autismadvocate

So my recommender showed me her letter of recommendation she wrote for me after she submitted it. It's lovely, but there's actually an incorrect fact in it! She said I developed a discussion forum, which I didn't actually develop (although I did give her the link for it along with a link for a website that I did actually develop, which is probably why she got confused). What do I do? Should I email the school to let them know? How should I phrase it? I definitely wasn't prepared to have this happen... Help!

I don't think you should run into any issues. I'm in the same situation, but I'm applying for Fall admission - what matters is whether you're done with the program by the time of starting your Master's, you don't have to be done by the time of application.

One of my recommenders said it's been a while since she's written a letter of rec and asked for a sample to refresh her memory. I want to provide a good one, but she's a personal letter of rec (who, coincidentally, was also my employer, but I thought she'd be a better personal than employer letter writer) and I can't seem to find a good sample tailored to grad schools to give her. Does anyone have any advice or have any of you guys found a good one? Thanks in advance!

So, so true. I can't tell you how many times my sister's been told "I never would have guessed you were autistic" which is intended to be a compliment... Here's my favorite reply I've ever seen: http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/MjAxMy0yMTY0NDQwODc1OTY5OWZj.png That phrase actually made a blogger's list of the top 15 things never to say to autistic people, and I'd take a wild guess and say you've experienced many of these yourself - I highly recommend reading: http://www.autistichoya.com/2012/02/15-things-you-should-never-say-to.html I think that's something that most people with disabilities deal with. Phrases like, "You're so brave!", "You do so well for a ______ person!", "But you don't look ______!" (intended as a compliment), etc all can be quite unintentionally demeaning. The key word there, of course, is unintentional, which is why I'm a big fan of disability understanding and education (awareness is all well and good, but we need to move further than that).

Thanks for pointing that out Asemoooooo (I'm huge into constructive criticism, so that is awesome and I appreciate it), but I'm familiar; actually, that's one of the first things I go over on this page (which, for all of you guys who enjoyed the last page, I recommend reading this one, too): http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/2-terms--background.html Believe it or not, though, a lot of people in the autism community still find it useful to distinguish between the different former diagnoses, myself included. There are a lot of reasons for this. First, it's a huge, recent change. Not only are people on the spectrum not generally fond of change, but many people have been using the label Asperger's (or Aspie) for decades now. It's habit, and for some people it's part of the way they see themselves. Secondly, as I said, it's still useful among others within the autism community because it conveys more information about the person than just saying autism spectrum disorder, namely it tells the other person that she's never struggled much with verbal language. That's the reason I will slip it in occasionally; I had a bad experience when a mom of an autistic child met my sister, saw how verbal she was, and took her as a sign of hope for her ten year old to gain verbal language someday, only to have it come crashing down when she learned my sister was always verbal. We left the mother fighting back tears. I felt like a terrible, terrible person for that incident and switched back to saying Asperger's more often. And last, it's a label that has a whole lot less stigma than autism. It's unfortunate, but there is a HUGE stigma attached to that label in society, one which our negative narratives about autism feed (yes, I have an article about that, too, which I recommend you read: http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/negative-narrative.html ). Stigma is a HUGE problem, one that despite not being autistic I've experienced myself. Back in high school, I used to volunteer at an autism support group for parents. Often, parents wouldn't be able to find a babysitter so they'd bring their autistic child with them to the meetings. Since that distracts the parents (and bores the child) I'd go to a playroom with the child and play with them until the meeting ended. I'd been doing this successfully for at least a year when a new parent showed up with her child. I offered to help her watch him, but she turned me down over and over, despite the fact that he was distracting her, disturbing the meeting, and she obviously could have used my help. I couldn't figure it out until the end of the meeting when, embarrassed, the mom apologized for having turned me down. The reason she gave for her actions? Someone had told her my sister had autism, and she got my name and my sister's mixed up. In short, because of a misunderstanding the mom thought that I was autistic and that made her not trust me with her son. I was the same person as I had always been, but as soon as she thought I was autistic this mother deemed that I was no longer trustworthy. I was being judged not by my actions, but by my label, and that was in a group of parents who are presumably more open and educated about autism than the average person. That's how deep the stigma of autism goes. It's just so, so upsetting. Anyways, trying to avoid stigma is a definite, legitimate (and very, very sad) reason people with Asperger's might not want to use the label of autism. You could, of course, say that someone is "high functioning" on the autism spectrum to differentiate (and possibly lower stigma? I'm not sure - as soon as people hear 'autism' they tend to go straight into charity case mode), but then you run into even more objections from the autistic community. You see, a person with autism isn't inherently higher functioning than a person with Asperger's. Depending on many factors, an autistic person who types to communicate could be higher functioning in life than someone with Asperger's, even though people with Asperger's tend to be thought of as higher functioning. Functioning also varies from minute to minute. So, yes, while one minute a person might be functioning well, the next they might be having a melt down and not functioning well at all. It just generalizes way too much. Forgive me, btw, if you knew all this already, Asemoooo - to have known that Asperger's was an outdated label (as of May), I figure you have to have a decent level of understanding of autism, I just have no way of telling how much so from the short response and tried to cover all my bases. Also, again, apologies for the length - as I've said before, this is something I'm hugely passionate about and I do tend to go on a bit more about it as a result. Thanks again for pointing that out, though! :)

