With increasing usage of AI in our daily lives, it’s important for us to consider how we use it within our professional work, including for the internship application process. I preface this article by saying that I am usually a late adopter of technology, and this is still the case with AI. I do not actively use AI in my life (personal or professional), but I understand that it can be a useful tool for many.
It’s worth saying explicitly that you should not use AI to compose your internship materials. However, you may consider using AI as a tool to do things like project management (e.g., developing a timeline of tasks based on your personal situation), organize your thoughts into themes after you’ve done a brainstorm, conduct checks on spelling and grammar, etc.
I highly recommend that you continue to write everything yourself and not ask an AI program to construct your sentences. For instance, you want the essays to capture your voice and internal process – of who you are, how you think, and how you work (i.e., your process). Think about it like if you had to answer these questions (and follow-up questions!) in an interview – can you articulate clearly how you work? The reader is a potential supervisor and is trying to picture what you’d be like to supervise. For example, they do not want to read a technical explanation of a theoretical orientation; they want to know you can think deeply and conceptualize what’s going on for a client and explain your intervention approach based on that conceptualization. So write your theoretical orientation essay like how you’d explain how you work to your supervisor.
An important point to keep in mind is that while writing essays can feel arduous and tedious, the process of organizing and articulating your thoughts actually help you synthesize everything you’ve been working on up to this point. The essays give students an opportunity to reflect on their training and express to others what motivates them to do the work they do as well as how they work. The cover letters are where students should make a case for why the internship program is a good fit for their internship and professional goals. (Internship cover letters are unlike job cover letters in that you are saying you have a solid foundation AND still have room to grow through internship training.) The writing process oftentimes helps people articulate their professional identity development more clearly, which then makes the interview process go more smoothly.
Some students have told me they have used AI to “clean up” their writing to make it flow better. The thing is, I don’t automatically remember to think about AI-generated writing, so when it’s come up as a topic, it’s because I noticed something felt “off” about the writing and then asked if the student used AI. The writing was somehow too smooth or a bit distant-feeling (too intellectual? impersonal? vague?). It ended up being distracting. To a certain extent, yes, internship programs would love for you to be a great writer, but in my experience, at the end of the day, they really just want to get a sense of you as a person and psychologist-in-training, and they are fine with “okay” writers who are clear about their work (i.e., the content is more important than the writing style).
The APPIC board is working on a policy regarding the use of AI in the APPIC internship application process (for both students and training programs), so I will update this page when that has been posted.
[Date posted: 5/11/2026]
Psych Grad Corner 