 p.m. EST will carry over to the next weekday at 10:00 a.m. EST.
- Verbal or written offers or acceptances of externship training offers are considered binding between students and externship directors. Externship site directors should not rescind offers and students should not rescind acceptances unless there is mutual agreement.
- The university/school clinical psychology doctoral program and the externship site director should complete externship training contracts as early as possible after a student’s acceptance of an offer.
- Externship training experiences may not exceed 16 hours in a two-day block for all externship activities and should not require externs to bring work home unless it is teletherapy. We strongly encourage externship site directors to not require meetings or service events that will extend an extern’s weekly hours beyond the limit of 16 hours.
- We recommend that no more than 25% of an extern’s total direct service hours should come from teletherapy services. Students should notify their program director and receive approval prior to accepting an externship that exceeds this guideline. Doctoral Program Directors can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis depending on a student’s experience and training needs.
- Individual face-to-face supervision should entail at least one (1) hour of supervision for every four (4) hours of externs’ direct service. Externship site directors may supplement individual supervision with group supervision of at least 1 hour for every 2 hours of direct service. Telesupervision is acceptable and should follow the APA Implementing Regulations Part C-13 D. Telesupervision on Page 25 (document link) regarding the need for a formal policy about its use at the externship site. We recommend that externship site directors and supervisors limit telesupervision to no more than 50% of the total number of supervision hours. Doctoral Program Directors can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis depending on a student’s experience and training needs.
- We require that supervisors directly observe externs’ service-related activities with clients at least once per semester in adherence with APA’s Observation Standards. According to APA, “… direct observation includes in-person observation (e.g., in-room or one-way mirror observation of direct service contact), live simultaneous audio-video streaming, or audio or video recording. A training site that does not permit live observation, audio or video recording by policy is not a sufficiently unique circumstance to circumvent this requirement.” (under C-14 D. Direct Observation in the document linked in #14).
- We strongly encourage stipends to be available for externs.
Exceptions to the Universal Acceptance Date (UAD) include:
- Sites that accept students from just one doctoral program
- Sites that are outside of the Washington DC metro area
- Sites that require a security clearance
- Students who are continuing their externship from the previous year, by mutual agreement
- One-day per week externships
- Externships only offered once to a specific student, by previous arrangement
- Summer externships.
GWCPPC participating doctoral programs will communicate with each other about externship sites and directors of clinical training who do not comply with these guidelines with our students. This includes instances in which externship site directors request that students undertake externship activities that exceed 16 hours in a two-day block.
Similarly, if a student enrolled in a participating GWCPPC program does not comply with the above guidelines, please inform that student’s doctoral program Director or Associate Director of Clinical Training immediately (see contact information below). We recognize that there are rare circumstances that may preclude an externship from following the Universal Acceptance Date; in such cases, please contact us collectively via email.
We strongly encourage you to keep externship training information on your website up-to-date, and to provide a point-of-contact to whom students can reach out with questions prior to submitting applications. Please email Dr. Jerome Short (jshort@gmu.edu) with any pertinent externship information and application updates that are not on your website.