jpiccolo

It's a good chance to show off writing skills which will be important for reports. I agree with the post that said don't talk about why you want to help people. It's not at all unique. If it fits with the prompt, talk about why you are a good candidate, things you've learned from experiences leading to grad school, reasons why that specific school can help you accomplish your goals, what you hope to gain from that program, profs/classes you want to learn from. Make sure each statement has a strong reason for being included otherwise take it out.

Part time and getting benefits might be tough but I'm full time so no experience there. I talked to EBS a couple times this year before graduation but looking on the Reddit slp threads made me hesitant to do contract. No guarantee you'll stay at the same school each year and you're assigned and moved at their discretion it seems. If you're looking at medical, then contract is typically the way to go. Most snfs have agencies. I ended up direct hire which is how my school district is. But that varies by location.

Totally get it! What a long time to wait. I had applications due later so my wait was shorter. My only other suggestions is to get off grad-cafe haha. I had two application cycles and it sure helped the second time to not check the site. But I get it easier said than done! Good luck!

Not crazy! I applied to a few of those a few years back (I'm graduated now). I remember the wait when I got them all done and it's not fun. Don't reread anything at this point. It's too late - I noticed a typo my first go around too which drove me nuts. Now just focus on other things. Distract yourself and do not check the results page all the time. If at all. It won't help to compare scores or anything. Focus on work/school and any hobbies or friends. Anything but the applications or email.

It's not impossible but not easy. Recommendations are usually ten hours weekly. Don't expect school to work around your job. There's not much control for when clients are scheduled which is mostly day time. Plus look into when classes are. Sometimes I had a mix of morning and night. Time management is more than half the battle of grad school and you've got to be able to study, do homework assignments, plus plan weekly sessions which takes awhile when it's new.

It varied. We had two our first summer which was a month long. My first fall I was doing evals weekly plus three actual clients. In spring I did a social language group with another clinician (each responsible for 2 kids) and 1-2 more clients plus adult hearing screenings. My last fall I had two clients plus my school externship. We did on campus clinic 4 out of 6 semesters, and 3 total externships. My classmates had different numbers of clients too. It depended on how often we saw them. We usually had more clients if we had once a week clients otherwise our hours were low. A few had to do extra evals our last fall because their weren't enough when they were on an eval team.

Excluding my brief summer clinic, my first full semester was about 47 hours. It went up a lot after that.

Fwiw: I was waitlisted twice at Purdue with a gpa of 3.76 and GRE of 162V, 155Q and around a 5 writing. Various experience but not a ton.

I've not heard of this being a thing. At least not a consistent thing but maybe it's not widely promoted. I'd email schools you are interested in and see. If they don't, I guess it depends on how significantly lower your quant/verbal were and how high the writing. I would lean towards verbal and quant over writing. At least they will have a writing sample through your personal statement.

Just my 2 cents about rankings. Unless you're planning on a PhD (and even then I'm skeptical) it's not necessary to go to a top 25 school. Rankings can be pretty arbitrary based on how they were created anyway. You can have a solid education even at a lower ranked school, especially in our field. Mine wasn't in the top 25 yet the slp coordinator who hired me raved about my program over all schools in state and in neighboring states.

I got into 1 of like 3 waitlists.

I got into msu a couple years ago though I ended up going elsewhere. Quant 155 verbal 162. Overall gpa 3.76. Feel free to message me if you have specific questions. I remember some info from my tour

Reddit has a thread for slp. My cohort used our Facebook page a ton. Also there are many slp Facebook groups to get ideas for activities

I reasked a couple profs when I applied again and asked one different one.

Clinical doctorates are pretty new and rare here in my understanding. But at this point I'm not sure the purpose or pros of getting one. Maybe a slight bump in pay but I don't see jobs advertising they want someone with a clinical doctorate. You're right that a PhD would be mainly if you want to teach or research but PhD is not a clinical doctorate. At least in the US with ASHA you could become board certified if there is a certain area you are more drawn to like fluency. That would be an alternative if you had interest.

