mystiqueSLP

The professor in Europe did not receive any postage from me to begin with because she's friends with my lab director, who also wrote a letter for me, and they both told me to not worry about it. Neither asked for any reimbursement afterwards and the one in Europe even sent me the tracking number for her letter so I could check up on it after apologizing profusely in an email. I was so relieved to realize that only one school needed letters through postal service after that incident!

Postbacc would have been more worthwhile for her too. Application fees alone for 20 schools would have been around $1300-1400 and now she possibly only has rejections to show for it. At least with a postbacc, she would have came out with (hopefully) better grades and letters.

Ah. To be honest, it doesn't make any sense to apply to so many places with really, really low stats without outstanding letters and experience. But I can't imagine how it feels to spend so much money on fees and time on different essays to apply to 20 schools and be rejected.

Wow, I was so broke after applying to only 6 programs! Do you know if she actually got in anywhere with those stats? Lower ranked schools can be tougher to get into because everyone sees them as their "safety" so lots of applicants vs. very limited number of available seats so there's that to keep in mind. If your stats are "too good" for the lower ranked schools, they might not offer you admission because they'll assume you just applied to them as your safety and you might end up not going anyway.

Thanks! I'm definitely going to send her the nicest card I can find (or maybe make one since I'm taking a chinese calligraphy course this semester). But I must say, European professors are really laidback. My former french professor is originally from NC (she has quite the unique southern/french accent) and she kept asking for stamps and envelopes. My second recommender, also my lab director, IS french and he was all, "Stamps? Envelopes? Who cares! I can send this after the deadline and it'll be fine!" even though I kept telling him that it was an in-office deadline. He just said, "No, no, no, it's a 'soft' deadline so don't worry about it." and I'm still not sure if I believe him That's awesome, it sounds like that really read over your entire application! I'm curious to find out what my letters were like now...

Oh come on now, you made it sound as if your GREs were really awful Most schools have an average of 300 for new GRE scores and you're only a few points away. I think if you study a bit harder and answer a few more questions right, you'll be just fine. How did ECU let you know that your LORs from the online professors were great?

I'm waiting until I hear back from the majority of my schools so I can include most of the decisions into my letters but I've already expressed my gratitude to them in person and over email multiple times. I was planning to get one of my recommenders, my former french professor, a necklace because I've always noticed her wearing these really artsy necklaces in class but she's the only one I can get a meaningful present for. I work really closely with my second recommender but it seems awkward since he's male. I would hate to go down the route of useless glass paperweights though. As for the professor in Europe, I gave stamps to my other recommenders so it does feel like I should reimburse her somehow. She was so nice about the whole situation that I'm pretty sure she's forgotten all about it by now which only makes me feel worse.

Has anyone thought about getting their recommenders a gift or something to say thank you for taking the time to write these letters? I have no idea what to do for one of my recommenders who had to send a letter by mail from Europe to SDSU overnight (the postage was nearly $100) because the deadline had slipped her mind but I feel terrible about it

I would look into how licensing works before you go to a school outside of Canada. I hear it can be difficult to get a license if you completed your education in another state in the US so I imagine licensing might be tricky between US and Canada. And I think a good number would be 5-8 schools. If you're really concerned about getting in somewhere, I've heard of people applying up to 11 schools but that can get really expensive. You also want a large range of schools, competitive ones to not so competitive ones.

Your GPA is really good. Did your GRE scores go up or down after the 2nd and 3rd retake? And did you apply to programs that don't look at pre-reqs for this year? From the info you've provided, if you don't get in anywhere this year, I would assume it was because of your GRE score which you can always bring up for next year through studying. I would only recommend a GRE class if you're having trouble with time management. Most GRE classes I find seem to focus more on "tricks" to save time than any actual reviewing of math concepts or vocab words. And any experience related to SLP would definitely boost your chances, along with great letters of recommendations and a well-written SOP.

I think it would be cool if all schools had the same grading system. My university doesn't have A+s, only As.

Quick question - does anyone know how someone can get a GPA higher than 4.0? I've seen it twice now on the results page. Is it a GPA from a college in another country?

I get those comments a lot when I tell people what I'm majoring in. My dentist thinks it's the funniest joke in the world And a lot of us double major here. Most French students double major in art history or history and some major with another language. One of my classmates wants to work in the UN or in translation and he majored in French and Spanish with a minor in Polish. I majored in French because I loved it and I've been taking it since middle school so I went through my freshman year thinking "I took it for 6 years, what's one more?" and it just got harder to get out of. I was going to minor but then I thought, "only 3 more classes to make it a major, what's a few more?".

My academic advisors said the same thing (but with a twist: "You should take summer classes here to bring up your GPA!") but my lab director really helped me out. He told me how SLP would be the perfect fit for me based on all of my experience and that I would have a better chance applying outside of my own state.

To be fair, my Psychology/French degree is pretty useless (my mother said to me, "What are you going to do with that? Become a french psychologist?"). Almost all undergrad degrees are. All Psych majors don't become psychologists, all History majors don't become historians, and all Philosophy majors don't become philosophers. Almost any undergrad degree needs further education to be worthwhile. And congrats kcald716!!! I'm happy to hear that personal factors outweigh the stats, gives me some hope

I don't think it's fair to be irritated by the out-of-field thing (I am one). I think you should be irritated by adcoms not looking at the whole picture like the difficulty of the classes you took. I was majoring in biology for 1.5 years before changing to double major in Psych and French. All of the intro science classes at my school are known as the "weed-out" classes. They're designed for you to fail and it was exceptionally hard to do well. The best grade on an exam would be a C (with a curve!) and more than half of the organic chem class failed and had to retake it. Some classes would only give As to 5% of the class despite the fact that more than 5% of the class were deserving of As. My transcript definitely reflects why my GPA is low and I hope these grad programs really read it (especially since I paid $7 for each of those things!) before eliminating anyone with a less than stellar GPA. I was hoping for some news this week because of the results page as well :/

Wow, that's so sweet of him! It's nice to see a program that treats its potential students that way, makes me believe that it'll only lead to good things for attending students.

We have similar stats (3.28 GPA, 159V, 157Q) but I think it comes down to our LORs, SOP, and overall "fit" and some luck. So don't worry, you're not as weak as you think you are!

You have so many choices though! Choose the school that fits well and is cheap enough that you won't be buried in debt afterwards. Which school is your first choice?

No, I haven't yet. What have you heard?

I wish people would stop having conversations on the results page and discuss stuff here in new threads titled "Accepted/Waitlisted/Rejected/Interviews for So-and-So School" or something. It's so cluttered right now with people going back and forth, asking about stats and interviews...

Do you know when we'll get our decisions for TC? I'm assuming around the end of this week but I'm not sure.

All of the minority scholarships I find specify that they're for "minority applicants of African-American, Hispanic/Latino, or Native American background" :/ And the loan forgiveness programs seems really uncertain. It could happen but it also feels like they'll stop the program at any moment.

The first rejection always hurts but you have 4 more schools to go! Don't worry, things will work out

Same, their deadline is ridiculously early! There's nothing in my Albert account at the moment and the only email I've received is the one about the open house. They haven't even replied to my email about financial aid yet.