Crimson Wife

Utah State COMD 5070 with Dr. Dromey but be forewarned that it is HARD! Maybe someone who took it elsewhere can chime in with a recommendation for an easier class.

I agree about re-taking any courses with a B- or lower because a really low grade reflects a poor understanding of the material. But retaking a course to improve from a B or B+ to an A will not replace the original "meh" grade in CSDCAS. It just looks like grade-grubbing. When I am talking about taking an elective, I mean a CSD department elective. So that would be factored into the GPA for CSD. Not every school requires the same courses for the CSD bachelor's/leveling program. So it is fairly easy to find something that you haven't already taken that still would count as a CSD course. Utah State does not offer Fluency, Voice, Neuro, Issues in Disability, or Educational Audiology so those are 5 potential CSD electives that a USU graduate could take to bump up his/her CSD GPA in addition to the CSD electives offered through USU like ASL, Socio-Cultural Aspects of Deafness, Multiple Disabilities, and the courses in the deafblindness intervention certificate.

What about your local VA clinic? I volunteered at one back when I was doing my 1st undergrad.

You could but CSDCAS factors both grades into your GPA. So unless the grade was really low, I don't see how retaking a course would be more helpful than taking electives that were not part of your UG degree. To my mind, retaking a course looks like shameless grade-grubbing, while taking electives can be explained as exploring an area of interest or broadening your knowledge base or whatever. Depending on my final grade in Speech Science, I might be taking an elective this summer at a different school. It's related to my area of interest so I think it would be useful beyond just offsetting a meh grade.

But my question to you is this: are you planning to do your clinical placements in the U.S. or in Canada? I'm not sure that a U.S.-based school would permit a placement outside the U.S. As I mentioned earlier, many of them will only accept students residing in specific states. It's called "SARA". I live in a non-SARA state (California) and that means certain distance ed programs cannot accept me or any other CA resident. If I wanted to attend those schools, I would have to change my residency to a SARA state and do my clinical placements there.

I took COMD 5330 through Utah State and it was relatively inexpensive & fairly easy. However the professor is a horrible lecturer as he rambles on and on. Be forewarned if you do decide to take it.

Are you planning to go to grad school in Canada? I'm not sure you would be able to do a U.S.-based distance ed master's from Canada. I know many of the distance ed programs don't even serve all 50 states. You'd have to check with your target grad schools to see if they even accept foreign students.

Do you have any undergraduate debt? Are you single or in a long-term relationship? For me personally, $23k savings is not enough to outweigh a specialty track in an area of interest but I'm in a fortunate position where I don't have any UG debt and my husband makes enough to support our family. If I plug $23k into the loan calculator at FinAid, that is a difference of $265/mo. over the 10 years. The benefits of doing the specialty track would be worth that amount to me personally. Right now we're paying $145/week out-of-pocket for my daughter to get auditory-verbal therapy with a SLP certified in AVT. It's as much training for me as it is therapy for her. So $265 more per month to attend a master's program with a specialty track in AVT would be worth it to me.

Utah State COMD 3120. Prof. Bingham rocks and tuition is fairly reasonable even for out-of-state. Summer semester begins the first part of May and USU processes non-degree student admission very quickly.

Honestly,if you do decide to shift gears, I wouldn't bother with a 2nd bachelor's in psychology because it isn't necessary for grad school in the field. My first degree is in psych but if I look at the local university that offers a MA in Counseling Psychology (leads to state certification as a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist), it just requires a bachelor's in any discipline. Having an undergrad psych degree wouldn't get me out of any courses or shorten the time to degree at all.

My suspicion would be that this professor knows about behind-the-scenes turmoil that she can't talk about but is trying to warn you about indirectly. This happens all the time in the corporate world.

I used the Manhattan 5 lb book plus the Magoosh free vocab app.

Since your verbal is stronger than your quant, you might want to consider prepping for and taking the Miller Analogies Test. No math on that! I have heard of people doing MUCH better on the MAT than the GRE.