Good luck, DeafAudi! Hopefully you do well!

Hey, so I think I mentioned this earlier, but does anyone have any idea how many schools you should apply for to be safe for admission? I have pretty good stats (155 quant, 167 verbal, 5.5 AW, 3.9 something last 60 hours GPA, will have post-bacc by the time I enter Master's program, and a lot of experience with people on the autism spectrum), but I just hear all these stories of people with good stats not making it into any schools and it's kind of making me nervous. As things stand now, I'm probably applying for 4 schools, none of which (with the exception of Texas) seem to be too terribly competitive. Thoughts? Is that a safe number, or should I apply to more?

Glad you liked it, DeafAudi! You're probably right about siblings, haha - believe it or not, it's so common that there's actually a national organization just for siblings of people with disabilities (mostly developmental disabilities) who are advocates for disability rights. (It's called the Sibling Leadership Network.) So I guess most of us tend towards advocacy...

Sunday, thanks for being interested! Sorry for writing so much before, it's just a HUGE area of passion for me and I kind of got carried away talking about it...oops! If you want to learn more about traits autistic people possess, I think you may find this article helpful: http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/3-specific-traits.html I wrote it with my sister's help (making a website explaining autism would probably be another thing that makes me different/sets me apart as a candidate, I suppose), and it goes into a lot more depth on sensory issues, eye contact, and other traits from the autistic perspective.

You've got a chance, from what I've seen. Although as others have stated, UNC Chapel Hill is unlikely as they are quite competitive and their stats are somewhat more competitive than what you've got - I thought about applying there, too and put together a list of their average scores (in order: GRE Qual, GRE Quant, GRE Writing, GPA, and the percentage of applicants they accept). You're slightly low for GRE Qualitative and Quantitative, and pretty significantly below for the GPA. But assuming the other schools are less competitive than for UNC Chapel Hill, I'd say you probably have a decently good chance for them, and UNC Chapel Hill is still worth applying for. 154-157 150-154 4-4.5 3.77 Total Apps: 341 Offers: 44 (13%) W/ funds: 12 (27%)

