bindlestiff

Over the last three years I've lived with in a 4-bedroom apartment in a student complex, a 2-bedroom an old house split up into apartments, and a studio in a house with 2 other studio apartments. My rent has been between ~$380 and ~$450, and utilities range a lot depending on the management. I've always had water included in my rent. In the smaller apartments my electric bill has usually been $30-$50, and in the hottest and coldest months it hasn't gone over $100. For groceries I really don't know what to say. My diet consists mostly of coffee and easy foods like granola bars, apples, and microwave dinners. Sorry, I hope some of this has been helpful!

Laith, I think your question would be hard for most people to answer without more information. I would recommend looking for Lawrence's cost of living online -- there are a lot of websites dedicated to calculating the cost of living in different places. I do know that KU has family housing on campus, so you might want to look into that. I'm not sure whether it qualifies as "moderate". The apartments are in apparently in pretty bad shape, but KU's Hilltop daycare center is literally right next door.

Have you gone through the results from previous years? Gives you a good idea of when schools will probably start sending out acceptances.

It's funny how many aspiring SLPs have a back up plan of teaching English abroad. I'd love to go teach English to French-speakers, and I've thought a little about deferring (if I get into a grad program) so that I could do this for a year. But honestly, I'm too scared that I would forget everything I've learned in undergrad!

The US News list is of the "best grad schools," but highest ranked doesn't always equal most competitive when you look at the numbers. For example, the University of Colorado-Boulder is ranked at #25, but it's a much more competitive program than the #1 ranked University of Iowa. I think UC-Boulder gets double or triple the number of applicants as Iowa, but both programs accept 60-70 students and have around the same target class size. IU's 5-year average acceptance rate is 34% (89/262), which really isn't bad! It's way higher than places like UC-Boulder (16% acceptance), and it's even higher than the #1 program (29%). Just thought I'd point this out!

@marshmelos Yes, you still have a chance. GPA is only one of the factors adcomms look at. You might want to go back and read the first page of this topic if you haven't already -- there are people (I'm thinking of Twinguy7) with GPAs under 3.0 who are in grad school. It all depends on 1) the programs you apply to, and 2) the rest of your application.

@hk65 I'm also a Kansan. Where are you from?

...??? This is absolutely ridiculous! Everyone knows how hard it is to get into grad school for SLP. Case in point, this month's ASHA Leader is all about how few spots there are in grad programs. On the front page: "CAN WE ADMIT MORE GRAD STUDENTS? Expanding the Pipeline". I can barely believe an admissions board member giving a speech at a NSSHLA convention would say something like that. When it is so difficult to get in, how can you not expect people to pack their resumes as much as possible? You and I and countless others have worked really hard to beat the odds and gain admission, and for someone to say that they throw applicants out for looking too good...is that a joke?? Do you remember this person's name or where they work?

@MangoSmoothie Yeah same here, except I'm not sure I'll feel done even then. I bet I won't feel it until I've heard from everywhere and either made a decision or moved on to plan B. And in either case, I'll have a lot to start obsessing over. It never ends!

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and ask -- is anyone else applying to KU, SLU, UO, UMD, or UW-Madison?

@timberlake That's rough! If you get accepted to the March schools what will you do? I would hate to have to choose a program without knowing whether or not I got into each of them.

I tried pretty hard to find bilingual programs that weren't exclusively for Spanish speakers. I thought that schools in Louisiana or Maine might be more French-friendly, considering their francophone populations. Unfortunately, the only schools I found that were at all interested are in Canada. I considered applying, but ended up going with US schools.

I'm DONE! Just finished my last one. Now I'm going to try not to think about how I spent my whole break on applications, only to get done the Friday before classes start up again. I'm also going to try to spend a lot less time on this website, although I doubt that'll last. I wonder how long I can go before I start checking my applications and the results page obsessively.

I'm so sorry! Please give yourself a break and try not to endlessly beat yourself up about it -- you don't deserve that! I made a mistake too and now I doubt that one of my transcripts will reach CSDCAS in time, so, short of a miracle, UO is out for me. My point being that you're not the outlier here. We're all human. Je croise les doigts pour toi!

EdFind is nice but not all of their info is always accurate, so I would look for stats on each program's own website. A lot of them have the GRE and GPA ranges and averages of their grad students for the last few years posted somewhere -- it's just a matter of finding it.

I don't think that's overkill at all! I've heard from multiple professors that the more reminders they get, the better. I think the only way you could overdo it is if you literally filled up their inbox. So if I were you I'd go ahead and email them today, and I would also include the info about how to submit their recommendations. Have you looked at the recommendations sections of your applications? On 4/5 of mine there's an option where you can send official email reminders straight from the application. When I reminded my recommenders, I sent them a message from my own email account explaining that they would receive official reminders that day and reiterating the due dates and other basic information, plus more detailed info for the one application that doesn't send official reminders (CSDCAS). I hope that made sense! I have a quick question for you rlywrmn: I see that you're an undergrad at UW-Madison. May I ask why you're not applying there? I'm wondering if you have any specific insight on the department/program that deterred you from applying.

Sorry, but could you please elaborate? Are you talking about the color coded list that was already mentioned, or is this something else? If it's something else, I'd like to hear about it

Woah, it took them 8 business days? I am really glad I saw this. I had been feeling a little anxious about the whole verification thing as well, but hadn't given it much thought beyond that. Thank you for posting, deerye525 and OhioAud!