There are paid jobs related to SLP aside from SLPA's/SLT's. Some options: -Special Ed paraeducator -Early Childhood Special Ed teacher (would need a certain number of units in ECE to get the credential) -Applied Behavioral Analysis interventionist -Academic Language Therapist -Lindamood-Bell tutor -Newborn Hearing Screener -Respite provider for those with special needs -Doing Clinical Nurse Assistant training (10 weeks at my local community college) and then working in a nursing home/rehab facility.

Grad school is 2 years out of your life while student loans will take decades to pay off. Take some advice from someone older and wiser- you WILL pay through the nose if you want to live in a "cool" city like S.F., NYC, Boston, Seattle, etc. and it REALLY isn't worth going into way more debt for. SLP pays decently but you're not going to be making $200k/yr like an investment banker or patent attorney or whatever. A couple of years in some place boring is far better than being middle-aged and wishing that you hadn't spent so much to attend grad school in [insert name of cool city here].

In TX, my understanding is that a bachelor's in CSD plus 25 supervised hours is enough for a SLPA license. If you go for the 2nd bachelor's, you would only have the major classes and not all the general ed requirements or electives. At Utah State online, there are 12 courses for the 2nd bachelor's for a total of 35 credits. If you go FT, it can be done in 3 semesters (and all core courses are offered every semester including summer). Other schools are going to have different requirements for the 2nd bachelor's but in none of them would you be "starting over" since you would only need the courses for the CSD major. (ETA: You can use financial aid for the 2nd bachelor's) An associate's in SLPA is designed for people with no more than a high school degree and generally takes 2 years. If you did that, you would still need to take certain pre-reqs not included in the SLPA degree either prior to applying to master's or as part of the master's. This would be the longest route and frankly, I don't see the point in a state where getting a SLPA license is super-easy (unlike CA, which is way more difficult).

I can tell you that the clinic where my daughter does her in-person sessions has its volunteers doing clerical work. Things like prepping session materials for the SLP's, filing, data entry, etc. Not worth the 60+ minute each way drive from my house when I can work 1:1 with kids doing literacy tutoring at my daughter's school in our neighborhood. I can't speak to whether volunteering vs. shadowing looks better on an application but if what you'd be doing volunteering is things like photocopying, laminating, and then cutting out pictures, that's not really going to teach you how to be a better SLP the way shadowing would.

You can probably get a summer school job as a paraeducator if you're interested in possibly switching to education. I know a lot of the paras at my daughter's school are moms and don't work summer school because they're home with their own kids. In my district, working as a para requires a high school diploma, a clean background check (which you'd need for SLP), and passing the CBEST (super-easy as I took it to get a substitute teaching credential).

Getting current academic letters of recommendation and the cost savings of taking the leveling classes at the undergraduate vs. graduate level is why I did the 2nd bachelor's. If you don't have any academic experience more recent than 18 years ago, I doubt even a perfect GRE score would be enough.

I do know they have linguists as my DH had been offered a linguist position in the Army Reserves until the Pentagon decided to make him go FT Active Duty rather than letting him complete his ROTC obligation in the Reserves.

The Reserves and National Guard offer loan repayment if you meet the eligibility requirements and are willing to serve. I don't know if the military has speech therapists the way they do other health occupations but it would be something to find out.

bumping

How are you at foreign language? My oldest daughter is dual-enrolled at community college aiming for a linguistics major and she will need 4 semesters of one foreign language and 2 semesters of a 2nd in order to transfer into the major at the flagship state university offering linguistics.

If your school is really strict about the 120 credit limit, I would just take it at a local community college. Yes, you'll need to send multiple transcripts but lots of grad schools will not let you apply without those 4 ASHA required courses.

Yes, this. I was SOOOOOOO sure in high school that I wanted to be a pediatrician and I actually applied to a couple of combo BS/MD programs. It's a good thing that I didn't get accepted because I changed my mind halfway through my 1st undergrad. Liking science and wanting to work with kids did not actually equal a true desire to become a pediatrician.