Welcome to this webinar on the Macquarie masters
of professional psychology. I'm Andrew Bailey and I'm the director of
the program. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional
custodians of the Macquarie University land, the Wallumettagal clan of the Darug Nation
who's cultures and customs have nurtured and continued to nurture this lands since the
dream time. We pay our respects to elders past, present,
and future. So in this webinar, I wanted to take you through
some information about our ma
sters of professional psychology, to give you a bit of background,
to talk about the pathways to registration as a psychologist in Australia. The value of generalist psychology education,
that's what we're providing. What are our objectives in this course? How do we do the teaching, the mode of delivery?What
do you study? What are our entry and selection criteria? Some of the frequently asked questions that
people have for us. How do you apply, and some ways to get some
further answers if we don
't cover them in the question and answer section at the end
of our time today. Excuse me. So one of the things that is quite confusing
in Australia are the different ways to become a registered psychologist. So we need to be a registered psychologist
in order to practice psychology in a professional or applied way. And the Psychology Board of Australia is a
government organisation that regulates the profession for the protection of the protection
of the public. They're not a professional society
. They are actually a government-appointed board
that is there for the benefit of the community, not for the benefit of the profession. So the Psy BA acknowledges four paths to registration. The diagram that you can see on this slide
comes from the Psychology Board website. And it's reasonably complex but I'll talk
you through. So in the middle part of it you can see that
there are four pathways. The doctoral higher degree pathway, which
is seven or more years of training. The standard higher de
gree pathway, which
is about six years of full-time training. So when I'm talking about years here, I'm
talking about full-time equivalence. So if that'll be say, for example, 12 years
a halftime-part-time light and a 6-year full-time light. So the standard higher degree pathway, which
is an example. An example like the masters of clinical psychology,
the masters of clinical neuropsychology, the masters of organisational psychology. Then we have the five plus one pathway, and
our program, the ma
sters of professional psychology fits there. There is also a four plus two pathway that
is being phased out. So, what does that all mean? If we stop to say, well, to get to the point
where you're thinking about postgraduate study, you need to have four years or four-year equivalent
of undergraduate study that's accredited by the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council
in psychology. So that four-year sequence, and for most people
that's an honours degree. There are some other ways if your un
dergraduate
qualifications are not accredited by the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council. So, for example, if your qualifications are
from overseas, non-Australia, then there are some information on this slide about how to
get those qualifications accredited for similarity to the Australian system. So what we're really talking about here is
people who already have four years of education in psychology. Hugely, that means three years plus an honours
year but it can be three years plus som
e other non-honours fourth year. Okay. So here are the four paths. What you can see is that after you've completed
any of those paths there is the possibility of the national psychology exam and then an
application for general registration. So as I mentioned before, our program, the
masters of professional psychology fits into the five plus one part pathway. That's the third column on the slide. So this five plus one pathway, what does it
involve? But in the five plus one pathway, we have
a fift
h year qualification, the masters of professional psychology, and then a one year
internship. Actually, slightly undercounted the hours
there. They're more like 1,500 hours of internship,
40% of direct client contact. It happens in the sixth year. People then pass the national psychology exam,
they sit the national psychology exam and then apply for general registration. So its six years of study and our master's
professional psychology provides the fifth year. Just to kind of sail those things
again, the
masters of professional psychology provides the fifth year in the five plus one pathway
of registration. It's the fifth year of formal study and we
are talking years in full time equivalence there. Inside that fifth year, there is one placement,
and examples of the sort of things that are similar, they may be a postgraduate diploma
of professional psychology for example or some universities run
or many like Macquarie are running it as masters of professional psychology. It leads to re
gistration without specialisation. And this is why they view it as a way to help
bridge the gap between the demand for and supply for professional psychology training
opportunities, while promoting uniform high standards for practice in Australian psychology. It is consistency with international efforts
to standardise professional psychology training such as you see in the [Euro survey?]. It's important to remember it's a five plus
one so that our masters of professional psych is the fifth year.
