MangoSmoothie

That's what I was going to complain about! Speech-path people seem to be particularly bad about it...or maybe I notice it a lot there because that's the results I browse. Haha. There was a quite a few posts even a week back or so where people complained on the results page that their posts were getting deleted because "not everyone wants to use the forums so we should be able to use the results board" and they said people who are irritated by non-results crowding the results page need "lighten up." They were actually discussing the program, visit dates, etc. All of which can and should be done on the forum. It's not that hard to make an account if you really want to discuss that, and then it's in an easy-to-find and accessible place... And speaking of the forum, I'm getting more and more irritated by people not searching before creating a thread. As far as I'm aware, this website doesn't have a policy against bumping old threads, and if you just search a little bit you often can find the information you're looking for, rather than making a new thread with a question that's been asked ten times before.

^Same. I'm not sure how Amazon asking me to rate pens gets in to my priority inbox and alerts me (they're awesome pens, though, and good pens are a priority in my life...), but I always get excited at that blue light meaning I have a gmail notification. The one time I wasn't excited at it it was an acceptance offer go figure. I'm even excited when I'm walking towards my front door and see I have postal mail sitting in my box since some of my schools notify by post. 90% of the time it's spam mail or my internet company trying to sell me cable.

Perfect storm

Well, I'm bumping this thread because I was also accepted to WMU and am considering going! I love the program I was accepted to, and I'll be visiting in a few weeks to see the town and campus in person. I'm just curious (if anyone around here knows...) when do students usually start looking for or signing leases for the next academic year? Where I am now, students sign leases for the next year from January to March, and most apartments are signed for by April, but it doesn't seem the same for Kalamazoo. I did a bit of browsing, and at least the rent seems cheaper than what I'm used to, so that's a huge plus. Do most grad students really live in those campus apartments/dorms? Is it necessary to have a car in Kalamazoo? I do have one and will be bringing it, but I don't really like driving to campus and hate the hassle of finding parking. Or is this not really an issue here? Also, does anyone have any experience with WMU and changing to Michigan residency for tuition purposes? They advertise that they allow this, but it seems like it might be best to wait until the second year to try this.

Seriously! I applied to 12 schools, and all of them have 100% graduation rates the last 3 years (maybe one has a 96% rate one year, but only one student not graduating and only once), and when I was researching schools, I don't recall seeing any of the schools I researched with students consistently not graduating, even it was just one student per year. It's definitely something to ask about. I'm actually really curious why. Perhaps they stay an extra summer to complete additional training? Or something along those lines...

Since you mention price... I've been accepted to another Michigan school (WMU) and it's also pretty pricey for out-of-state students. Overall GPA-wise I'm a less-competitive applicant (but I have good GREs, good post-bacc grades, good LORs and SOP, and good experiences and time between my undergrad and now), but I'm worried about not getting in anywhere else. I love WMU's program, and I would be thrilled to go there, and I want to go there, but the price is insane... :\ Without an assistantship, how do people pay for the tuition? I'm looking at something like 63K for tuition the two years, plus more loans needed for cost of living... Is that amount of debt (on top of undergrad debt!) worth it? Who else is looking at around 130K or more for total debt after graduation if they go somewhere like this? Has anyone else thought about assistantships in other departments or perhaps the second year to cut down on the cost? Seems risky to bet on that though... I had tried not to apply to schools I couldn't afford, but somehow I left this one slip through! It was one of my top choices too. And mo~, I think that might be a good question for your advisor actually! They likely have insider knowledge about whether those grades would be beneficial or not at this point. To me, personally, it doesn't seem like it would be, unless the schools had an early March deadline. You could always send official transcripts (if they needed them before) with that grade anyway, and if they get added to your file before the program looks at your file, great, but if not, well, at least you tried!