I'm glad you find it so interesting! It is difficult to form a culture in person for many people on the spectrum - in part because it's a pretty small minority group for in person, because the person has to not only know they're autistic (lots of people are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed) but also be open about their diagnosis (a lot of people, for fear of stigma, hide it). That said, there's a really big online culture that I've gotten involved with on online forums like http://www.wrongplanet.net/ (which I recommend you check out - they're very welcoming and not judgmental or anything [which I would, btw, say is part of the culture]). Online forums are actually a really great equalizer, because even someone who can't talk may still be able to type (and even people who are "verbal" are often able to convey better/more consistently in writing). So right now because of issues of size and communication abilities, the culture is mainly online. There is in-person culture, too, though - I'd definitely categorize organizations like ASAN (Autistic Self Advocacy Network) as such, where autistic adults advocate for themselves (their motto is nothing about us without us, which is really appropriate when you know the background on Autism Speaks) - their website if you wanted to check it out is http://autisticadvocacy.org/ . There are also different rules for in-person interaction in groups of autistic people. Like if someone doesn't want to make eye contact, that's respected, you don't touch people without their knowledge/consent, respectful of sensory issues, don't assume someone's intelligence and/or worth is related to their ability to talk, etc. I wouldn't say it's difficult for autistic people to relate to each other, though. I know it's a widespread claim that people with autism don't have empathy, but that's not the case and reality may, in fact be quite the opposite (and that's not just my own opinion/that of the autistic community, science is FINALLY beginning to back that up, which is good because people used that "fact" to dehumanize people on the spectrum). Anyways, they relate to each other quite well, at the very least to the same degree that you'd expect neurotypical people to do. Giant brownie points for realizing every individual is different - you'd be amazed how many people don't seem to get that. Though there is a common thread, autistic people tend to be more different from each other than alike. There's a saying in the autism community: "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." As in, it's great that you met one person, but that doesn't mean you can extrapolate your understanding of that person to the entire autistic population. Here's a presentation by autistic self-advocates on the culture of autism - you may find it interesting: http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/culture-of-autism-presentation.html I know it's a tangent, but I actually took my sister (who has a form of autism) to one of the Deaf World events at my school and she had a lot of trouble. Things that were done to get attention in lieu of sound (touching, flashing the lights, etc) were real issues for her sensory-wise and she had to leave because she was getting overwhelmed. The slight clash of cultural differences, as influenced by different experiences of the world, I found quite interesting and I thought you might, too. All this autism-related stuff may not seem so related to audiology, but the audiologist's office is actually one of the first places children on the spectrum tend to end up. Because they're often not speaking and/or responding as expected, physicians/parents assume there are hearing problems and send them off to get their hearing examined. So you'll likely have plenty of people on the spectrum cross your threshold in the future...

I have a different view with regards to autism, the population I want to work with as an SLP. Pretty much everyone sees it from a parent or professional point of view. I see it more from an autistic point of view - while I'm not autistic myself (I don't think), my sister is and because of her I've really been drawn into the burgeoning adult autistic culture, if you will. If you're not familiar with autistic culture, it actually seems to be going a comparable path (with comparable barriers) as Deaf culture - a lot of people capitalize Autistic and there's the whole concept of neurodiversity and acceptance, etc. It's really cool to be on the ground floor of a culture that's just starting off. Anyways, I feel like this point of view really helps me understand and help autistic people themselves (because helping their parents isn't always the same thing), and it definitely makes me unique. I didn't play it up too much in my application, though, because many parents/professionals aren't always so supportive of this view...it's a huge paradigm shift away from the way we're used to thinking of autism, and that can be hard to adjust to for some people.

Wow! Congratulations on getting them all finished! I'll admit, even though I hit the first deadline in two weeks I still have a bit of work left to do on my apps. The thing that made me nervous about only applying to four schools was that I read a blog post about a girl who seemed to have reasonably good stats, applied to six schools, and didn't get into a single one because of the competitiveness of everything. By the time I finished the post, I wanted to apply to at least 10 schools, but I'm only definitely applying to the four. Glad that someone else also uses the 'pretty much trilingual' label. I always am stumped at how to label my degree of fluency in either of my foreign languages (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese - I know, not a combination you'd expect, lol), because when someone else asks me if I'm fluent, the answer's no because fluent is a really big word that encompasses a lot more than I am. Yet if I just say I can communicate well in both languages, I feel like people think I'm someone with a terrible accent who maybe made it up to Spanish II (or Chinese II) in school. Truth is I'm somewhere in between (although way closer to fluent than the Spanish II level, haha), but I have both languages to the level where I'm fine in academic, personal, and professional environments...hence the label 'pretty much' because for all practical purposes I am.