In the sixth year, this is outside the university,
there is a year of supervised internship. And that's overseen by the Psy BA. It's not covered by university entitlement. So this is training to be a general psychologist. General psychologist make up about 60% of
the total psychology workforce in Australia. Clients of general psychologist qualify for
Medicare rebates to cover the fees. And general psychologists are equipped to
practice in a broad range of settings and are highly valued roles th
at require flexibility,
breath of experience. And often go on to managerial and leadership
roles. What are er trying to achieve in our program? What are our objectives? We want to prepare students for that sixth
year of independent supervised practice. We want to prepare them for the national psychology
exam and in turn to be registered as a general psychologist. Our emphasis is on practical skills training,
on ethical decision-making and problem-solving in professional psychology practice setti
ngs,
including but limited to those involved in psychological assessment and interventions. Students are encouraged to focus on building
professionalism and collaboration and not competing with each other for marks. So our mode of delivery. Our training is a mixture of theory and experiential
learning. We do a lot of role-playing and live assessments. We run this as all day workshops, and at the
moment we're running them as Wednesdays and Saturdays, and we have assignments that are
due most week
s. So that leaves four other working days to
do other works, including the placement in the fifth year. Many of our professional psychologists are
also working perhaps two or so days a week to support themselves. So all of our teachers, all of our lecturers
are registered and/or some of them are endorsed in a more specialised forms of psychology. They're currently working in one or more of
the fields of applied psychology. So we have teachers who are experienced psychologists. These are the unit
s of study that make up
our program. We start in the first semester with four units. The first four units: Counseling and Professional
Practice, Psychological Assessment and Reports, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Additional Therapeutic
Modality is an elective. There are a couple of other electives. Then in the second semester, we have Working
With Children and Families, Working With Groups, Working With Special Populations, and Theory
and Research for Professional Psychologists. Somewhere around
Easter onwards, there is
a 300-hour supervised practical placement that occurs. So that runs out to be around about two days
a week for something like five to six months. How do we select people to come into the program? One of the things that has happened because
of regulation of the profession by Psy BA is that we're based by legislation to only
really have people in our program that meet and are able to be provisionally registered
as a psychologist. So everybody who comes into our program mu
st
meet the Psy BA provisional registration standard. That means they must have English language
competence. Sometimes, depending on where you got your
qualifications, that might mean that you need to do IELTS exam and get a score of seven
in each domain and across overall. There are other criteria that are really set
by the Psy BA, So it's important to keep across that and to look at the Psy BA website. One of the things that often catches people
out is a recent decision that the undergraduate
work, the first four years of study, need
to be done in the last 10 years. So then what are we looking for when we try
to select people? We are looking for a sound academic record. It doesn't have to be excellent. We're looking for strong interpersonal skills. We're looking for a capacity for independent
and critical thinking. We're looking for some experience. We want to know that you know that this is
the right job for you. We want you to have tested out, can you handle
some of the work of a p
sychologist by your experience? So some sort of experience in applied psychological
work and not [inaudible] teamwork. It's not a bad thing to have some life experience
more generally. In particular we are interested in people
who want to become generalists. So some of the questions we get asked, is
it competitive to get in? Yes, it is competitive. It's not quite as competitive as some of the
other postgraduate psychology programs. The current cost, these estimates for 2018? So here we see domes
tic students paying 26,000
and a bit. International students, the estimate for 2018
is something around 37,000. How employable are graduates? Many of our graduates are getting paid employment
during their sixth year, and after their passing the psychology exam are moving on to paid
employment. Is it possible to study part time? Yes. We don't have the ability do midyear intake,
and at the moment we don't have any way to easily combine with a PhD. Is there a pathway to specialisation? At the momen
t, there isn't an easy pathway
to specialisation. I'll talk about that a little bit more. And perhaps one of the issues for people who
are listening to this from an international-- outside Australia qualifications. It's possible, of course, to get a student
visa for your fifth year of study because you enrolled in a university course. If you're a sixth year, however, unless there's