Most schools will not require you to tell them you're accepting their offer of admission or funding before April 15th; this is sort of an agreement that schools share, in this department in others. It's not common (though it is possible) for schools to ask you to reply before then. My acceptance letter stated: We adhere to the agreement of the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders. This agreement states that students should have an opportunity to consider more than one offer of admission/financial aid. Students have until April 15 to accept admission / a funding offer. So I wouldn't worry about it too much. Other than offers off of the waitlist, more of your offers should come before April 15th, and most shouldn't require you to respond before April 15th. Now, the waitlist thing has me all sorts of worried. Haha. I have two waitlists from schools I'd love to attend, and one acceptance from a school I'd also love to attend, and I don't expect to hear back from those waitlist schools until well after April 15th. I'll end up respond to an offer (with a deposit maybe?) before April 15th, but if I get off the waitlist from one of those two schools, I'd probably take it.

The housing market for apartments aimed at students is in Madison ridiculous, and now is prime season for searching for the Fall 2015 academic year. I was always envious of people in other college towns, since their housing market never seemed as competitive. Most people have to resign their leases for the next academic year (so with an August start date) in November to keep it, and November is when apartment companies will start showing and renting out for the next academic year. I once felt like I had barely settled in before they started viewings on mine. You should start looking now if you want the best apartment for a single person (so studio or 1BR) and at the best price and in your preferred location. By May, even, there's almost nothing aimed at students left, and the apartment companies have no problem filling their apartments to capacity. I'd aim to secure a place by the end of March or maybe mid-April to get what you really want, but the sooner the better. I used sites like http://www.cdliving.com/to find an apartment that fit my needs and then contacted apartment companies directly, and I was also living abroad and had to search and sign the lease from abroad. Apartment companies were generally not willing to provide additional or newer photos for me, but I had family that could view the apartments for me and send pictures to me. I began searching the February before I moved in, but I'd lived in the city before so I know where I wanted to live and vaguely what companies to avoid, but I couldn't sign a lease until May because of uncertain circumstances. If you know for sure you're coming here, you are better off searching now over later for an apartment. By May there likely will be nearly nothing in your budget. The May I signed a lease from abroad, I missed out on 2 different apartments I really wanted by less than an hour. There's lots of information on locations to live in this thread, but generally, if you live farther west off campus (for example, University Ave or Old University Ave, around the UW Hospital longitudinally or more west, or the Hildale area people have mentioned) there are fewer undergrads/less of a party atmosphere and good bus routes. A lot of undergrads like living walking distance of campus or a very short bus ride. Living downtown and on the isthmus it is possible to avoid undergrads/noisy and underage/barely legal drunk kids; if you live east of the capitol on the isthmus, it's also relatively quiet. However, you are still near the capitol square and within walking distance of great bars and restaurants, with good bus routes to campus.The apartments very near to campus are high in demand, so the rent is a little bit higher, the quality of them is a little bit lower, and they do tend to populated with undergrads. It is possible to live south of campus (but I wouldn't recommend too close; the areas around Regent street and toward campus are pretty loud). Not as many people live south though because it's harder to commute by bus; there's fewer buses, and some only run during peak hours (6amish to 9:30am, then 3:30pm to 6:30pmish). The apartments well south of campus are noticeably cheaper and a bit better quality than even the areas I mentioned above. The best bus routes tend to be buses that run eastbound or westbound across campus. Congrats on getting in and getting funding. It's a great place to live, an amazing university to study at, and I hope to live in Madison permanently someday. Also, it looks like you might be "living" in Van Hise (the building with all the language departments). I love that place, even if it is kind of old.

I thought I had kept such good track. I had a spreadsheet with all my schools, deadline dates, app fees, supplemental apps if they use CSDCAS, official transcripts or not... It slipped through! Multiple require a CSDCAS fee and their own grad school fee before admission (like WMU) and I really don't understand it. :\ If you're using CSDCAS, you shouldn't have applicants submit your own grad school's application and fee until you admit that applicant, which is how it works for many other schools that use CSDCAS. It just makes us pay more. It's the same reason I believe programs shouldn't require official documents (GRE, transcripts) until they admit you and you decide to enroll. If an applicant lies about something on their application, they'll be discovered once official documents are sent in upon admission. It's just another thing we have to pay for. Some programs do this, some don't. Most of mine didn't and required official documents. :\ That's why CSDCAS is nice, but when schools double up on the application stuff with CSDCAS and their own materials, it eliminates the savings a student could have and ends up costing more...

