bindlestiff

A little late, but thank you for the information! I actually did know abut la Maison Française and am happy to say that I will be living there next year!

Bonjour!
I won't be studying French at Madison, but I'm going to live at la Maison Française. Are either of you familiar with it? Their website is uwfrenchhouse.org if you want to check it out. It's a language immersion residence/restaurant where Madison French speakers congregate, so I imagine I might meet you two there at some point! 
Madison seems to have a really strong French community, which a huge plus for me -- I want to keep/improve my French, which would usually be pretty tough during grad school. Oh, and the French House sells these great t-shirts. (Sorry if I'm telling you what you already know!)

It would be lame but you gotta do what you gotta do hahaha

After months of bad news and stress eating, I just got accepted to Valdosta!!!!           

Is there a Facebook group for sacred heart!?

So I'm a sucker for school supplies. I'm the one that you'll see browsing the isles completely in the off season just because it makes me happy, lol. I was wondering what supplies do you think are "must haves" for grad school and others that have worked well for you in the past. I'm trying to come up with a solid list and not have too much excess. Thanks!

There is a question of how you phrased the email -- I could see someone getting upset if you said "an offer from a school I like more came along so I am withdrawing" as opposed to "a funded offer came along that I simply cannot pass up, given the financial difficulties that the offer from you would have put me in." 
 
That said, a school with an early deadline AND no funding offer really has no business being upset, in my opinion.

The early deadline school doesn't even offer any financial packages.

I mean, sucks that you got that email, but they do have a right to be upset at a late withdrawal. Their school could have been the dream school of someone else who might have already committed to another institution. And what they said about you in the email was true, right? ... you WERE using them as a fall-back.
 
You didn't mention if you had originally asked for an extension of your acceptance. That would have been the best thing to do in this situation since your sights were set on another school that was forcing you to wait, which is what many applicants go through.

You should respond by saying, "I have an idea for how to prevent it: not having your response deadline be a month earlier than everyone else's!"

So, one of the schools I was accepted to had a an acceptance deadline of March 16. I had not heard from any other schools at that point, so I accepted the offer knowing that I needed to secure the spot since it was my only acceptance. I could withdraw later if I got in somewhere else. According to everyone on here, this is not uncommon & most schools expect some of this.

Fast forward to April. I just found out yesterday that I was accepted off of the waitlist at my top-choice school. I emailed the other school to withdraw my acceptance. I emailed 2 people who I have been interacting with. One of them sent a message to me by mistake rather than to the other person at their school. The message said, "You’ve got to be kidding me! So they’re using this as their fall-back? Let me see if I can come up with any brilliant ideas to help prevent this in the future."

Apparently they didn't expect any melt & they are now upset that I withdrew. I feel bad, but really? How could they not expect any late withdrawals?

UW system schools have already cancelled a bunch of faculty searches, and they're talking about laying off pre-tenure TT faculty. A friend of mine in the system was told by her chair that they might not be able to do her tenure review on time. So devastating.
 
In conclusion, fuck you Scott Walker.

Somebody upvote Lycidas for me -- great post and totally on point.  Walker has been doing devastating things to public K12 education for the past few years -- state-funded voucher systems for charters and private schools is really horrible on so many levels.  I work in a public school and can attest to the fact that there are a lot of ridiculous contradictions in the way money is spent (iPads for all the students, but horrible teacher retention rates, etc.)
 
The recent cuts are really frightening, particularly, as Lycidas pointed out, for teachers.  Walker has been the enemy of all teachers in this state for a while.  I have a feeling though, and I might be wrong, that there will be more resistance to this across the political spectrum -- my impression is that no matter your politics, people appreciate the UW system and don't want to see that get dismantled.  Walker is also a college dropout, if that tells you anything.
 
 
 
We also have to be careful with statistics like this, and if you contact UW budget people, make sure you see what areas are most affected.  People are throwing out numbers for between 3 and 13 percent overall -- obviously, this will translate to higher or lower percentages as you look at specific parts of budgets -- specific schools, specific departments and offices, etc.  I would imagine that certain things will be dramatically more or less affected than others.
 
ETA: As badly as this will affect Madison, I would be more concerned for the rest of the UWs, which I could imagine being reduced to mere trade schools if Walker's vision gets carried out...

All too familiar with them, unfortunately. You make it work, and it often seems way more daunting than it actually is. Feel free to shoot me any questions/concerns you might have!

I don't understand how 3.8 and below isn't stellar. I think under 3.5 starts to become iffy and under 3.0 is worrisome (mostly for cutoffs), but how low are you talking? GPA isn't everything.

Is there a facebook page for Stephen F. Austin yet???

Is there a Texas Woman's University group yet?