some other visa available to you, you won't be able to get a student visa for that sixth
year, and therefore won't
be able to complete the placement requirements and the national
psychology exam, and then end up not registered. So does a student visa cover you all the way
to getting registered? No. So I mentioned this issue about a pathway
to specialisation. Many people think that they want to be a clinical
psychologist, they want to be a specialist clinical psychologist. If you're sure that you're really looking
for that kind of qualification but you're having trouble gaining admission because your
academic
record is not so strong, then applying for our program and our professional psychology
is probably not a good option. Why is that the case? Well, it's very few clinical psychology programs
would offer you full credit for the fifth year, so you end up doing it again effectively. Remembering that a clinical psych program
is a fifth and sixth year university training. It will effectively mean you have another
year if you were subsequently were to get into a clinical psych program. So we're really
passionate about the value
of education as a general psychologist, and we're not-- it's true, a number of our graduates
do go on and do clinical psychology. But we really want to encourage people to
come to us because they want general psychology education, rather than specialised education. So applications are via the UAC system for
domestic students. International students, I think the best thing
to do is to have a look at the course website, it's got some links there how you apply. Applicatio
ns are opened around about September,
and they close at the end of October. We need two referees reports, and for the
last couple of years and into the future, we've been using their national psychology
referee system. That's a little difficult if you're an international
applicant, and we have another way of doing your referee's reports for them. We have supplementary information that's required
which talks about your academic record, your relevant employment experience, and some other
additiona
l information. So you need to make sure you don't just put
in your UAC application if you're a domestic student, but you're also doing the referee's
report and the supplementary form. We will short list out of those applications
as paper applications. I guess they're not paper anymore, they're
online. We will short list from those applications,
about 60 people, and invite them to come to an interview which will be in late November
or early December. And from those interviews, we'll offer 20
to 3
0 places depending on people's qualifications and abilities. So for further information, can I point you
to the course website? And also to have a look at the Psy BA website. In addition to the overall Psy BA website,
there is a particular part of the Psy BA website that's rated towards five plus one pathway,
which is well and truly useful to understand. So that takes me to the end of the formal
presentation, and I'd like to open it up then for questions. It takes me just a little minute to work
the
system but I will. Let's see what I can do. Let's see. So I can see one question popping up here,
and I just can't quite get it open. Okay. So the question that I have in front of me,
you mentioned one placement. Where might I do this placement? And do you organise it for me? Okay. So that placement can be in any of the places
in which general psychologists work. It can be within the health system, it can
be within a variety of community agencies. At the moment, even right at non-government
al
agencies. We've just this afternoon organised a placement
for someone in Family and Community Services. There have been some places in Juvenile Justice. Placements in education are interesting. At the moment, the state education department
and New South Wales educational department is a bit more restrictive about people working
as psychologists in education needing to have teaching qualifications, but non-government
and Catholic systemic systems are a bit more flexible. So do we organise plac
ements for people? We encourage people to be active in looking
for placements and being out there to try and find placements, but we also help people
to find placements. We've got
a lot of different options, connections that we have in a variety of settings. I hope that answers your question. I can see another question coming through. Let's just see if I can open that up. Oops, haven't quite mastered this system. Can you give some examples of the types of
places graduates work on graduating? Oka
y, so keep in mind that because we're the
fifth year of the five plus one pathway, on graduating people are going on to work as
provisional psychologists in settings where they can complete their sixth year of training,
their supervised internship. So the types of places that people are working
are pretty much the sorts of places where people get placements in their fifth year. There are some in health, there are some in
other government departments, there are some in non-government agencies tha
t do a variety
of welfare kind of work, and in educational settings. Again, as I say, generally not in the state
education department unless someone already has a teaching qualification. So going to the next question then. The next question. What are the advantages of specialising in
clin psych? Are there major advantages? I guess the advantages are that-- well, the
