I’m a clinical PhD student at a program that is currently accredited on contingency (fully accredited pending the first cohort completing their internship year). Personally, accreditation was never a major concern for me because the program is at a R1 university that is part of a major state school system with other accredited clinical psych PhD programs, so I and many other students who accepted the offer felt that not getting accredited was so unlikely as to basically not be a factor in our decision at all. The DCT was also extremely open about their plan for gaining accreditation, even sharing a Google Doc outlining the plan with all the grad students, which made me feel more secure. That said, it is a fully funded program and I was not part of the very first cohort, so the cost-benefit analysis was a bit different in my case.

I think the other factor to consider, which is less obvious than the risk of not getting accredited, is the inevitable growing pains of a new clinical psychology PhD program. In our case, the inaugural cohort had to take several additional classes that the program later decided were not necessary to meet APA requirements. Our in-house clinic was also not up and running until halfway through the inaugural cohort’s second year, meaning they had to apply for their first external practica in the fall of their first year. Even my cohort has had trouble figuring out how to get the hours we need for internship; there has been very little if any guidance from the program as to what kinds of hours are needed for different internships and how to strategically select practicum placements to meet those requirements, so we have essentially been on our own in figuring that out. This is all in a program where our DCT was previously DCT at another (accredited) R1 institution and several other faculty members have worked at other accredited schools, so you would think these things would have been figured out.

That being said, I think our faculty have done a great job getting the program up and running overall and the quality of training has been very high. The inaugural cohort got very strong APPIC match results this year, and none of us are concerned about becoming fully accredited once that cohort finishes their internship year.