The Torture

Having the future of our family put into the figurative hands of a computer algorithm is nerve-wracking.

Five years ago this month, Ryan was interviewing for acceptance to graduate school. That was a very stressful time. Everything depended on Ryan getting into a program. But, even with all the stress, travel, and politics involved, It was still people dealing with people. We knew two days after his first interview in Lubbock, TX that he would be offered a spot. When he interviewed at the military graduate school in D.C., we knew after two days that he had an acceptance offer.

Internship is a very different beast.

Before last Fall's semester, Ryan spent many hours researching APA accredited internship sites. He also spent many hours getting his application together. He wrote a bunch of essays, created a vita (an academic resumé), and obtained several recommendation letters from supervisors and professors. And he wrote a unique letter for each site, detailing why he wanted to go there. Once he had it all together he uploaded it to the APPIC. They are the third party contractor that stands between internship applicants and the internship sites (we paid them an outrageous mandatory fee for them to perform this service for us). Ryan told them what sites he wanted his application sent to. Then we waited for their replies. The sites are required to send either a interview request or a rejection letter. Over three weeks in November and December we started receiving interview requests. With each one we got, we grew more and more excited. In the end, Ryan was offered ten interviews for ten applications. This is unheard of. No one gets all their interviews. For instance, two other people in the psychology department had 2/7 and 9/21.

Ryan is truly amazing at what he does.

He did one interview in San Antonio in early December and then phone interviews for Alaska and Iowa later that month. That left the remaining seven interviews for two weeks in January. Once everything was scheduled and booked, this is how it looked:

Lubbock to North Carolina
North Carolina to Tacoma, WA
Tacoma, WA to Salt Lake City, UT
Salt Lake City, UT to Dayton, Ohio
Dayton, Ohio to Washington DC
DC to Honolulu, HI (he at least got to spend the weekend here)
Honolulu, HI to Atlanta, GA (then drive to Augusta)
Atlanta, GA to Lubbock, TX

He did all that in fourteen days with a carry-on suitcase and a laptop bag.

The interviews themselves varied. Five of the sites are active duty Army and the other five are civilian Veteran Affairs (VA) hospitals. The ones that matter most (Army sites) went great. Ryan left the interviews feeling that they liked him, and found that he liked even the less desirable Army sites more than he thought he would.

Once the interviews were all over, we had a couple of weeks to weigh all the pros and cons of each site. We then came up with our rank list. We turned this into APPIC. Each internship site also comes up with a rank list of their applicants and turns it into APPIC. It is against the rules for either party to tell the other how they intend to rank. If they do, they can get kicked out of the match. But now that everything is turned in, and deadlines to change anything have passed, I will let you, my friends and family, know what we chosen:

  1. Tacoma, WA -Army medical center
  2. Honolulu, HI -Army medical center
  3. Augusta, GA -Army medical center
  4. San Antonio, TX -Army medical center
  5. Washington D.C. -Army medical center
  6. Salt Lake City, UT - VA hospital
  7. Asheville, NC - VA hospital
  8. Iowa City, IA - VA hospital
  9. Dayton, OH - VA hospital
10. Anchorage, AK - VA hospital

Right now, APPIC is using a computer algorithm to match applicants to sites. We find out next Friday, February 24, what the results are. Ryan found a NYT article that explains why this is so scary. Pretty much, there is no guarantee. If the numbers line up wrong then it doesn't matter how good you are, you can end up with no internship. This happens every year to highly qualified candidates. There will be about 1,000 applicants that do not match with an internship, because there aren't enough internships to go around. And many of those who don't match will be better qualified than some who do match. That's just the nature of the game. And so you know, the fact that Ryan is already an Army Reserve officer has no bearing on his chances. All Army sites were explicitly instructed by the lead Army psychologist to not consider the applicants' participation in military scholarship programs when making ranking decisions.

So now we just pray. Pray that the algorithm is good to us. Pray that our number one pick also puts us as their number one. But we mostly pray that we will be placed where God needs us to be.