differences between clin psych and general psych, clinic psychs are more focused on dealing
with mental disorders and more focused
on providing therapy and assessment and probably
more in a health kind of context, whereas general psychology work across a range of
fields that may be less aimed at people with mental disorders. Unless aimed at complicated mental disorders. The people with clin psych qualifications
to complete those take, I guess it's a six years of university training and another--
what's it called a registra program to get the endorsement in clinical psychology from
the registration board. That's a further pe
riod of supervised practice
in order to then achieve what's often a higher pay scales, if they're working in institution
or higher Medicare rebates, if they're working in private practice. So I guess you can say clin psychs tend to
earn more money, they tend to have more narrow focus in their work, and the training takes
longer. So if you're more interested in a wider range
of work with greater flexibility, I think the possibility of general psych is worth
considering. I can see the next questio
n coming through,
I just can't quite get it open. Is the course still applicable to those who
have done a graduate diploma in psychology instead of honours? Yes, we do certainly take people in our program
who have done a graduate diploma in psychology. And that I suppose what you mean by graduate
diploma, because for different universities that can be a different qualification. But if you mean an accredited fourth year
that's not honours, then that's definitely the case. We do certainly take peo
ple with that type
of qualification. Perhaps the next question. When applying for masters, does the university
mainly look at our fourth year results as our academic record, or are first, second,
and third year results just as important? That's an interesting question. We are interested to look at your academic
results, and certainly the fourth year results do count. We all understand that people find their own
path through and sometimes it takes people a little while to work out if they really
have found the right part of psychology for them. So, often times people are finding their feet
in first, second, and third year and fourth year is somewhere where they can show in. On the other hand, fourth year's one year
and it's a little risky just to carry on that fourth year. It is difficult to put-- let me put it in
the context of we will receive something like 180 to 200 applicants for the program and
we'll need to shortcut down to about 60 odd to interview, and then we'll end up offerin
g
people, offering about 20 to 30 places in the program. So, in order to do that, it's quite difficult
to completely do justice to the complexity of everybody's academic record and the complexities
of everybody's professional experience, but I don't think we rely solely on fourth year
or solely on first, second, and third year results. We're looking for an overall story. So the next question sounds like it's coming
from one of our international applicants or potential international applicants. R
ight. So this question, "My international degree
has been accredited by the APS as equivalent to a four-year degree. Do you have a mechanism for calculating how
a first-class degree in the UK is equal to a first-class degree in Australia?" Most definitely. We are very comfortable with that kind of
calculation. The difficulties we get into from the wide
variety of international qualifications, but UK qualifications are quite similar to Australian
qualifications, so we're reasonably comfortable. I
t's pretty likely that a first-class degree
in the UK which has APAC equivalents as a fourth-year degree will be regarded as a first-class
degree in Australia. So the next question I see is, can people
work part-time or casually during the course? How many contact hours are there? Or is it Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 5:00? I think I covered that in the overheads, but
just to say it again, our teaching is done on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so that leaves
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for placeme
nt or work. Given the placement, in order to do the placement
hours, we're talking about-- so it's about 300 hours of placement. About 50 of those hours get covered in work
we do within the Wednesday and Saturday workshops, and then the remaining about 250 hours of
placement, that's about four to five months of two days a week work, so it's definitely
possible to take a full-time load and do one or two days of work. The thing that is often hard to get across
is that you will need to do some prep
aration time for the face-to-face work and then maybe
time required for assessments. Particularly, when you hit placement time,
you're probably going to need to do preparation for placement time. So I don't think it's a good idea to try to
work three days a week and work and then come to us and try to do a full-time load. But certainly, working through three days
a week, you can do a part-time load with us. And sometimes it's really a question of how
much do you want to squeeze in. Whereas we're
not getting you to come to campus
for Saturday workshops, if you've got family commitments that can make it difficult. Next question. Is it possible to apply for the master of
