Application Process

If you plan to apply, please send an email containing: 1) your full name; 2) full address including city, state, and zip; 3) your university; and 4) your telephone number to psychint@musc.edu. Thanks again for your interest in our program.

To be eligible for the program, the applicant should be in good standing enrolled in an APA-accredited Ph.D. program in clinical, counseling, or school psychology. The Charleston Consortium prefers applicants from APA-accredited programs, but we understand that training programs cannot attain accreditation without placing their graduates in APA-approved internships. Therefore, we accept and give full consideration to applications from students enrolled in Ph.D. training programs that are currently applying for accreditation. The internship currently accepts a variable number of interns each year, depending on budgetary factors. Over the past seven years, that number of interns has ranged between 18 and 24.

Applicants should note that the internship is an intensive experience guided by the scientist-practitioner/clinical scientist model. Accordingly, interns selected for this program should have sufficient supervised clinical practicum experience to achieve an intermediate level of clinical competence in evidence-based treatment models (as attested to by letters of recommendation) and demonstrate considerable interest and ability in conducting research beyond that required by the thesis and dissertation (as evidenced by previous research accomplishments and letters of recommendation). Additionally, although our program’s faculty have many theoretical orientations, the large majority are behavioral or cognitive-behavioral. Thus, we seek interns who have a background in behavioral or cognitive-behavioral theory and at least basic experience in implementing these intervention strategies with clinical populations. You do not have to be experienced in a particular intervention, or with a particular clinical population, to complete any rotation at the Charleston Consortium. If you have the appropriate foundation of clinical preparation and skill, our rotations will help you develop your expertise level, no matter your starting point.

As noted elsewhere, international students cannot be paid via some funding sources (e.g., VA stipends, National Institute of Health training grants), but they are eligible to be paid by others. Furthermore, we impose no restrictions regarding the completion of individual rotations at VA training sites (i.e., international students may complete rotations at VA sites).

All matched interns must complete employment eligibility for either MUSC or the Ralph H. Johnson VAMC. Background checks and pre-employment drug screens are required at both sites. Background checks are aimed at identifying serious past felonies. Both MUSC and the Ralph H. Johnson VA require COVID-19 vaccination for all employees who interact with patients. Although medical and religious exemptions can be requested, applicants should be aware that vaccination is expected for all interns. In addition, applicants are advised that neither recreational nor medical use of marijuana is currently legal in South Carolina, and the VA has advised its national workforce that marijuana use is not allowable. Positive tests for marijuana (as well as other illicit drugs) may be grounds for denial of employment at MUSC and the Ralph H Johnson VAMC.

The Charleston Consortium uses the AAPI Online to evaluate all applicants. For purposes of our program, the most important components of your application include the cover letter, the applicant’s CV, the AAPI application, the personal essays, and letters of recommendation. We do not require or evaluate any supplemental documents.

Our application review process works most efficiently when applicants provide the above materials in a format that is simple, straightforward, and easy to digest. The cover letter should include information regarding which track(s) you wish to be considered for and your perceptions of your match with our program. Because our internship includes mentored research training, you should include some indication of the research areas in which you see yourself as a match, as well. Applicants need not have one-to-one clinical or research matches with our rotations and faculty in order to be considered; however, we would like to know where and how you see yourself fitting with the diverse clinical and research training experiences offered within the Consortium.

With respect to letters of recommendation, you may provide three or four letters. Please do not provide more than that. We are very eager to read recommendations from both clinical supervisors and research mentors, so please select your letter writers accordingly.

If you have any questions about the requirements, please email the program.

As part of the application process, each candidate will be interviewed by the faculty of the program. Interviewees will also meet with one or more current interns. We have found that this important step in the selection process allows the applicant to be maximally informed about the internship and helps the selection committee choose interns who match well with the program. As an APPIC member internship, we agree to abide by the APPIC policy that no person at this training facility will solicit, accept, or use any ranking-related information from any intern applicant.

All interviews this year are being conducted via videoconference. No in-person interviews will be conducted, even for those applicants who may live nearby and want to travel to campus. We will be using Zoom as our primary video platform.

Because we will be interviewing people from across time zones this year, we will be establishing some interview days that are conducted “later” in the east coast day than others. We will share this information at the time that interview invitations are emailed. We will still be conducting interviews in groups of approximately 10 applicants per day; our Saturday interview day will have a larger capacity.

Each interview day will begin with a conversation with one of our Co-Directors, who will provide an overview of the internship’s goals and philosophies and some information about the Consortium.

As part of your virtual interview, you will videoconference individually with three faculty members. We will make every effort to arrange interviews with faculty members working in your interest area(s). In some cases, a particular faculty member that you would like to see may not be available on the day of your interview.

You will also have the opportunity to have videoconference conversations with our current interns. We plan to achieve this in two ways. First, there will be a scheduled time on your interview day to meet with a subset of interns. These virtual meetings will not include any faculty, and should provide you with an opportunity to get the intern perspective on our program and what it’s like to live in Charleston. There is not a guarantee, however, that the interns who are available on your interview day will have the exact interests in Tracks or rotations that you have. To help address this, we will also provide all applicants who are invited to interview with a) email contact information for all of our current interns to allow you to ask any specific questions you might have; and b) a schedule of group videoconference meetings with our interns. These meetings will be organized by Track (e.g., “Traumatic Stress and Substance Abuse”) and scheduled in late January. You are free to drop into the ones that match your interests the best. Generally, we would recommend that you have your interview day first, before dropping in on a videoconference with interns, but we do understand that timing and the schedule can make this challenging.

On the day of your virtual interview, your final meeting will be with one of our Co-Directors, who will answer any remaining questions you have and explain how the Consortium will move forward with the evaluation process.

We hope this process will help inform you about the Charleston Consortium and give you the data you need to prioritize your goals regarding internship training. We look forward to meeting you.

The interview dates for the 2024 to 2025 applicants are:

2024

Monday, December 2
Friday, December 6
*Monday, December 9
Friday, December 13
Monday, December 16

2025

*Friday, January 3
Monday, January 6
Friday, January 10
Monday, January 13
Friday, January 17
*Friday, January 24
Monday, January 27

*On these days, we will be starting interviews at 11am. Preference on these days will be given to applicants located in Mountain and Pacific time zones.