SLPgradstudent

You could try emailing the department to see if they'll accept a revised version, but that only works sometimes.  If they've already started reviewing apps, don't worry about it.  Freaking out won't really help you, unfortunately.  (If it did, I would have heard back from my schools already!)  You'll be alright, just remember to breathe.

Yup, I've run into a couple of people here waiting to hear back from the programs I applied to as well.  While technically we are each other's competition, we're all rooting for each other!

Something really cute: I got my official acceptance letter to Delaware via website today (phone notification came Thursday), and when I clicked the link to the letter, the letter displayed on the screen as virtual confetti poured down as well! It was so cute! I'm always saying *throws confetti* in this and other threads, and I got some confetti from Delaware! So cute! The confetti was in the school colors, too! 

So, how are we all holding up?
Some of my schools start to notify in early February, but I'm trying not to get too distracted from everything else I need to be doing. It's a struggle, though.

I saw that acceptance and came over to post! I hope you get in, SLPgradstudent!
(I hope I get in, too, but I've been following your story and I know you've got a lot riding on this!!!)

I wouldn't worry too much about this until multiple students do it, last month someone posted an acceptance for my school saying how they were so excited, etc. before the application deadline even passed. I knew for a fact our professors hadn't started even reviewing applications yet but if it had been another school I would have been having extra anxiety for the past month! 

The amount of refreshing I do on multipe websites can be probably be categorized as some kind of form of OCD by the psychiatric association... XD

It's so great reading all of these acceptance stories!  I hope I have one of my own to share soon.  Although my story will probably be, "I was sitting at my computer, avoiding doing my assignment and checking my email for the 1000th time that day when..." 
I'm feeling so nervous waiting, but your stories make me smile!  Thanks everyone!!!

Hey everybody, February is here!  For many of us, we will probably be getting news about decisions THIS MONTH!!!!!  I'm hoping it's more like this week, but we'll see!
Good luck everyone!

bump.
Come on, share your story! Extra points if you make me tear up.
 

Hey everybody, February is here!  For many of us, we will probably be getting news about decisions THIS MONTH!!!!!  I'm hoping it's more like this week, but we'll see!
Good luck everyone!

Hey everybody, February is here!  For many of us, we will probably be getting news about decisions THIS MONTH!!!!!  I'm hoping it's more like this week, but we'll see!
Good luck everyone!

Ha - replying to my own post.  Just as an update for any future readers - I did not end up updating my transcript as I was admitted to the program early, however I would recommend that anyone in the same position simply call the department to see if they put any weight/consideration on the new grades.

I just received an early admission offer from University of Oregon today - and am still in complete shock!  

I live in LA, not near it lol - I know traffic like no other.   We are on the westside though, near UCLA, so my commute into "the Valley" where CSUN is, happens to be a reverse commute.  More people are driving from the Valley into LA - so it works out perfectly for me.  And I agree - everything gets more complicated with significant others and kiddos.  If I were younger and single, my list would have included Vanderbilt, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Colorado Boulder and San Diego State.  I still would never have applied to ten schools.  Or twenty, which is what an advisor at my school recommended.  I think that is insane!  I'd love to see DC some day - I've never been but my hubby loves it.  Best of luck to you - it looks like you have a fantastic background!  

Thanks for sharing Jolie!  You're not wrong, I started with 3 schools too.  I ended up not applying for my 3rd school because I didn't feel like the program was a great fit for me.  It's a fantastic program, but not what I want.  Also, I wanted to focus my energy on finishing my final courses.  So many people here have applied to 6 or 12 or 20 schools, that I feel like the oddball having only applied to two.  But my fiancé just got his job in April, and we would like to stay in the area, which limits my choice already.  The schools that I am applying to are top ranked and awesome programs all around.  My stats are their ranges, but my overall GPA isn't awesome.  I have a 4.0 for the last 90+ credits though, so I feel like that makes up for it a little.  I hope the schools agree!  I am going to be very nervous until I hear back.
Your reasons definitely make sense.  I feel like it's easy for a kid straight out of college to apply across the country, to any every school, whereas for someone who's married or has kids (or both), or is otherwise tied down to one location, the options are more limited.  I hope you and your family are very happy wherever you end up.  West coast is beautiful, I would love to live out there someday.  For now, I'm stuck on the East coast, not that I mind Maryland or the DC area.  I've lived here my whole life, and for the most part I love it.  I don't love the traffic, but I'm sure you can understand that, living near LA.