Oh yeah I did...I applied to Western Michigan University and got accepted, but about a week before I was accepted I got an email from the Office of Graduate admissions reminding me my application was incomplete. I wasn't bothered by this, since a few schools who use CSDCAS and have you submit their own graduate application at the time of initial application say that their graduate school might say you have an incomplete app when it's not. I don't know how I missed it, but turns out, they require you to submit official transcripts to their office of graduate admissions at the time of application. And I hadn't. I checked the department page and yep, indeed it said something like "Official transcripts need to be sent to the Office of Graduate Admissions before January 15th." I was panicking and emailed the department, and thought for sure it would hurt my application. They told me it should be okay to send them still, even though they were over a month late. WMU uses CSDCAS and they have their own application where you submit unofficial transcripts, so it still seems weird to me they'd want official transcripts at the application stage, but I was convinced I had ruined my chances at admission!

Given that it's under the heading "Admissions" I always thought it was safe to assume it meant of GRE and GPA admitted students otherwise it might be more suited to the "General" header. I did a quick search and that seems to be the case, although it took a little bit more digging than I thought it would. "EdFind includes grade point average (GPA) and Graduate Record Exam (GRE) score ranges for the most recently admitted students." Look under the "Admission to Graduate School" heading: http://www.asha.org/Students/Planning-Your-Education-in-CSD/ It's also important to realize the the stats and information on EdFind are submitted by program directors who fill out and submit a survey, part of which is released to the public through EdFind. http://www.asha.org/academic/HES/ This also means that they can input what information they please, which is why it seems some programs post an average GPA rather than a range, and I remember seeing one that appeared to post average percentiles for the GRE scores, rather than the score itself. We don't see the actual survey questions (though there are links that will show you the instructions which have some glimpses of the survey). This could also mean that maybe the GPA is CSD GPA or last 60 GPA (although that doesn't seem likely). If you have more questions about how to use EdFind or how they collect the data, the contact listed on the About page is hes@asha.org. And actually, I'm sure they might like your feedback on this, since it seems quite a few people were unclear on whether it was admitted students or not, and the answer to that question isn't as easy to find as it maybe should be. They maybe could stand to be a little clearer on that, since they even write that one of the purposes of EdFind is for prospective students to gather current data on potential programs.

I was wondering why we didn't have one yet! I've heard back from four schools so far: one (expected) rejection, two waitlists, and an acceptance! I truly wasn't expecting an acceptance so soon or at all! Like I said before, I have a low GPA, especially for this field, so I'm really shocked. The first Monday of March is only 5 days away guys! Hope the good news starts rolling in for everyone. I also have a lot more schools left to hear from, and March is the month!

I got my first acceptance yesterday! I honestly didn't expect this to happen, since I applied with such a low undergrad GPA (below 3.3). At most I was hoping for waitlists that maybe turned into an acceptance. I got a few of those already too though. Haha. It is such a relief to know that I can go to graduate school at all. I still don't believe it! I keep expecting them to email me saying "Sorry, we made a mistake." Hey guys, how come we don't have a thread like past years for results? We should get one started. It's almost March, which is when they really start rolling in! Good luck to everyone! I hope we all hear some good news.