We got our client schedules like the Thursday of week one of the semester. Then we had a week or two to meet with our assigned clinical faculty for each client, prep, and then start. It was nerve wracking but you'll probably have a written plan for the session so you'll know what to do. Heck my first client crawled under the table to hang out for half the session. I wasn't having luck with testing him but my supervisor came in and supported me. It's hard each first session for new clients when you don't know what to expect. I was nervous about the field simply for the reason I wouldn't know what to do! But you can do it and then you'll be a CF! Good luck

Logan is definitely bikeable. I can't say from personal experience but several of my cohort (I just finished at usu) would bike all the time even to campus. It gets hot and cold, there's lots of outdoorsy stuff which I'm not huge into but I did a few hikes. Supposedly there's one bar but I'm one of them Mormons so that didn't matter. The others would go down to salt lake if they wanted that. We all got along great, but for a couple it was a slight culture shock. Program wise I'm not sure how much funding there was. Several had assistantships and I was offered a small scholarship after the first summer. But if you qualify for that regional state agreement that helps so much. Many students came for that. For more specifics on usu feel free to pm me.

You can definitely do your CFY in a different state. Those things aren't connected, although some states do have more strict requirements for schools. I'm staying in my state and my temp license required a transcript and praxis scores. Everything costs money.

I wouldn't spend the money. I used my 2009 MacBook and eventually my iPad which was faster. But if your mac is in good condition I don't see why to upgrade.

Attire: odds are you'll have a dress code. Ours was pretty specific. Nothing could show tattoos, shoes had to be closed toe with a sock liner. I think sleeveless shirts were allowed but not spaghetti straps. No jeans. I had one externship that was casual but in clinic and all others I needed some decent slacks. My cohort was mostly computers or tablets for notes and a few took freehand. All our profs had PowerPoint slides or handouts so it was easy to download and type on. Nice to have all your notes together and control-f when looking for something or studying. I prefer a backpack but that's me. It's whatever works best for you. As for materials, that's handy you have a lot. I'd say maybe bring the handmade stuff but not the games. Your clinic should hopefully have a lot of games and materials. Unless you don't have a place to store them for after graduation because future jobs might not have materials and it's worth saving games for later. Our clinic didn't have a ton of space for us to keep stuff there, only a small crate. I cant think of anything else to buy. We paid for a custom name tag at the school itself. They had iPads and apps. We could print some materials there until they decided not to continue that. They had a laminator and a clinic fee covered materials used.

Recent slp grad here. My entire cohort agreed that grad school wasn't hard; it's time consuming. You have to balance class and clinic and prioritize and that is the hardest part. Yes we had tough exams but nothing significantly harder than undergrad. It's a challenge to study/do hw and constantly be making therapy plans. If you do a thesis, then that just adds to the pile. But hands down it was all about time management.

