shuca

Yup, same here. I'm really not looking forward to carrying heavy, 800-page hardcover books. *sigh*

This is really cool!!! Thanks for sharing, sayjo I recently got a backpack from focused space. I love their bags because they are really space efficient. Lots and lots of pockets, although they don't look like those backpacks that you'd take for hiking. I mean... just look at the picture below!! Backpacks tend to look less "professional" than other types of bags, but focused space has some backpacks with leather patches too and I think those are not too casual. I know I'll be commuting on a train so I really didn't want to do a tote or a messenger bag.

Yay! It makes me happy to know that I'm being resourceful/helpful to someone

Hey guys! So as April 15th approaches, I think a lot of us are having really difficult time deciding which school we should attend. We should all consider ourselves very, very fortunate that we are given options, but it's really hard to make a decision. It was so hard for me that there were times that I even wished I had been accepted to just one school. lol I already made a decision for myself and am VERY happy about it, but after I made my own decision, I found a good way to learn more about the programs and what we might be getting out of each school. I know there are a lot of people here who are in the same situation so I figured I'd share it with you guys Go to Indeed resume page for SLPs: http://www.indeed.com/resumes/speech-language-pathologist Right below the "Find Resumes" button, you'll see "advanced search" in small letters. Click on that. In "School name," type in the school that you're considering to attend. Make sure you select Master's degree right under it. Click "Find resume"!! This will (hopefully) pull out a bunch of online resumes of the people who graduated from the school you are considering. Most people list in their resumes where exactly they worked as a graduate clinician, as well as where they have been working after graduation. In the search section you might want to select 3-5 years or 6-10 years for years of experience, in order to narrow your search (each program changes over time so it's more helpful to find resumes of those who graduated more recently). Also, if there is a particular city in which you'd like to work after graduation, you can type in the city name in the original search field to find the alumni who work there, too. Of course, this method won't help you learn much about the "feel" of the school/program, and personally I found it very helpful to visit each school and talk to the current students & faculty, so I think you should visit each school in order to learn more about them. But in most cases campus visits won't tell you exactly where their graduates end up, and the method above will tell you just that. I think this method might help those who are especially career-driven. You need to keep in mind that the resumes you'll find are a small sample of their graduates, but I think it's still better than what you can find out by just talking to 2-3 people at open houses. It's worth a try if you guys are having a really hard time gathering concrete information about each program. Hope this helps you guys. Good luck!!

Emerson College MS in SLP (CSD) - Class of 2016 https://www.facebook.com/groups/834742819876310/

Some 2-year programs allow out-of-fielders without prereqs to apply, and they are given equal (well at least I think equal) consideration for admission as well. I myself applied to 2-year programs without any pre-requisites and I got accepted to two. Though I do think that lack of pre-requisites may have been one of the reasons why I didn't get accepted to other programs. nata25 - I am an out-of-field applicant as well. And like I said above, I had not taken any of the pre-requisite courses at the time of application. My GRE score is mediocre (definitely not bad, but not outstanding either). But I think I probably stood out a lot - I am not a native speaker of English and I grew up in a country where language that is VERY different from English is spoken. So considering my background, I think my mediocre GRE score probably didn't look that bad. (I had a perfect TOEFL score, too) I also have a master's degree in Linguistics (with a 4.0 GPA), which probably helped me demonstrate that I can be successful in grad school. I really hope you hear back from some of the other programs soon and sincerely hope that it's good news! Good luck!!

Ahhh that makes sense! Thanks for sharing your tips on this, sayjo and Papaya91!

How are you guys making Facebook groups?? I've tried several times but I get an error message saying I have to add people (invite my friends) in order to create a group. I got this message regardless of the privacy status of the group - whether it's closed or open.

So, SO happy for you, twinguy!!!!!! You have been so supportive to other applicants here and I've been secretly rooting for you! CONGRATS!!!

