I have entered officially into what my school calls “the triad of death,” which is a series of major hurdles that are needed to complete our degrees (PsyDs and PhDs have the same requirements here). So far, I have completed one out of three, so let’s break down how it’s been going.
Comps, aka comprehensive exams, are probably things that you have heard of regardless your doctoral degree area of expertise. For us, we have 4 different comprehensive exams, each of 3.5 hours long, all of them included writing essays, 3 of them included multiple choice questions. I took my comps the 2nd week of June and got my results a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, I was able to pass each one on the first try! Passing comps is a major milestone because you need to pass each of the exams in order to graduate from the program (one retake per exam available). We took all of the exams the same week and weren’t really given options for scheduling etc.
What are comps like during a global pandemic, you ask? Let me tell you! We still went into the school, but each of us were assigned to a professor’s office to take the exams socially distanced. We could bring anything that we wanted or needed, including headphones for music, snacks and drinks, and comfort items (I definitely had a blanket and a stuffed animal my fiancé gave me). All of our exams were graded blindly by two professors on a 5 point scale (like AP exams), with a third reader brought in to break ties between passing and failing.
Honestly, my anxiety was really overwhelming about Comps for months. We had our first meeting about comps sometime in March or April, but I became paralyzed to start and was not able to tolerate much studying for until the beginning of May. This gave me less than a month to fully study, and I was able to create a study schedule that was flexible and worked well for me. I used a mixture of Kahoots, group study guide creations (based on study guides provided to us per subject), individual study guide creation, and utilizing the learn, games, and flashcard options on Quizlet. Group studying was great review too, because it allowed me to help teach my peers and make me feel more confident in myself (take that, imposter syndrome!). This carried over into the exam week, with a group of us going over to a friend’s house to study for the next day’s exam and stuff our faces with snacks (it was surprisingly fun and I love my friends, I couldn’t have done it without them!).
I was able to survive comps, and am so thankful that I didn’t have to do any retakes (my goal was to have no more than 2 retakes). This gave me some extra time to begin unraveling from stress and end my time at my current practicum site with ease (my last day is this Friday!!). It also taught me a lot about how I get really avoidant when I get majorly stressed. This is something that I decided to nip in the bud as I begin to approach the other two parts of the triad of death: internship applications and ProQuals.
So let’s talk about internship applications (aka AAPI, aka APPIC, etc.). For those of us in the clinical psych world, we need a final year of full-time work at an internship. Typically, people go through a process of applying, interviewing, then ranking their favorite sites (and the sites ranking them) before being electronically matched to where they will end up for the next year. Match Day is in February, but much like applying to college or grad school, all of the applications are in the fall. I could write a lot more on my AAPI process and tips (see my lastest IG post, where I definitely spelt is APPI instead because UGH LIFE), but suffice it to say that being able to attack avoidance and manage overwhelm by really spacing out all of my work has done wonders for me. I am currently in the essay writing phase, and hope to finish writing them all this week sometime. Having completed some of my essays and begun updating my CV, I already feel much more productive and in control than I did for comps.
I hope to take the same approach to my Professional Qualifying Exams, which I will be taking in the fall. What is the difference between ProQuals and Comps, you ask? While Comps are more traditional exams, ProQuals look at applied clinical skills through evaluation of assessment skills, intake abilities, and therapy abilities. It includes videos of my work, written case conceptualizations and assessment results, and presentation of transcripts from actual therapy sessions demonstrating my ability to use a chosen modality. For me, I will be doing CBT. All of this is presented to a committee of 3 professors: your academic advisor, a professor of your choice (the CBT prof for me), and a third one of your choice (I chose someone from the counseling center who has watched me supervise first year students beginning clinical work). Similarly to Comps, you have two attempts to pass without being dismissed from the program. Now, I wasn’t able to get on board to do any of my ProQual stuff this summer, which feels like a blessing and a curse at this point. It’s a blessing because it allows me to go home for a long break this August to work on wedding planning and see family, AND I have been able to focus solely on my AAPI for the time being instead of having to do two high-stress things at once. But… I also just want to get it over with and start getting into the clinical stuff so I have a lot of material to choose from for presentation.
So that is what is going on for me this summer. I am hoping to post more about how I passed comps, what I am doing to prepare my AAPI, my reflections on my last practicum year, and more. Stay tuned!
The Young Grad Student 