ktmel87

I was accepted to UC and Kent, and waitlisted at Ohio State. I am beyond thrilled to go to UC in the fall after graduating from OSU this spring (also I'm orginally from CLE). I went to a grad visit day at Kent State and the admitted student day at UC over the last two weeks to help choose. Here's the notes I took from both which I hope will help other people looking in the archives now & in the future: Kent The cohort is 38-40 people and they offer a decent amount of funding to students. The first semester is in the on campus clinic which they're currently doing a make over on and it should be ready for the fall. Class is held 4 nights a week (which surprised me) and then you'll get 2 half days or 1 full day of clincials per week. During the second semester you will get placed at various enrichment sites. It's typical that you will have 2-3 clients per semester in the first two semesters, 2 in the summer, and then it will increase a little bit. In the final two semesters, you do your peds placement first usually at a public school and then your adult placement in the last semester. Generally they place students in rehab centers more than hospitals. There is the opportunity to return home/get placed outside of Kent if you are succeeding very well clinically for the peds placement but the university makes the decisions on adult placements. The hospitals connected with the university are Akron General, Akron Children's, Salem Hospital, and Youngstown Hospital. They said that generally placements can be 45mins to an hour away but there are some closer ones that are 15-20mins away. They have a social program for autism on Saturdays and there is an autism certificate program. They also do a lot of work with the ELPC. Kent State's program is 6 semesters and they said doing research can cause it to go over into an extra semester. If you choose a nonthesis option, there is just extra coursework which is already built into the schedule. Some courses overlap with both first years & second years in them & it will be interesting to see how it works with the new pilot program which has Kent undergrads starting in the spring. A lot of the students my tour group talked to went to Kent State for undergrad so they were really familiar and passionate about Kent and the program. There was one girl from OSU who said the transition from Columbus to Kent was somewhat a shocking transition from city to suburb. The rent was cheap ~$450 a month and everyone felt it was safe. Cincinnati The cohort is a bit bigger with a target of 45 people. Classes are all day Tuesday and Thursday & then clinicals are 1 full day or 2 half days. You can be scheduled clients on any of the extra days but they try to make it consistent each week. At the beginning of the year, you meet with the clinical coordinator about your goals and they work with you to put you in sites that are close to where you live and match your interests. UC has connections with over 40 organizations including schools/hospitals/rehab centers ranging from the Cincinnati VA to Schools of the Deaf. (This was a huge pull for me as the showed the actual list of 40+ sites in the area). The program is also 6 semesters but a little different in the fact that they frontload the major coursework to the first year and then the second year is all electives and full time internships. In the first year, students work predominately in-house clinic or one of the 8 community outreach programs geared more toward specialty areas such as child and family center, aphasia group, brain injury group, language and literacy group, Head Start, etc. The second year is your adult and peds placement that can be taken in any order. There is the potential to go off campus/out of Cinci for one semester but it has to be a compelling reason. UC requires a research experience and you start it the first year. There are three options to getting your credit hours. Option 1: participating in faculty and doctoral research, thesis, publishable paper, individual/group project with a poster presentation for student/professional conferences. There's also another program called LEND that serves as a clinical placement too, but I didn't write down what it was. Option 2: Research methods class project where the pair you in a group with an organization and you gather the literature for a topic. The example they gave was getting a mentor from Cincinnati Children's and helping them with a research topic from combing literature to learning more about the research process. There is also the opportunity to apply to go to Jamaica over spring break on a research trip and do assessments and evaluations there. Option 3: MA/PhD program. Professors can bring you to professional conferences and you can get your name out there on publications. It can be competitive getting into professors' labs and it's best to reach out to specific faculty early. There is extremely limiting funding for the first year (like 5 offers) but they're are some paid practicums you can apply for later on such as the CCHMC DDBP or VA. It's cool that the classroom building, clinic, hospital, library, cafeteria, and gym all connect through "tunnels" so you virtually don't have to walk outside the first year. The grad students mentioned that there's a lot of group work and collaboration within the cohort. While you take all the same classes the first year, there's at least 3 different specialty electives you can choose in the second year so class sizes get smaller. It's more expensive to live in Cincinnati and a lot of the grad students we talked to just commuted from home. It's also definitely considered less safe than Kent State but that's simple city to suburb difference. There is a ton of grad students that come from UC's undergrad program-like maybe half. There was one grad student who went to OSU for undergrad on the panel and said it was a little strange transitioning when everyone knew each other already, but there's a good 15% that come from out-of-state and the cohort is so large that it wasn't hard to make friends. Overall, this is just everything I remember/wrote down so take it with a grain of salt. Although it would be nice living closer to my parent's home by going to Kent, I can't turn down all the opportunities that UC has to offer. There just didn't seem to be a proportional number of opportunities at Kent State to their cohort size. UC is also the second highest rank program in Ohio after Ohio State. Also, I would echo everyone else's sentiments about OSU, I applied but really only to live in Columbus longer rather than the program- faculty isn't very open with students.

Have you heard anything about funding or Ga/TA/RA opportunities?

It's a personal choice for how much money your willing to spend vs. location. I decided not to apply to BGSU after going to an open house because of the few resources available in the area. They explained that you may have to drive up to an hour away to see a client and then still return to campus for night classes. For me, all that driving was excessive when I knew other schools were located by big hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Personally, I think I would choose Rush because there's more diversity in the kind of clients you would see there then Bowling Green, Ohio. And to the post above, BG is 4 hours from Chicago but yes closer to less exciting Detroit.

Still waiting for Ohio State, not feeling hopeful.

I don't think it's strange. My advisor pushed me to go to other schools as well simply because she knows that it's best to go to the school with the most funding. Everyone who gets their Masters gets a job.

Does anyone know what's going on with Ohio State's second wave? In the results search people are saying that they aren't sending anything else out until mid-April. But has anyone gotten a rejection? That's kind of shitty of the program to not send out waitlist letters or rejections until decision week- and I go here for undergrad. Also waiting on Kent State which would honestly be great because the tuition is so low.

Just curious to know if anyone got funding offered with their admission or if you know what the process is for that

This waiting game has been killer. I'm especially nervous being wait listed twice & really regretting not retaking the GRE. I wish all the Ohio schools would announce sooner!!

Hey y'all, For those you who have submitted your apps on CDCAS already, how long was the verification time? I have two 12/15 deadlines coming up and I'm minor league really worried about the timing. Ohio State just needs to have everything submitted by the deadline but Cinci needs to have everything verified by then. Any input is appreciated; thanks!

Hey! So I found a spreadsheet on here for East & West Coast schools, and I started making my own for schools in the Midwest. Feel free to edit any incorrect information & add more schools! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d4V-zA9FnBKbrbdjR9ALwvLqH_9UUwju9LR-LrdI7DE/edit?usp=sharing Happy hunting!

I haven't looked into this that much, but does anyone know of schools in the Midwest that will allow you to defer and give you acceptance for the 2018 app season? I want to take a gap year to do an Americorps program on literacy but I'd like to have the certainty of knowing I'll have a place to go after it's completed. Any input would be appreciated!