professional psychology and the master of clinical or clinical neuropsych and/or the
master of research at the same time? Is it possible to do multiple yet potentially
related applications all in one go? Certainly, you can apply for all of those
things. There's no restriction on how many you apply
for. And often people do
that and they find out
if they don't, for example, know their honours mark. It's worth pointing out that it's not one
form for all of those, so you will need to put in multiple applications but at least
the master professional master, clinical master, clinical neuropsych from Macquarie will go--
it will run UAC application form where you give your preferences. There may be differences in the supplementary
information required. The master of research is a research degree. It's not a course degre
e like the other master's
program we just been talking about, so it's application process is very different. And yes, it's common for people to apply for
many programs and see what they get off and see how they get shortlisted. In fact, if you're serious about applying
I would recommend that you apply to as many places as you can in order to see what offers
you get. So the next question I have is, on average
how many people apply per year? So I think about 160 applications. Last year we shortlis
ted about 60 as I say,
and then we will offer places to around 20 to 30 depending on the quality of the applicants. I hope that answers your question. Okay, so the next question. If I partially completed the postgraduate
diploma of provisional psychology, would some of the subjects I completed be credited? That's definitely possible. It partly depends on the time, how long ago
it was that you completed those. That would be the main consideration. You would need to apply again because it is
a sep
arate program, and we have made some changes to the unit. So there isn't a complete one-to-one mapping,
but it's likely that there would be some credit provided it's not too distant in the past. The main issue is going to be the recency
of the training. And some of that is actually university policy,
some of that is the registration board's policy. So I think it's probably best to give it a
go and see what happens. That's probably a question I can answer more
directly if for example you were to
send me an email with your student ID and I can look
up your record and when it happened, and stuff like that. Okay, so can I move on to the next question
there? This one, if we're already doing a volunteer
placement such as Lifeline, can that be part of our placement for the fifth year? I think the crucial thing about placements
is that they involve new learning and there's a plan of learning that addresses some particular
competencies that we're interested in seeing you develop. So the crucial
points about placement are
really, really advance your skills in particular areas. Is there the availability of a qualified supervisor? And when we say qualified we mean qualified
according to the Psychology Board Accreditation of Supervisors. So generally, an agency like Lifeline does
provide options for placement. One of the hustles can be that many people
who work in a Lifeline perhaps are doing an evening shift once a fortnight. That would be a very slow way to complete
the fifth year place
ment. I think that would probably take you something
like 18 months to get the number of hours up, just off the top of my head. So if that's the kind of thing you're thinking
about, I think you'd be trying to find some other options. But generally speaking, the crucial bit about
placements is that it's new skills, developing core competency for you across the areas,
across eight domains that are set by the registration board. And we're talking about the availability of
a supervisor. So going to
the next question. Just can't quite get it open. Are Macquarie Uni students given preference
over other universities? No. We're interested to look at people on their
academic merit and on the basis of their experience. Next question then is, are students already
at Macquarie University at more of an advantage of getting into the course? I think I've answered that already. No, we're interested to have applicants from
around the country, interested to get a variety of people come to us. Next quest
ion then. This is a reasonably long one. I'm sorry, the type's a bit small here so
I'm sort of struggling to read it. Would you recommend the five plus one pathway
for someone who doesn't want to do clinical but hasn't quite made up their mind about
the other areas of psych they may be interested in? The APS website talks about areas such as
counselling psych, coaching psych, health psych, and areas like this. I'd like to perhaps find my way in one of
these areas so I'm thinking that five plus o
ne is the best option. Certainly, five plus one will get you closer
to that work faster, the variety of work faster than you would see in a clinical program. As it's probably also a little easier to get
into five plus one, that's certainly another consideration. Possibly there are-- if you were, for example,
interested coaching psych or health psych you will see specialised masters program in
those that are worth thinking about. There aren't many counselling psych masters
programs left. They ten
ded to suffer for the-- especially
as Medicare rebate changes a couple of years back. But that's a reasonable strategy if you were
