Predicting Match Outcomes

What is it about?

Internship applicants recruited from Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology member PhD programs completed surveys before and after Match Day about their academic achievements and clinical training, personality, and match outcome characteristics. Results revealed strong evidence that the single best predictor of matching among these students is the number of interview offers attained. A low number of attained interviews (6 or fewer) forecasts increased likelihood of going unmatched. Entering the match a second or more time is also associated with not matching. Additional analyses indicated intervention and assessment hours significantly interact to impact number of interview invitations, suggesting that monitoring the accrual of proportionate clinical hours (rather than focusing simply on attaining more client contact hours) is important throughout preinternship training in this sample. Although associated with only a small amount of variance, facets of personality do appear to be significantly associated with the number of interview offers obtained and internship match outcomes. Finally, a significant interaction between science, as indicated by research achievements, and practice, as indicated by proportionate clinical hours, was also observed. This represents the first empirical demonstration of the Boulder model’s philosophical premise regarding the training of clinical psychologists. Specific mentoring suggestions are offered, as well as recommendations for future directions in training, policy, and research.

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