Crimson Wife

Do you have your SLP Asst. license?

I'm a mid-life career changer and have been a SAHM for over a decade so I'm using a functional resume format. My sections are "Education", "Relevant Experience" (combo of volunteer, paid, and shadowing), "Other Work Experience" (employer, job title, and dates only), "Professional Development Conferences and Workshops", "Professional Affiliations" (things like NSSLHA), and "Certifications and Credentials".

This topic comes up frequently: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/search/?q=last+60&type=forums_topic&nodes=95

If you haven't yet taken all 4 of the ASHA pre-reqs (statistics, bio, chem or physics, and psych or sociology), you might want to check into self-paced options. Utah State's FLEX offers courses that meet some of the ASHA pre-reqs. https://online.usu.edu/flex

Have you checked when Eastern NM's courses start? They offer both 8 week and 16 week courses, though I'm not sure whether they do in summer.

The National Student Clearinghouse may very well have a record of your attendance and the last thing you want is for the grad school to run your name & find that you left out the transcript. I have to print out my enrollment verification every semester to prove that I'm a student and one time I checked my full record. They had the extension courses I took as a requirement for an old job. I got A's so including the courses helps my GPA but it's annoying that I will have to pay to get those transcripts sent.

ProctorU is an option for most USU courses that require proctored exams. I've never used it but it certainly is more convenient than going to a library for proctoring like I do.

I've never heard of this being an option, and I specifically was told by one of my target schools that they would NOT accept me unless I could finish the CSD bachelor's prior to matriculation.

I started out my 1st bachelor's as a pre-med and got a bunch of B and B+ grades. I did a lot better my second half and wound up with a 3.7 cumulative GPA. I was told by the head of the CSD department at one of my target schools that was competitive. If you get strong GRE and/or MAT scores and get some decent volunteer and/or work experience, I don't think you need to sweat a shaky start too much.

Online/low-residency programs that allow the student to earn money in a related job might be the financially smart choice. If I had to choose between "take on lots of debt to attend in-person" vs. "work as a SLPA or SLP on waiver while going to school online", the latter would win out assuming I had a job that fit with my long-term career goals.

Utah State offers 3100 (A&P of Speech) every semester, including summer. Ditto for Wisconsin-Eau Claire's A&P of Speech & Hearing. Eastern NM offers A&P of Speech & Hearing in the spring but not the summer. Those 3 offer open enrollment in individual CSD courses. There are probably others but those 3 are relatively inexpensive.

Is your signature correct? If so, then Asian Studies is a VERY different field than SLP. So much so that I'm not sure why you decided to comment.

I only prepped the verbal because I knew that SLP programs tend to weight that more heavily. I was taking A&P of Hearing at the time and figured that studying for that course was a better use of my time than trying to squeeze a few more points out of my quant score. I used the Magoosh vocab and the Manhattan Prep 5 lb. book to study. I wasn't able to get my apps together in time to apply for fall 2016 so I'm considering retaking the GRE after prepping for the quant and the AW sections. Vanderbilt and UNC-Chapel Hill are on my target schools list since they offer training opportunities in my field of interest, and my quant is on the lowish side for them.

Have you taken any online courses? I did my 1st bachelor's in-person and am doing my 2nd online. I think my personality does better with in-person coursework but the only option for an in-person 2nd bachelor's was more than twice as expensive and would've required a commute that's 75+ minutes each way. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. Right now I'm going to be targeting in-person master's but if I can arrange a good SLPA fieldwork placement that leads to a paid SLPA job, I'd consider an online or low-residency hybrid program. I should know by the time I'd need to make a decision about where to apply.

Also, schools that do not participate in CSDCAS are bigger pains to apply to, so the breakdown of CSDCAS to non-CSDCAS schools also matters. The main con to adding another school to CSDCAS is the cost whereas adding a non-CSDCAS school requires a lot more effort.

The stronger your qualifications, the fewer schools you can get away with applying to. If you've got high GPA and GRE scores, 8 may be plenty. If you've got a relatively weaker GPA and/or GRE scores, you're better off adding more.

There are a bunch more NYC and Boston schools than the ones you've listed. Might want to look at how your stats compare after you get your GRE. Are you open to online or hybrid programs?

I think it would depend on the scheduling. A lot of SLPA jobs are in the schools and require morning-to-early afternoon hours. That would be difficult with an in-person master's program. But my daughter briefly saw a SLPA at a private clinic that offered evening hours (my daughter's appointment was 6-6:30 P.M.) I would think that would be do-able with grad school. NYU now has a distance master's, but it is pricey.

In my state, I cannot work as a SLP Assistant unless I have a bachelor's in CSD or complete a SLPA Associate's. I want to have the option of working as a SLPA either during grad school or if I don't get accepted on the first shot. It's also cheaper to complete the pre-reqs paying the UG tuition at USU than it would be to take the same classes as part of an extended master's. Depending on which grad school, it could be up to a $20k difference.

At my daughter's ABA agency, all new hires start out as behavior interventionists regardless of whether they have a bachelor's or are still working on it. It does take passing the BCaBA exam to become a lead interventionist on a team but it also takes a certain amount of experience as a BI. It's not like you can skip the entry-level position.

Is University of Delaware too far south for you? As a new program, they may be less competitive than more established schools.

Three years is a LOT different than "I just finished" unless the OP didn't actually mean she graduated within the past 12 months.

It's like job-hunting- at minimum 1 year's experience at the current position before applying, and preferably 2. Anything less makes you look like you're either a flake or bad at what you do.

A bigger "red flag" would be why you are changing fields so quickly. It's one thing to do it after some time in the workforce but if you just finished grad school, frankly it makes you look either like you can't get a job and/or you have no clue what you really want. Sorry if this comes off as a bit harsh, but do you really want to spend all the effort and expense of applying this upcoming cycle if whoever reads your application is likely to have the same concerns?

On the topic of humanitarian missions, I'm auditing a grad course this summer on cochlear implants (my daughter just had CI surgery so I wanted to take it now even if I won't be able to receive a grade due to my UG status) and the start was delayed because all the audiology students are off doing a mission. So that's a career you might want to explore. I think it would be much easier to do mission work as an audiologist than a SLP because the language barrier would be less of an issue. You'd still need an interpreter to give the directions and explain the results of course. But a lot of the work that an audiologist does isn't reliant on being fluent in the local language(s).