Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs

1. Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs Daniel Michalski, PhD February 21, 2015

2. Agenda • Why a centralized application service? Goals. • The PSYCAS student portal: Streamlining the application process • Data analytics and workflow for psychology programs • Discussion

3. Call for a Common Letter Building on the ‘common letter,’ are there other common elements that students enter? • Transcripts • Courses/GPAs • Test Scores • Basic demographics & contact information • Essays

4. Expanding Beyond a Common Letter Building on the ‘common letter,’ are there universal procedures and workflows that all departments share? • Monitoring application statuses • Organizing applicant pool • GPA calculations • Assigning applications to reviewers • Communication with applicants

5. Goals for a centralized application for psychology • Allow programs to maintain their unique application and review processes • Utilize current technology • Cloud-based • Real-time • Adhere to best practices for data security • Data back-ups • Third-party access and PII • Internal APA access

6. Goals for a centralized application for psychology To provide data for meaningful reports and statistics to the discipline and profession. • Nascent workforce that emerges from graduate level psychology • Gather data across the entire discipline • Gather data at both the master’s and doctoral levels

7. Progress to date • Selection of the core application items; • Creation of a common recommendation letter; • Established program eligibility criteria; • Fee waiver program; • January soft launch

8. Demonstration

17. Example Review Steps What are some of the functions available to departments in PSYCAS? • Sort and separate complete from incomplete applications • Select review criteria (e.g., courses, GPAs, etc.) • Assign applications to committee members for review • Export

22. Encountered Hurdles • Cost to students • Data integration

24. Discussion