I don't know much about Northwestern either, but I agree with sayjo... $100,000 extra in debt sounds a bit too ridiculous to me. (I wonder how they even fill an entire class every year with outrageous tuition like that?!) I'm not sure how long you plan on taking to repay that loan, but you should look at a loan calculator online and see how much you'll be accumulating on interest alone. The cost difference will actually be even more than $10,000. I personally think what's great about the profession as an SLP is that you need to keep educating yourself. ASHA requires you to have certain amount of professional development hours in order to stay certified, and because there is this requirement, there are abundant selections of courses/training you can take. I think it would be more worthwhile to have financial freedom after graduation and invest in quality continuing education. 2 years of grad school education isn't the only way to make yourself marketable in medical SLP. Also, do you have other life goals that are important to you? (marriage, kids, home ownership, location you want to live in, hobbies, traveling, etc.) Money will affect all of these goals you have, and how willing are you to possibly sacrifice those for getting "better" education? EDIT: Sorry, but after writing all of these I just realized that you didn't mention taking out a loan to pay for your education... Shouldn't have made that assumption. I know some people have parents/family members who are willing to help pay for the cost, or some people take the route of loan forgiveness etc.

I could not agree more! I think people have different priorities in lives, and the cost difference between the dream school vs. affordable school is just one of the many factors we need to consider. Yes, my career & education are both very important to me too, but I have a lot of other life goals too, and I'm at the stage in life where I need to consider them more seriously than others (read: I'm not fresh out of undergrad and if I want kids I can't wait that long). Like aucinema, I want to own a house someday, have kids, and I want to be able to provide my kids with good education & go traveling with my family occasionally without having to worry about my own loan repayment. I also want to continue to work while I raise my kids, and child care services in my state cost about $1200 to $2000, depending on the kid's age. And that's just for ONE kid. Being deeper in debt would make it considerably more difficult to accomplish my other goals, and I just didn't think it was worth it. I totally second aucinema that it is a highly personal choice and everyone here has different things to consider, but I agree it's a good idea to think about what other life goals you have besides career/education, how important they are to you (and your significant others), and how those goals might be affected by your choice on grad school. P.S. Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail sounds awesome!!!

I recently purchased an iPad mini for grad school, and even though the school hasn't started yet, I'm already glad I bought it. I'm currently taking a prerequisite, and I've been using my iPad to read an e-book version of the textbook (on the kindle app, not on iBook). I think they (Apple, Amazon Kindle app, and the publishers) did a great job with the e-textbook - it's easy to flip through a book and I like how I can easily take snapshots of important diagrams & figures etc. For instance, I can zoom in on one figure and take a screen shot, import the screen shot to an image editing app so I can erase some important terms within the figure, print it off (one side with the figure that has terms erased, the other side with the terms still there) and voila, you have your own flash card with a clear image. Doing this with a hardcover textbook would have been much more difficult & time consuming. The downside is that you can't sell your textbook back, but the e-books are usually cheaper than their hardcover versions and a lot of publishers have renting option for e-books too, so I think the final cost isn't that much different. Also I know I am going to be commuting on a train to go to my school, so I like how iPad allows me to carry books that would otherwise be very heavy. Speaking of the apps that I think will be useful for grad school, I have Evernote for note-taking, Noteshelf for PDF annotation and creating my own visual, and Recordium for recording sessions (Recordium is awesome because it lets you edit your audio recording too. You can trim, annotate, highlight, and tag different parts of your audio files). I would highly recommend buying an iPad (mini) but I wouldn't use that as a replacement of your laptop.

No problem. Good luck with your decision! I don't know much about NYU but they seem to have great reputation too. Must be hard deciding between them! I'm sure you'll be happy at either of them, though

Hey lisa19, Yeah I've read that too, but I personally think it's misleading. I've actually talked to the current students (and alumni), and professors. They all confirmed that first year students have pretty much the same schedule (meaning they all take the same courses), so all of the courses you take in the first year will have 50-60 students in it.

Hey lisa19! The cons that come to my mind for MGH are: * big class size (about 60 people in each class) * heavy literacy focus (obviously this depends on your interest and could be a pro too, but it seems like a lot of people going into MGH are expecting more medical focus and are often turned down by literacy focus in the first year). * longer (6 semester) program, so you don't get summers off. (Some program have summers off, which allows students to do external practicum in cities - or even countries - outside of Boston). Are you interested in medical SLP?? If so, MGH might seem very appealing, and yes, it IS a great program as far as the medical SLP goes. But you have to keep in mind that getting education/experience at MGH definitely doesn't guarantee a medical SLP job upon graduation. Medical jobs are hard to land even if you graduate from MGH too, so you'd have to be willing to relocate, or be willing to work at SNF rather than hospitals. If that's the route you are willing to take, then the education/experience you get elsewhere may very well be enough to land a medical job too. If you want to get the specialized education that MGH offers regardless of the job prospect, then yes MGH would be a great choice for you.