Yes - I remember seeing earlier that you were only applying for a few (I thought you had three too originally) and I thought, hey, I'm not the only crazy one, lol!
I had several reasons, I suppose.  Commuting in LA is not pretty - and neither is relocating.  I eliminated Long Beach due to the nasty commute, as well as the fact that you have to pick either a school or med rotation - if you want both it takes longer and costs more.  I also eliminated Cal State LA because the commute is horrible there as well, due to the close proximity to downtown.  I also don't particularly like that area.
I have two sons and a hubby, so in fairness to them I decided I would only pick schools where if we relocated, we would all have an improved quality of life.  We have family in Oregon and had always discussed relocating and buying a home there, so U of O was a no-brainer.  We have some family in Washington and I have a brother who should be moving to Seattle this year (military pilot) so I also chose UW.  My background is medical, so the MedSLP track appealed to me.  Both Oregon and Washington are cheaper to live in than West Los Angeles, so that works out too.  I wanted to stay on the West Coast because that is where most of my family is as well (SF Bay Area).  And it's just gorgeous here, frankly.  
I picked my current school as well of course - where I absolutely love the faculty, diversity of clinics, and of course - no headache in relocating.  My stats are within the range for all three, so I felt confident I would get into at least one of the programs.  If I didn't, I was comfortable working for a year, polishing up my SOP and gaining experience.  Plus I'm confident I could score a lot higher on the GRE with the added prep time.  

For all you U of A hopefuls, looks at all the fun you could be having next year... haha.
 

This video was made by our second year buddies in the class of 2016.
To the people who messaged me about stats, sorry I haven't gotten back to you, I'll post them in the next few days after I figure out what they were.
Good luck to all, try not to stress.

First thing is that many many many psych (clinical and research oriented) applicants apply more than once.
Don't be discouraged.
Use this time between now and next go around to learn, shore up your weaker academic areas, retake the GRE (with LOTS of study time), publish, and get recognized.
I applied twice, then being discouraged, took two years off and worked full time. I decided at the end of my first year off that I couldn't stand being away from research. So, since I knew I was not terribly competitive number-wise, I decided to get my Master's degree. I was accepted right away, no problem (not a competitive program). This gave me time to flesh out my research interests, get to know the field better, bring up my GPA (my undergrad GPA was 3.3 and my grad GPA is 4.15), and start making more professional connections. My original GRE scores were unimpressive, and I took a Kaplan GRE course over several weeks and brought them up a lot!
After talking to a bunch of people and getting some perspective, I found a few weaknesses I had going in that probably killed my application before.
-My SOP was not focused enough on what I wanted to do or accomplish with my career. It was too vague and it spent far too much time telling a story about personal growth. Since I was targeting highly competitive and research focused field, I needed to demonstrate that I had really thought through why I was doing what I was doing and how I was going to do it. I also talked about my disability and I have no idea if that hurt my chances (I suspect that it may have). I didn't this most recent time around. While it is important to why I'm doing what I'm doing, I managed to talk about this without identifying myself as having a disability.
-I had clear weaknesses in my quantitative background... or not clear weaknesses, but ambiguities that could cast doubt on whether I could succeed in the stats courses involved in a graduate psychology program. Since I started my Master's program, I have taken every graduate stats course I could get my hands on. The only stats course that is offered in Psychology or Education that I have not taken is multi-level modeling. I have gotten A's and A+'s straight through with no exceptions.
 
-I had research experience in behavioral protocols but none in the neuroscience area explicitly. After a few conversations with people leading labs I was interested in, I realized that the average grad student I was up against had at MINIMUM 2 years experience doing neuroimaging research. I had one person flat out tell me that he was not willing to bring anyone into his lab that could not run neuroimaging analyses independently... That was a little under a year ago, so I joined a neuro lab as soon as I could BUT I was not going to have that kind of competitive profile in the 6 mos I had to apply. :-( If I don't get in anywhere (this is my 4th ap season) this will be why. On the one hand, I can fix this by next go-round, but I don't think, at this point, it will be necessary. 
 
-Nobody knew who I was. This sounds a bit soft, but in the last year and a half, I have been developing relationships by sharing ideas and discussing them with the researchers in the field, I've been seeking them out at conferences, following them on twitter, linkedin, and research gate I make sure that they can recognize me and that they have the opportunity to see that I am passionate and committed to what I'm doing. In a few occasions a researcher has been intrigued enough by an idea I had that they've wanted to read over some of my papers I wrote for my master's courses and discuss the ideas and theory behind it.
I think this has helped because it is really the only way I can get leverage over the massive number of people who have much better scores, grades, and research backgrounds than I do. I know which parts of me are less shiny and they're mostly on paper (I came from a very nontraditional background for my field, grades not so hot, no exp in the specific research techniques they use, etc), once I can get into a conversation I can show people what I am worth and get them to work with me. I'm not sure how applicable this is to you, but I've found very few resources that really talk about this component *shrug* so I think it is worth putting out there.
Of course you NEVER want to be aggressive with the above, if you don't find ways to let them decide to come to you, then this will backfire HARD. Basically, my rules of thumb are to always be genuine, always follow through, and always do it because I want to engage in the idea with whom ever will talk to me (this means grad students, the public, researchers outside of the field, and if I'm lucky, the PI's I want to work with). Do it because you love the work, not because you're trying to market yourself to someone.
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All  in all though, all of the above is supposed to show that if you really want to do it, don't give up. Every time you apply you will get better. If you keep working on research in the field, going to conferences, people will start associating you with your work, which will be a big draw b/c you can demonstrate how awesome you are, instead of making them take a gamble on how well you will do. You are already way better off than I was when I first applied :-)
 