trying to get a broader experience of psychology before perhaps developing a more atopic practice. I haven't said that last point particularly
well, but I hope that's answered your question. I'll go on to the next question then. Coming from a Canadian university that has
an exchange program with course credits transferring to Macquarie, would I still need to pay the
APS degree assessment fee? Yes, because that's not a Macquarie requirement,
that's actually a requirement to-- no, actually, let me stop. If you're coming from a Canadian university,
in order to be registered as a psychologist in Australia and to have the training that
you receive at Macquarie count towards that, then yes, you need to go through that pathway
to get your Canadian qualifications accredited. If you're just coming for an exchange, so
you're going to pick up one or two units out our
program, you're not planning to do placements,
then it's not important, but then that would not count towards being registered as a psychologist
in Australia. So that's a crucial difference. Certainly we have international students come
to us and do one or two units and they take that back to their home university and use
that as part of completing a qualification in their country of origin. That's a different story from
trying to gain qualifications that would lead to registration as a psychol
ogist. So let me say it again. If you're trying to get registered as a psychologist
in Australia, you need to have international qualifications accredited. And unfortunately, I think as you're eluding
to the question, it is a relatively expensive process. That's unfortunately the only way to do it. I hope I've made that clear. It's different for one or two units as opposed
to the whole package. So the next questions then. Could you possibly speak a little about the
interviewing process, regardin
g the length of interviews and the type of questions asked
or the content covered? I think we're talking about an interview process
that is interested in sort of the selection criteria that are not well assessed in a paper
application. We're interested in maturity, we're interested
in interpersonal skills. The interviews that we've run tend to be less
than an hour and we tend to, as I say, look for skills and attitudes that we think are
important for work as a psychologist. I'm not really able t
o tell you much more
about that. We do like to keep the questions as a bit
of a surprise, I suppose. I hope that's answered your question. Okay, the next one. Can you tell me a little more about the selection
process? How many people are on the interview panel
and how long is the interview? If I'm overseas, how will I be interviewed? Okay. As I said before, a couple of things I've
answered in the previous question might help you there. How many people are on the interview panel? The panel last y
ear was made up of five experienced
generalist and specialist psychologists. And our interview, as I said in the previous
question was a little less than an hour. We were doing interviews via Skype. Despite our attempts to make Skype interviews
work, they're really not as good as a face-to-face interview. If you were trying to maximise your chances
of getting in, I would recommend being here face-to-face. But if that's really not possible, then certainly
would do the best we can with internet te
chnology to get Skype working. Yeah, I think that's probably the best way
to put it. We'll try to make it work, but we can't promise
that it will be as good as being here face-to-face. So the next question's come up as, could you
please discuss the positives and negatives of doing four plus two versus five plus one? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Four plus two at the moment is being phased
out, and the Psychology Board has expressed preference for people to do five plus one. Four plus two has
been relatively difficult
to achieve in the last couple of years. Why it's difficult to achieve is because the
board is asking supervisors and provisional psychologists to show that they have attained
a wide variety of competencies in a variety of areas. It's quite difficult for a supervisor in a
particular agency, in a particular practice, to be able to provide all those opportunities. And it's quite complex when you can't get
them inside the same agency to go around and collect all of the diff
erent competencies,
all the different certificates of competency that you're going to be required in four plus
two. So four plus two is quite a hard path. It's hard to find supervisors that will take
you on for four plus two. It's not impossible and it certainly worth
doing if you have some sense that you can find supervisors that do that. Five plus one gives you in the fifth year
the sort of structure and breath of training that you need and then sets you up for that
sixth year of worker as a p
rovisional psychologist in the placement of the supervision. I think it's probably easier. There are probably more places really in five
plus one at the moment across different universities. I think that would probably summarise for
me what I saw as the positive and negatives, probably because of the-- you;re slightly
more vulnerable in four plus two that you're really bound to a particular supervisor. Five plus one, you're getting a variety of
experience across a variety of sources, so it's pro