This is an important distinction! While ASHA may be okay with your coursework, it's possible a graduate school might not be. I'm sure you might be able to talk to them and maybe convince them to allow your coursework, though. It's worth a shot. I'm going to have to do this with the course that fulfills a biology requirement as well. :s

I think the points above are largely the reason, but also you learn a lot by working with different faculty, which I do think would end up mattering for clinical work. When you're an undergrad at a school, you will have had a lot of the faculty that teaches the graduate coursework (if not all of them). By going to a different school, you can meet professors with different ideas and different focuses and interests. Even now I have professors who disagree with work being done by professors at other unis, or published materials, and it's good to get both points of view or different points of view. Our undergrad professors are great, but their points of view aren't the only ones, and people in the field do disagree with each other on a range of issues. It's a different field and from the oppposite perspective, but at my undergradaute school, I was a lingusitics major, and it was very difficult for linguistics majors at my school to enter my uni's graduate program. The logic was that the faculty wanted the students to go elsewhere and experience other professor's view points and interests. Quite a few of the faculty at my school were interested in and did field work on the same, regional Native American language, and so as undergrads we got a lot of exposure to that langauge by way of examples in the coursework. If you went somewhere else in the country though, for grad or undergrad, the professors are going to focus on different languages. The same is true for this field, since there's so many different areas faculty can focus on. At my current undergrad university, there's actually not really any faculty that self-reports on their bio that they do research wtih or have an interest in an area that I am highly intersted in, so I might (and did) seek out graduate schools with a faculty member or two who do have the same interest I do.

I can't answer for certain, but all the schools I applied to that asked me to list a com dis GPA did not want those courses included in that calculation. Overall GPA is obviously important, and these classes are included in this calculation, but I would imagine they carry less weight since they're not typically included in com dis GPA calucations. Even CSDCAS lists them separately. Reading Standard IV-A, it does not seem your specific grade would affect certification. http://www.asha.org/Certification/2014-Speech-Language-Pathology-Certification-Standards/ OP, I had courses that covered these requirements from my undergrad, but other people in my post bacc program were able to take courses outside of the department to fulfill these requirements while in the post bacc. You can always sign up for summer class or online classes to fulfill them, though, even the summer before you begin grad school. Also, there is a special note in Standard IV-A that you might want to inquire about. A course in biological and physical sciences specifically related to CSD may not be applied for certification purposes to this category unless the course fulfills a university requirement in one of these areas. One of the com dis courses I took as an undergrad (I wasn't a major) fulfills a university biological sciences requirement, and I checked with ASHA, as did the department, about ASHA allowing it as a basic science course. ASHA will accept it for certification purposes since my university lists it as a biological science class, which is reflected on my transcript. The bigger struggle is going to get graduate schools to accept it, because a few I emailed about it said that their own policy was not to accept a com dis course as a biological science course, even if ASHA does. I don't think this is common though, since I don't think most unis list any com dis course as a biological science course, but it's worth checking out.

If you haven't already, I'd check out the results page and lurk there to see when results start coming in. http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/ A lot of people seem to post there more actively than they post on the forums, plus it's easy to see when applicants were notifed last year, but it looks like people heard back starting in late Feb. But good luck! I hope you get the news you want to hear.

bindlestiff, Exactly! I think I'll feel "done" when I get (if I get) my first acceptance, because then I know I will be going somewhere. I dream of having to have the hard task of deciding between two or three programs that accepted me. lol Even one acceptance and I'll be happy, even if it's off of a wait-list in June.

You should go ahead and check the results page. It gives you a pretty good idea of when people who applied to your schools in past years started hearing back. http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/ A few of the ones I applied to historically notify in late Feb, but most of them notified by some time in March. It also seemed like most of mine notified by email, but a few were by postal mail. I just finished submitting all my applications, but it felt pretty anticlimactic. I don't think I will really feel done with this process until I get my first result.

I'm applying to 12. It's my first year applying, so maybe that's overkill, but they're all schools I'm interested in or would go to. Two are pretty big reaches though. I have 8 done, and the rest of the four are almost finished. I hope to have them all submitted by Tuesday. and after that, I will pretend I'm not constantly checking my application portals or lurking on this website. A few of my schools historially have started notifying in late Feb/early March, so I'm sure I'll be a lot more anxious then. Also, I feel like some of the graduate schools are such trolls. I know it's not time to hear back yet, but I've had a few schools email me with an email that starts "Congratulations! You have completed your application for..." Did you really have to start the email about my application being complete that way? XD