I don't have much to say about your chances of being accepted. But I will say that I also studied psychology and though clinical isn't my area of interest, I know something about how difficult it can be to get admitted to psychology PhD programs. Clinical is the worst from what I have heard.
Last year I applied to PhD programs in I/O and was rejected from all of them. 3.84 GPA, decent but not amazing GRE, strong recommendations, and not nearly enough research experience. It was devastating at the time to watch the rejections roll in. I had never felt "not good enough" when it came to academics before. I was embarrassed to tell my professors. But the funny thing is that I cried on and off for a few days and then got over it. And shortly after that I realized that wasn't even what I wanted to do. I don't want to go the PhD route. A well respected professor of mine asked me if I wanted a recommendation on my last day of my senior year. I went to a graduation party thrown by the psychology faculty and had a ton of my professors express their support for me and encourage me to keep trying. Although it is incredibly difficult to put myself through the process again,  I've now applied to masters programs in the same field (along with human factors) and I am playing the waiting game. My GPA is up to a 3.9, and I have a publication I've coauthored under review. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. 
I don't think you should give up. But I do suggest you be open to reevaluating what you want or looking for alternative routes to get there. 

Is there a temporary page where the schools could at least see basic content, even if the page isn't pretty right now?  Does the under construction website easily link there?  If so, I think you're fine, and there's no need to tell schools about it.  If the only thing they can access is the under construction screen, you might consider contacting schools with what is normally available on the website.  Also, when you mentioned it on your resume, is there any indication there of what it's all about?
I don't think it's a big deal either way.  There's no guarantee that the schools will even take the time to visit the website in the first place. If they do, and can't access the normal content, I doubt they would hold this against you.  It's very cool (and modern) that you have that as part of your experience in the first place!

Short answer: Speech pathology is my dream career.  I've been working on my prerequisites for 2 years now (2nd bachelor's).  To be a speech pathologist requires at least an MA, thus graduate school.
Longer answer: I've always known I've wanted to go into a helping profession.  From the time I was 7 until high school, I though that meant med school.  But when I was in high school, the subjects I had loved (math and science) because unbelievably difficult for me.  Turns out I had something called hydrocephalus, and needed brain surgery.  Because of this condition, I had developed a learning disability, among other challenges.  I had surgery just before my 18th birthday, but it wasn't as successful as we'd hoped.  I continued to struggle academically until my junior year of college, when my neurosurgeon determined that the first surgery had failed (or not been successful in the first place) and I did indeed need another surgery.  Although I had been struggling to maintain a C average until this point, the semester after my surgery in December 2008, I managed straight As.  I've kept a 4.0 since then, including through my 2nd bachelor's degree.  My experience struggling with this medical condition and associated disability has given me compassion for other's struggles.  Combined with my strong interest in language development and disorders, fascination with anatomy & physiology and desire to work in a clinical setting, speech-language pathology is the absolute perfect fit for me.  It is a career that will not just pay the bills, but give me purpose and fulfillment each day I go to work.  I have so enjoyed my prerequisite course work, and know I will continue to enjoy my studies as I enter graduate school.  I can't wait to start grad school, and I can't wait to become a practicing SLP!

Between this application process and Alan Rickman dying, I am feeling too many feelings this week.

I would say that GPA and GREs are what get you through round 1 (not getting your app thrown out).  Then extracurriculars, volunteer experience, a strong statement of purpose, etc. are what get you noticed.  They're going to have dozens of applicants with 3.7 (or higher) GPA and great GREs.  You have to show schools why they should choose you.  Why do you want to go into SLP?  What attracts you to that particular school's program?  How do they know that you will be a successful, passionate graduate student and then speech pathologist?  Since this is a field flooded with applicants, you have to find a way to stand out.  There are lots of ways to do this though.  Extracurriculars and volunteer experience are just a couple.  Find a way to get related experience and show that you are a great fit for this field!

This is a highly undervalued skill.  When you get thrown a curveball in your interview (or just a question you didn't think to prepare for), and need time to think of a good answer, you have to know how to do it gracefully!  It's awkward if you sit there silently, or are obviously unsure how to answer, but generally looks good if you are obviously giving the question thought.  It's a mistake to try to answer interview questions without understanding what they are asking you.  Much better to take the time to figure it out, either with a direct question, or thinking it through out loud.