All of the Clinical-Community doctoral students are required to complete a one-year full-time predoctoral internship after course work is completed. Students are required to have an approved prospectus before applying for an internship. They are strongly encouraged to at least have their data collected prior to leaving on internship, but preferably to have defended their dissertation before they leave. In addition, before a student may apply for internship, the specialty comprehensive (clinical or community) and the oral examinations much be successfully completed.

Students in the program have consistently been selected for highly competitive internships around the country, including many medical school placements. Many of our students intern in other states, and some intern at either of the two fine in-state sites, Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and Hall Psychiatric Institute in Columbia.

Virtually all of our students go on APA-approved or approval-seeking internships. APA-approval is desirable but provides no guarantee that the site is an excellent one. Although there may be good training opportunities available at some non-approved sites, they are not recommended because of restrictive clinical psychology licensing laws in many states.

Reactions from students and evaluations from internship sites have suggested that our students enter their internship year with a solid set of clinical skills and an orientation to assess and enter a social system at a number of different levels. In the case of a number of training sites (e.g., University of Oregon Medical School, Vanderbilt Medical School, the Palo Alto VA, Yale University Department of Psychiatry), multiple placements have occurred within a given year or over time. Of the six graduates who had internships at Yale University, all entered post-docorate positions, with two moving into faculty placements at Yale.

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