APPIC Internship: How the Match Works

An APA-accredited doctoral program cannot confer the degree without the internship. Its standards require “The program must demonstrate that all students complete a 1-year full-time or 2-year part-time internship.” The internship program itself is defined by length: “Accredited internships may be structured as full-time or part-time.”

APA’s 2008 careers guide explains why programs publish their results: “Accredited doctoral programs are required to provide information on their websites about the match rate of their students-to-internship placements.” APA’s graduate-school FAQ lists the questions a student can ask of any program that requires an internship: “what is the success rate of placement for students attending the program? What level of assistance is provided to students in obtaining practicum and internship placements?”

“The 2027 APPIC Match will be conducted in two ‘phases,’ with each phase involving the submission of Rank Order Lists by programs and applicants to determine the placement of applicants into positions.”

APPIC, About the APPIC Match

• Phase I. “In Phase I of the Match, applicants and programs submit Rank Order Lists and a matching process will be carried out using those Rank Order Lists. The results of Phase I of the Match will then be distributed.”
• Phase II. “Phase II of the Match is a second selection process that begins immediately upon the conclusion of Phase I, with the goal of placing applicants who did not obtain a position in Phase I into positions that remain available after Phase I.”
• Post-Match Vacancy Service. APPIC says it “begins upon the conclusion of Phase II and allows programs to announce unfilled positions as well as newly-funded positions that become available into the Spring and Summer.”

Eligibility runs both ways. An applicant must be “matriculating through a doctoral program that is eligible to participate in the APPIC Match.” Internship sites must belong to APPIC: “All APPIC-member programs are eligible for, and required to participate in, the APPIC Match.” On cost, APPIC says: “Internship applicants pay $160 to register for the 2027 APPIC Match.”

APPIC’s combined Phase I and Phase II report for 2026, prepared March 25, 2026, counts 4,662 applicants registered in the Match, 182 who withdrew or submitted no ranks and 4,480 who submitted ranks. Of those who ranked, 3,919 (87%) matched and 561 did not. The 87 percent divides by applicants who submitted ranks, which is a different base from the degree rows below.

Phase I matched 3,513 applicants, and APPIC reports that “A total of 44% of all applicants who obtained a position matched to their first choice internship program, 67% received one of their top two choices, and 81% received one of their top three choices.” “A total of 845 applicants who submitted Rank Order Lists were not matched to an internship position in Phase I, while an additional 287 applicants withdrew or did not submit a Rank Order List.”

On the positions side, there were 3,996 in the Match. Of 3,687 APA- or CPA-accredited positions, 3,661 (99%) were filled in either phase. Of 291 nonaccredited positions, 258 (89%) were filled.

APPIC reports results by the degree an applicant seeks and by the type of program. In 2026 a larger share of registered PhD applicants than PsyD applicants matched in every group below, and PsyD applicants in counseling programs matched at the lowest share. Smaller groups swing more: 128 counseling PsyD applicants and 65 school PsyD applicants registered.

The PsyD vs PhD guide adds the 2024 and 2025 results for all programs.

APPIC also publishes a match report by doctoral program. This site reads it for the 117 ranked programs and shows a rate on a program’s card where it had at least 10 registered applicants from 2021 through 2025: 103 programs, with 9,431 registrations. The rate is the share of registered applicants, withdrawals included, who matched to an APA- or CPA-accredited internship. The post on psychology internship match rates for PsyD programs counts those rates program by program, by specialty and by school type.

Each program’s own rate and its number of applicants are on its card in the national ranking, with the internship match as one of two measures in the Outcomes factor, beside the EPPP pass rates ranking. A rate over a handful of applicants says little, so every rate shown here rests on at least 10 registered applicants. The rate by program is not the same measure as APPIC’s degree rows above, which count a match to any internship.

APPIC’s most recent applicant survey, run in 2023, asks applicants of every degree type about the process. It went to all 3,955 applicants who registered for the 2023 Match, and 2,403 (61%) completed some or all of it. Its results are not split by degree.

• Debt. For all students, the mean reported graduate debt was $86,481 and the median was $50,000.
• Stipends. “Applicants matched to U.S. sites reported a mean internship stipend of $35,478 USD.”
• Applications and interviews. “In Phase I, applicants who applied only to U.S.-based internship sites submitted an average of 15.2 internship applications,” and “received an average of 8.0 interview offers.”