Hi guys! Just popping in to re-post this here so people are aware of the rules (mainly not posting requests, please!) in case anyone misses it on the first page

I had some initial panic about my decision too, but I think it's important to remember that we are all going to be a little on edge until we actually get started in our programs and get a better grasp on things. New places, new people, new schools, new professors, different rent and tuition, it's all a bit nerve-racking but we are capable individuals and will EASILY figure it all out! We are all extremely smart and capable human beings to have gotten this far, don't worry too much about what the future has to hold! 
I'm sure we are all anxious to continue this journey to SLP, but all programs have strengths and you will get a great education and a wonderful career no matter what. Embrace your opportunities!  

Those standards are the minimums. There are programs who exceed those standards, while some barely meet them.

Oh boy i'm the opposite of all of you... I chose the more expensive "dream" school over a basically free in-state school (was offered a GA on top of already cheap tuition). Honestly though, in my case I'll have a better quality of life during grad school (better weather/awesome city area) and I'll be more than happy to settle in the area after grad school and use those contacts I develop through externships. There's a little nagging voice in the back of my head that is slapping me for giving up free school, but I would probably be totally miserable for two years, and then I would have to relocate anyway. I think I won't be 100% sure/happy until i'm actually there, but right now I'm like 97.8% sure that I made the right choice, and excited to start in the fall!! 

Unlike all the previous posters, I picked the strongest program (which also happened to be the most expensive). 
 
I really think I'm going to the best program in the country. As such, I expect to receive top-notch training as well as the best career opportunities afterwards - job placements and/or PhD route.
 
It came down to this: Which would I rather live with? Debt, or regret of knowing I turned down an amazing opportunity? 
  I feel confident that I will be able to pay of my student loans in 5-ish years. Make no mistake, debt is a huge undertaking. But I'm not foolish with my money and consider this a wise investment in my future. 

Agreed, not all programs are the same, but they do meet (haha or claim to meet during site visits) basic requirements. One example would be the number of clinical hours provided. ASHA requires 400 (25 obs and 375 clinical) hours. I know one very low ranked program (relative is a prof there) which can sometimes struggle to give students enough clinical hours (but they always manage to do so in the end) while many programs go well over (500-600 hours). This is NOT at all to say that every lower ranked program has trouble giving its students clinic time. Just one example of the point above. Another example of how programs differ could be how how supervises you on off site locations. Some schools have their own people supervise and some have the people at the site you are going do the supervision. I'm not arguing that there is direct correlation to such factors and ranking, but sometimes things like these can indirectly trickle down an impact opinion which is really all that the rankings seem to boil down to. I think its safe to say the rankings can mean something but not necessarily something good, bad, or even accurate.
 
At the end of the day, any program that will lead to your C's should get you a job, so if that is ALL that you care about then they absolutely do not matter. However, when choosing a program they might be able to help you better approach how to ask questions relating to how much you will like the program/ how well you will fit in. For example, if a program is highly ranked then you know there is a higher probability it is more researched based and can ask about this aspect. If you like research this is great, but if you don't, you might be both more happy and successful at another program that is lower ranked.So, I think the rankings can be helpful not in telling you what program is better or worse, but by simple giving you a starting point from which you can delve deeper into a program to see if it is a good fit for your personally/learning style/personal goals within the SLP field.
 
The one exception to this is indeed if you are thinking about pursuing a PhD. High rankings do tend to mean more research is being done and encouraged in students. Also, the academic world is vain and ranking (whether or not they should) matter. 
 
I think its worth noting too that at the graduate level, the overall school rankings / prestige mean pretty much nothing and are definitely weighed less in the field's eyes than program rankings. For example, if you are planning to pursue your PhD and you get into Columbia University and the University of Iowa, definitely go to Iowa unless there is some very very powerful outside factor drawing you away. 
 
And purely statistically, some very low programs can be much harder to get into due to numbers. For example, I applied to a higher ranked school which got around 250 apps and a local school with a much lower ranking had over 500 and both were looking for roughly the same class size. Of course you cannot calculate your odds based on number of apps and admits alone; you need factor in the strength of your own application. The overall types of applications received by the programs makes program competitiveness hard to compare among each other. However, no program is a safe bet these day, and I'm sure programs from number 1 to the bottom all admit some truly exceptional students.
 
Hope that helps and I haven't ruffled too many feathers. 

Yes, they do! It looks like students can have lunch there Monday-Friday ($5) and Wednesday dinners/Friday lunches are open to the public, plus they hold a lot of open events. La Maison also runs a blog about French films, concerts, etc. happening in Madison, and it looks like there are several French tables throughout the week. 
 
For me, coming from Kansas where hardly anyone speaks French, the Madison francophone community seems almost too good to be true!
 
Switching topics - I've heard great things about Madison in the summer, but I won't be moving up there until late August/early September. I'm kind of bummed :/

I've always wondered about what happens if you accept admission and then back out -- I figured it was something bad, but I never actually did any research on it. Now that I think about it these kind of situations must mean that people backing out does happen fairly often (as has already been said).
 
So is it standard to pay a deposit when you accept? Sorry if that's a stupid question. In my defense, it's been four years since I last accepted admission to a university!