• Start asking professors for letters in mid-September so they have plenty of time to get them to you by application due dates, which range from early November to mid-January.
• Try to ask people who taught you in a range of settings so they can play up your academic and clinical expertise.
• Ask more than three people for letters so that if one or more of them is "lukewarm," you can use a “rave” letter instead.
• Talk directly with the people you ask, rather than by e-mail or telephone, to ensure that they’ll write you a good letter and get it to you on time.
• Check on the protocol for sending the letters; some sites want the envelopes signed by the professor and sent separately from the application.
• Also check on the procedure for sending transcripts because some sites want them sent directly from your graduate program and others want them included with the application, advised panelists.

Interviewing

For many students, interviewing is the most intimidating aspect of the internship search. For example: In a real life experience when an interview-er asked teh student how her parents felt about her decision to become a psychologist, the student avoided going into overly personal detail and just said her parents "were thrilled."

When another interviewer asked her the number of internship sites she had applied to, she answered evasively. The student had applied to 19 other sites and she feared that disclosing such a high number would make the internship director think she'd get plenty of offers, and therefore not offer her a position. To prevent that from happening, the student merely said she'd applied to "quite a number of sites" and named a few of them.

End Game

Rank internship sites and cope with the wait on selection day. To make it through that grueling day, foloow these steps:

• Rank the internship sites you want ahead of time so that when the phone rings and you get an offer, you can quickly accept, hold or decline it.
• Establish a support system that will get you through the day, whether it's having a buddy there to cheer or commiserate with or having family members call in regularly.
• If you don't get an offer, don't despair - there are a range of options, such as soliciting help from your graduate program director, re-applying next year, taking a non-APA-accredited internship (although be sure to consider the pros and cons) or trying the APPIC Clearinghouse, which matches students with remaining internships.