1) I did not have a job, mainly because I wanted to have something pretty flexible and didn't find much. Some classmates had GAs, others were TAs, some had outside jobs off campus, and others did not work. If you don't have evening classes, you could probably work but keep it mind you'll need time to plan sessions in addition to hw/studying. But if you need to, you can if you have the right job and mindset for getting things done. 2) part-time jobs? the only ones I can think of that classmates had were at the local library, telemarketing surveys, or teaching yoga. Otherwise retail? restaurants? Probably nothing during the day since clinic is scheduled then and we had no say in our client schedule. 3) I went to football games my first fall, a few gymnastics meets, and a couple basketball games later. My main recommendation is that if they overlap with class, do not expect a prof to let you out early or rearrange class just to let you go. I've heard of someone trying that once and the prof did not take it well. We had some grad school socials and I went to a couple for the free food. If you want to be involved in a specific campus group, the schedule may be the toughest to work around, especially if it's a class that is scheduled during the day (like I used to do marching band but knew rehearsals would interfere with either class or clients). 4) Time consuming and a big lesson in time management. You'll be juggling multiple clients/sessions per week, meetings with supervisors, and classwork. But academically no harder than undergrad. All my cohort felt this way. Some supervisors might be harder to click with. Depends on your personality and learn early to be prepared yet willing to learn and accept feedback. I had mostly positive supervisor experiences but I know others who didn't, with the same exact supervisors. 5) Yes. But this will depend on the setting you want and where you live. My state is in constant, desperate need to fill jobs and no one in my cohort who is staying in-state has had difficulty with getting job offers. One classmate in Portland though is having a heck of a time in the schools getting an offer or interviews. Too much competition. 6) This is all up to you. Take advantage of externships and try to get a variety. I had a pediatric outpatient clinic, a middle school, and inpatient rehab/acute hospital. Schools are way easier to get hired in but can be poorly paid and easy to burn out with paperwork. Hospital, depends on if you can handle medically fragile patients and can break into the medical setting (tough right out of grad school unless you had an externship there possibly). Not all my hospital pts were fragile but some of those were tougher with being sick, especially in the acute setting. Luckily, you're never tied into one setting. However, if you spend X years in schools and want to jump at some point to medical, it will be tough to break in because of the lack of experience. So get experience early or transition quickly if you start with peds and want to move to medical. 7) wait to choose until near the end. Many of my classmates switched interests, some didn't and are totally set into schools or medical, and a few of us like me were interested in multiple settings and haven't chosen one permanently. I'll see once I get a real feel for the job in my CF. I know I don't love voice or dysarthria a ton, but both adults and peds can be interesting to work with. Variety is nice.

My cohort had a mix of PC and macs and we didn't need any specific programs. We used google drive for presentations and the few times SALT was needed it was available on the report computers which were HIPAA compliant. I even started bringing my iPad to class instead which was newer and way faster than my laptop.

I can't speak from experience but only what I learned in grad school about SLPAs during our professional practice class. They need to work under supervision of an SLP and have limitations on what they can treat (mainly artic). Paperwork, testing, all other treatment needs to be a qualified SLP (with master's degree). Here's a link to what ASHA says is required in Idaho. http://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/info/ID/Idaho-Support-Personnel-Requirements/ But if I'm understanding your post your mentor is talking about jobs besides SLPAs that only require a bachelors (they can be called aide, assistant, or tech too)? I want to add that even if schools don't require a master's and call it an SLP, having only a bachelors doesn't qualify anyone to call themselves an SLP or sign as such. There's so much to learn to be able to practice ethically, which is why a master's is required, even if places are desperate to have the job filled. And ASHA would not certify you as an SLP. My cohort talked about this a lot even in the first semester and agreed how hard it would be to take on a caseload without having gone to grad school. At least as an SLPA/SLT you have a certified SLP supervisor. Anyway, basically the only process I'm aware of is becoming an aide/assistant (check the Asha link) or getting your master's. (I hope that makes sense. I'm just going off what it looks like your mentor is saying (are they an slp?) Feel free to clarify if I misinterpreted. )

Having just finished school I can say the biggest thing (besides health, etc already mentioned) would be can you pause school when baby is born. If it's in the middle of a semester you may have to cancel sessions with clients. I don't know if you'd be able to return quickly (obviously depends on health) but worth looking into if you can take a semester off if necessary. Much of my cohort were parents of 18 mo twins all the way to college age kids but no one was pregnant. Our program was intense and having to miss sessions means you lose hours and your client doesn't get consistent therapy. Just be realistic that it may be an added challenge so plan ahead especially if your program even has a few weeks or month between semesters (no guarantee if baby came early of course). I know a ton of undergraduates who had babies midsemester but grad school is a different beast. (I hope I don't sound too discouraging; you know you and your program. I just know how hard it is without kids and if you are prepared and realistic hopefully it'll go well!)