My application has been verified on CSDCAS, and I was wondering if anyone else noticed inconsistencies in course subject designations after CSDCAS went through them and changed them while verifying your application. Linguistics is listed in the FAQ as a Basic Communications Processes (CSD) subject course . My undergrad was in linguistics, and they listed my phonology (not a phonetics course) and syntax classes as CSD courses, but none of the other linguistics courses I've taken. I disagree that linguistics courses, particularly advanced linguistics courses, are CSD coursework, although knowledge of them certainly helps you in the field. The FAQ has linguistics under CSD courses, but I assumed they meant the intro class only. Regardless, none of my other linguistics classes received the CSD subject change, not even my intro course. I initially listed all of them as Other. Still, I find it frustrating because my actual CSD course GPA is higher without my linguistics courses being included. They also changed the subject designation for my ethnic studies course from Social/Behavioral science (which an ethnic studies courses is meant to be categorized under) to Other. :\ I'm sending an email to ask about it, but has anyone else had some weird changes? Has anyone got CSDCAS to change the subject designation after it's been verified? I'm not even sure how important some of these GPA calucations are for schools, but the website says CSDCAS will only change course subjects which have been verified incorrectly based upon their title and department. So I wonder. :\

Did it end up working out timberlake? My professor managed to get his in today, but he never responded to my emails letting me know he did so. I saw by refreshing the applications every 20 minutes. :\ While some schools are flexible with LOR deadlines, I really think all of them should be. At least a little bit. They don't start looking at applications the day after the deadline anyway, and because of the cost to the applicant (GRE score fee, transcript fees, application fee, postage fees), it seems unfair to toss out an otherwise complete application entirely because of something that was largely out of their hands, especially if that letter was only a day late. The woman at one of the two schools I called today was very sympathetic, but also said they could not budge on this policy. So far this professor submitted all of my letters late, except for the schools that use CSDCAS that have a deadline after he submitted his letter there. I did send periodic reminders before the deadline dates. I had another professor who said she'd submit her letters late even, but ended up being on time. I should have been wary about asking him when he told the story of a woman from his class who applied last year and was rejected to all her schools because one of her LORs never made it to any her schools. It might have been his... I definitely agree, letters of rec have been the most stressful part of the application cycle for me from the beginning, although then I was just nervous about who to ask. :\

I contacted one school who has the oppoosite view point of the other two I contacted. If my last letter of rec doesn't submit his letter by midnight tonight, their deadline, they can't consider my application. I've sent him four emails this week about this, and he hasn't contacted me, and my department doesn't allow you to call the faculty, so there's not much I can do.

I can also confirm that you can. I also thought this wasn't clear and on Dec 29th I had the same panic, but on the Personal Essay Information page they do say: "Please note: should you add a new school later in the cycle, you will have the opportunity to enter a new essay for the new school ONLY." https://portal.csdcas.org/csdcasHelpPages/instructions-and-faq/additional-information/personal-essays/index.html I still called and checked because I wanted to be sure. I submitted my first application on Dec 30th, then added three new essays for three other schools and submitted those on Jan 9th. CSDCAS has its benefits and convenience (as well as annoyances), but they really do make some things confusing and unclear!

Don't feel stupid! Mistakes likes this happen to everyone! I came across a university whose program I am in love with, but I came across them late in the game. I thought I was good because they used CSDCAS, so I didn't think about it too much, but it just occured to me Friday that I forgot to send in my GRE scores to CSDCAS for that school, and they have a deadline of the 15th. My scores won't reach on time, but I'm taking a chance and submitted it anyway... Did you contat the university to explain the situation? The worst they can do is tell you that you're out, and nothing changes. You had all the really important stuff in before the deadline, and the supplemental application is often just a formality and for financial aid purposes. It doesn't hurt to ask to know for sure. The worst part is the money. I know that feeling. I had to borrow money just to apply because these costs add up. Still. you're not stupid! This is unfortunate, but you're applying to other schools you (hoprefully) like, and you'll get in to one of them and this will seem so unimportant then! Good luck with the rest of your schools!