Bangor University - North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme

During the selection process, we will contact you by e-mail only, so please check your e-mails, as well as your spam folder and update us with any changes in your contact details.

Shortlisting

Your application is assessed by the programme team members, People Panel members (our expert by experience advisory group) and local clinical psychologists, who only see the relevant sections to be marked. They do not have access to your personal details, such as name, address, age, ethnicity etc, only your Clearing House ID number.

For shortlisting, we use all the minimum entry requirements, indicated in this document with a *. We do award additional points for volunteering, publications, and to candidates who are fluent Welsh speakers and learners.

From the final shortlist, we invite the highest ranked candidates, up to three times the number of training places. For the 2026 cohort, we had 16 training places.

A number of candidates whose application is assessed under the Disability Confident scheme and who have met all the minimum criteria, are also invited for interview. This number varies every year.

Only at the final shortlisting point, the information that you have provided to Clearing House regarding contextual factors, is added. Candidates who have met the minimum criteria and have the highest number of contextual factors are invited to fill the remaining interview places. We had 72 interview places available overall during the 2026 interviews.

Once we have identified who will be invited for interview, based on your Clearing House ID only, the application forms are downloaded in their entirety and reviewed by the programme director, the recruitment and selection director and other members of the selection team in line with safe recruitment principles.

If you have not been shortlisted for interview, we strongly recommend you check your details against all our selection criteria and have checked with the people who have provided your statement of suitability that they are fully supportive of your application. 

It is possible that you have met all the minimum criteria but were not ranked high enough to be invited for interview.

Due to the number of applications, we are very sorry, but we are no longer able to offer personalised feedback if you are not shortlisted.

Interviews

Remember that the interview is not for a traditional ‘job’ where you need to demonstrate that you can do the work. We are interested in your critical thinking, analytic skills and abilities to translate information into different clinical areas. We want to see your competency to function at doctoral level. So, think widely and broadly about questions, and outside the box.

The interviews will take place in person at Bangor University.

The interview panels usually comprise local clinical psychologists, People Panel members (our expert by experience advisory group) and programme team members. Our interview process consists of two components:

• A combined interview that aims to assess your academic, research, clinical and reflective competencies. Duration: 45 minutes.
• Written task in which you are required to synthesise and critically appraise research. Duration: 60 minutes.

Feedback

• You will be contacted at the end of the interview week with the outcome.
• You can ring at a set date for feedback on your interview, which will contain information on how you performed in both interview components.
• Those on the reserve list will be informed of their place on the reserve list.
• The person ranked first on the reserve list will be informed of this position, especially when there has been change in the reserve list. You can contact us for updates on your place on the reserve list.

Fitness to Practice, DBS checks and Safeguarding

Please check the Clearing House website for information on Fitness to Practice, DBS checks and safeguarding. 

• When we invite you for an interview, you are asked to declare any convictions, cautions, whether you are bound over on barring decisions.
• If you make a declaration, this will be reviewed by the Programme Director and Head of Clinical Psychology Services of the Health Board, who will decide if the interview can indeed be offered.

Equal Opportunities

Being able to speak Welsh is a desirable characteristic in the person specification of a NWCPP trainee clinical psychologist, as a significant proportion of clients have Welsh as their first language. Being a Welsh speaker is therefore considered a desirable skill and hence when two candidates have similar scores (similar to two decimal points) during the shortlisting or interview stage, and one candidate is a Welsh speaker, the Welsh speaker will be offered an interview or training place. Please be aware that if you have indicated that you are a fluent Welsh speaker, and you are invited for interview, you will be assigned a Welsh-speaking host who will speak with you in Welsh.

We use positive action as permitted under the Equality Act 2010. We acknowledge that applicants from racialised backgrounds and men are underrepresented in the clinical psychology profession. Both are protected characteristics under the Equality Act.

In summary: If candidates have a similar score at the shortlisting or interview stage, then the interview or training place will be offered, in order of priority, to a candidate who is a Welsh speaker, a candidate from a racialised minorities, and a candidate who identifies as male.

Contextual admissions

Our programme introduced contextual recruitment processes for the 2022 intake. This is based on evidence that contextualising individuals’ achievements using additional information about their educational, social, and economic background can lead to fairer and more inclusive selection processes. This information can help us to recognize individuals with strong potential for success at doctoral level and within the profession, who otherwise might not have been identified.

The Clearing House will invite you to complete a survey to collect Contextual Selection data separately from the application form. The Group of Trainers in Clinical Psychology have agreed the questions in this survey, which have evidence for improving the inclusivity and equity of recruitment processes.

Completion of this survey is optional, however if you can answer any of the questions which provide some additional background about you, and you are happy to share this with us via the Clearing House, then we would encourage you to do so.

We include your contextual information in the final step of our shortlisting process, for all candidates who have met the minimum entry requirements described earlier.

Those candidates who meet all our minimum requirements, and who are not invited for interview based on their ranking or for having their application reviewed under the Disability Confident scheme, will then be reviewed considering the contextual information provided.

Those with the highest number of contextual factors are then invited for interview.

The number of places available for candidates invited for interview with contextual selection will vary annually. We have a finite number of interview places available, which are filled by those invited based on their ranking and Disability Confident scheme. The remaining places will then be allocated to candidates with the highest number of flags.

Disability Confident / Applicants with disabilities

The programme operates the Disability Confident Scheme. 

• The minimum criteria identified above with a * are applied when you have indicated, on your application form (Basics - Disability Confident Scheme), that you want your application to be assessed under this scheme.
• Additional to the academic* and clinical* experience requirements (see under entry requirements), the two other minimum criteria are a well written personal statement* and two supportive statements of suitability*.
• You will need to meet all the minimum criteria in order to be considered for an interview under the disability confident scheme.
• Please email Carolien Lamers for further information and to discuss support that can be made available to you during the selection process and any reasonable adjustments that might be required during training.
• If you have declared you want your application reviewed under the disability confident scheme and we invite for interview, we will ask you whether any reasonable adjustments can be made during the interview process. Please reply to this request by the date indicated in the letter, as we cannot consider requests after this date.