I'm applying to Florida State, University of Central Florida, Marshall University, and Texas State for sure. Those are my main ones I want to go to and they all have autism concentrations, etc available, at least according to ASHA. I may apply to others so I have a safety - I'm worried that applying to only 4 is too low? Like, I don't want to risk not getting in anywhere, but I don't want to pay for more applications than necessary either. I think I'm a fairly good applicant for most of those schools - as far as stats go, I graduated with a 3.9 in Psych (getting my post-bacc now, carrying a 3.91 GPA), for GRE got 167 Verbal, 155 Quantitative, 5.5 Writing, and I'm basically trilingual, so I think those are pretty good qualifications...which would ordinarily make me think applying to four schools is okay, but I hear SLP schools are super competitive, so I'm wondering if I shouldn't apply for more. Maybe I'll make it a bit more formal, given what you guys said...

As shown by my signature, I already have mostly decided where I'm applying...but I was wondering if I used the right criteria to help me decided? Since, as the name implies, I'm interested in autism I looked at schools that have good autism-related tracks/resources in their programs (and aren't too expensive, also an important trait) regardless of whether or not they had good rankings. I haven't even checked the rankings for some of these schools. My question is, do rankings really matter? If I do end up going to a low or mediocre ranked school, could that hurt me at all? Or should the wanting population-specific training outweight that concern? (Also, side question - are there any schools with good autism tracks that I don't have listed in my signature? FSU, UCF, Marshall, Texas State) Thanks so much!

I've helped my friends with their letters of intent/personal statements for both med school and law school, and I've noticed that each field had its own distinct things it was looking for. For instance, law schools wanted to get a good feel for who the applicant was as a person, whereas med schools wanted to get a sense for the qualifications and achievements of the applicant. I was wondering if SLP Master's programs had any such vibe to their letters of intent? I wrote a letter of intent already, which goes through my life as it relates to SLP/autism/journey to grad school chronologically. While it's written in essay format, it has a slight informal vibe, which was my way of getting the reader to try to get to know/like me while reading about my accomplishments - since I didn't know which vibe SLP schools go for most, I just kind of meshed the feel for law school and the feel for med school together. But if it turns out they like one or the other of the two styles of letters of intents more, I'll edit it to reflect more of that style. My other, more specific concern with it is that in my letter of intent I focused A LOT on autism. That is, after all, the reason I want to become an SLP (family member on the spectrum and a lot of personal/professional/volunteer experience), what I have a very long history with (which is what tends to happen with family members), and it's the population I want to work with as an SLP. But I was wondering if they might think I went a bit too far focusing on the one thing - like I might give off the vibe that I'm a one-trick pony or I don't care about the other disorders we'll study in grad school, neither of which are the case. Advice, comments, thoughts, etc are all greatly appreciated! :)

I used essay style, but with more the personal feel of a letter...

As for your question, I think the advice given on this thread () may help you more than anything I can say. Although personally I'd go the chronological route, skimming over or skipping things you don't think are that important, and emphasizing things you think are. Give them a feel for who you are and what brought you here today. But that's just my thoughts... To add to the non-verbal vs mute thing, I'd just like to ditto that, unless the child happened to have selective mutism for whatever reason in which case you would still not use the word mute and just say they had selective mutism - it's hard to tell which it is from your description. I'd also leave non-verbal in quotes - labels are always controversial and while I think most professionals are cool with the term non-verbal (it's certainly an improvement over mute), autistic people themselves don't tend to like it because it tends to be a bit of a misnomer - after all, the child in question did speak and we're still labeling them 'non-verbal'. Child who didn't speak much might be better. Just a thought.

Psychology programs these days take forever to complete and are very expensive, so that might not be the best choice, although special ed is a better suggestion. How much you need a back up plan, though, depends on your qualifications. Your undergrad degree is in CSD, right? How did you do in it/on the GRE?