Hi all,
I’m new here and I hope I can get some good advice here. I am a Psychology undergrad junior (with a minor in French and soon Linguistics) at UIUC looking into Speech Language Pathology as a career option. Here are my current stats (gah, I feel horrible about them):
GPA: 3.34 (this is going to be higher by the end of the semester)
GRE: (to be taken)
Experience: Conversational English Buddy (helping international students coming to my school to improve their english), Research Assistant to two labs during my undergrad years (still am and looking forward to join a program to write and present research in either Language Acquisition/Language Comprehension & Brain Waves), I worked at the Public Library helping translate and participating in activities with bilingual children. This coming summer (2014) I am very excited to apply to program to volunteer as a Spanish Language Assistant that promotes early second language acquisition for children in town.
Languages: Spanish, English, French, Portuguese & (slight) Italian.
My GPA is so low mainly because of two things:
When I started college I was in an emotional abusive relationship that I was finally freed from with some therapy and support (there is an upward trend with my grades that proves that).
I am not very awesome at multiple-choice type testing and the Psychology faculty use this method frequently (I’ve had better grades with essay questions, which are common within Linguistics).
I became really interested in SLP because (besides language acquisition) I am also interested in how people lose languages through brain injury as well (such as aphasia) which I learned time again from some of my SHS/LING/PSYC courses. I’m also very dedicated in helping people and I feel language is such a powerful tool that is just so unfortunate to lose or not ever acquire. I fear that with my GPA I have no chance in going anywhere, despite some experience here and there I’ve had during my undergrad years.
I also an working towards the pre-reqs and have no idea where to look for supervised hours in clinical supervision =/
Should I get a Master’s in something else and then move to SLP? I’ve thought of TESOL/Applied Linguistics, but I’m scared of any job opportunity I may not have if I don’t enter SLP at all (even though teaching abroad is in my agenda before graduate school as well).
Should I just apply anyways and see what happens?
Any suggestions?
Sorry if it is a dumb and overposted question, although I think most cases are pretty different from each other.