bably a bit of a broader experience. The next question. Can you talk a bit more about the supervision
requirements during placement? How many hours of supervision are required,
and do we need to arrange to find our own supervisor? Okay. So the supervision requirements are set pretty
much by the Psychology Board of Australia. For every seven hours of work that you do
on placement, you need an hour of supervision, and that supervision needs to be from somebody
who is an accredited supervisor who h
as received training and that training is accredited by
the Psychology Board. We do have a list of supervisors, we do have
placements where the supervisor is in the workplace and is prepared to do the supervision
as part of the placement. We do have placements where there is no suitable
supervisor on site and there are external supervisors. We have access to teams of external supervisors
that we can recommend to you, and we're in the process of developing more and more placements
over time. Just
to add a little bit of extra detail,
as the emphasis moves from four plus two to five plus one, we are hoping and expecting
that the placements that were available in four plus two are going to become more available
in five plus one, so we're actively trying to encourage that at the moment. If you do have access to or ability to organise
supervision that's a great thing, if not we'll certainly give you assistance with that. And I think at the
moment that is the last question that I can see on
the screen. I'm guessing that we're almost up to 7:50. I wonder if there are any of the sort of frequent
questions that people-- here we go, here comes another question. Let me just pull that one up. So the next question says, "Pays for the supervision." So that really is dependent upon the placement
and the availability of supervision. As I was answering before, some placements
have a supervisor on-site, and that supervisor sees the work that's done by the provisional
psychologist as part of pa
yment for their work. In other context, there's no supervisor on-site,
and it is necessary if that placement is going to count for an external supervisor to be
organised, and in some unfortunate circumstances, it is required that the student pay for that
supervision. Unfortunately, some work places provide really
good experience but they don't have supervisors on-site, and that's probably the only way
that they can maybe count it, is through the student paying for the supervision. Yes. So, perha
ps a couple of-- another one coming
through. Right. So the question then-- oh. There's a couple of things I'm just skipping. So the question then comes up, how much experience
is required or recommended? It's hard to answer that because in shortlisting
people-- and we're always ranking people against who else is applying the same year. So it's hard to give an absolute standard
to say, "Yes, if you have this much experience then that would get you in." It really depends on who else applies in a
p
articular year. What we're interested in is that the person
who's applying has some idea that they've actually been able to test out. Do they really like psychology in its applied
form? Have they had enough of a sample of the work
of psychology to actually know that it is right for them? It's quite hard to commit yourself to long
years of study when you're not really sure if it's the right work for you, and so it's
good to have some experience to do that. It's good to have some experience to bui
ld
your practical skills. I would suggest that-- on the low-end, many
people who join the graduate psych will do Lifeline and as part of Lifeline they will
do, say, fortnightly evening shift. And if they've done that for a couple of years,
that's probably-- if they've done it for a year or two, that probably provides something
like a month or two, maybe a little more of full-time equivalent experience. So it's not a large amount of experience. On the other hand, [inaudible] on the low
end, it's
relatively rare with someone who just has that sort of experience to be offered
a place. It's not impossible. On the other hand, if you've worked in an
agency in a sort of welfare role for example, maybe done that full-time or part-time for
a year or two, that is usually sufficient to get you into one of our programs. So the next question, are the interviews one-to-one
or group interviews? By group interviews, we certainly-- it's one
applicant that's being interviewed. Sometimes we've done inter
views with panels
of psychologists asking questions, other times we've done sort of multi-mini interviews where
there were a number of interview stations and a one-to-one interview happens with an
experienced psychologist. Group interview could be read as a number
of the applicants together, we don't do that. So it looks like we're coming to 7:50. It sounds like we've covered really some of
the most important issues in the five plus one pathway and the kind of program we provide. Could I point y
ou back to some of the other
sources of information that I had on the overheads earlier, on the slides earlier? And if there's anything that you'd like me
to clarify, perhaps it's easiest if you could send me an email. That address is available. Could I also get you to-- could I thank you
for tuning in? I suppose that's the right word. Joining us this evening to go through this
webinar. And could I ask you to have--?
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