thespeechblog.com

I don't know about those programs specifically, but the best advice I received (which is the advice I always pass along) is to go to the most affordable, accredited program. 
Don't worry about prestige, rankings, 'brand-name' etc. Chose the program that will get you your degree for as little money as possible. The jobs will be pretty much the same when you're done. 

You got a full-ride offer from an accredited program? DO IT.
Vanderbilt is not worth the money. In this field (and many others) that 'brand-name' and 'prestige' are only worth it to your ego and have very little impact on your career. 

I've accepted-I just wanted to get more specifics because the reviews on the results page were really freakin me out! That would be appreciated, if you can PM me! 

I'm currently a non-degree student here at UNM. I started in fall of 2012. I got my BA in psychology at UNM, which was great-the faculty are nothing but friendly and supportive of all students. So naturally I expected that when I started as a non-degree, but not really what I experienced. The department is small and it's not a very harmonious department. Some of the faculty members don't get along well with each other and will occasionally gossip about each other during class. Also, certain students are very clearly favored over others. It's a very competitive atmosphere so there's a lot of cliques among the students. Considering how stressful grad school is, especially when studying speech pathology, it seems important that the department would be supportive of its students but at UNM, that's definitely few-and-far between.

I have not been through a similar situation; it sounds tricky. Here's my thoughts...
In the portal where it asks you to upload the transcript, can you upload a document/pdf explaining what you explained here? I.e., "I enrolled at XYZ University and completed Example Class 101 for noncredit and per XYZ University policy, transcripts are not provided for noncredit classes. I can provide enrollment verification in the form of..." maybe even consider adding that enrollment verification as a second page to whatever you upload.  Call the school in question and ask a real human there what to do If you didn't earn credit for the courses at XYZ and XYZ has no record on file... I would assume the National Student Clearing House has no record either and so... just leave it blank? If the course wasn't for credit, and you're not trying to claim credit, it really shouldn't matter...right? Or am I missing something?

Your best bet would probably be to get in charge with the admissions office/whoever is in charge of prereqs since that course is so unique. Usually that would be split up into at least two different courses for undergrad. Best of luck!

I agree with @RMott that you do not need a post-bacc. I got into four-leveling master programs (including U of A) where I do not have to reapply for admission to the masters after finishing the pre-reqs, with a 3.52 GPA and a V160, Q155, and AW4.5. I had 25 hours of observation of a bilingual SLP (no letter of rec or anything though, just mention of it in my SOP). And I got full funding at one of the programs. I´m not trying to be vain, just let you know that you can do it without the time and $$$ of a post-bacc. 
If you have strong numbers (they don´t even have to be stellar - mine weren´t) and you can write a really strong SOP you have a good chance. I don´t think you need experience as an SLPA - in fact, it is not really a "stand out" experience that will help your application jump out. It doesn´t even seem like you´ll need observation hours given your personal introduction to the field, but they might not be a bad if you have time. 
Something else I did to sort of "hedge my bets" was enrolling in USU´s 2nd degree program. I had finished three courses when I applied (which also let me apply to even more leveling programs). I think this boosted my GPA and demonstrated my strong interest. Plus, if I hadn´t gone in I would already be started on Post-Bacc-Plan-B for the next year. Since I did get in, I have 3 less classes to take in my leveling track. Does that make sense? I´m not sure if I´m explaining it clearly. 
One other thing that I think helped me was really focusing my application and my SOP. I only applied to schools with leveling programs (obviously) and bilingual emphasis. I learned in depth about how each program was unique and the interests of the professors in the dept. I tried to include those things in my SOP and my interview. 
Finally, don´t underestimate the importance of good letters of rec. You should be cultivating those relationships now. Pick your recommenders wisely and strategically. 
I hope all that made sense and was at least a bit helpful. I´ve got more of my ramblings on my blog if you´d like to look them over. 
Best of luck! 
 
 
 

I love that question!
One thing is really think about if you would go to a school if you were accepted there. It sounds silly, but hear me out. 
When you´re applying, you´re a mixture of desperate and day-dreamy. You´re thinking, "I want to be an SLP so badly I´d do anything and move anywhere!" and you´re also thinking, "I´ll get a great job with a good salary after. I want to dream big" and you sort of throw pragmatism to the wind. SO, I applied to 6 schools that perfectly fit my profile. Two of them are private and crazy expensive. I knew the chance of getting financial aid would be pretty much zero. But while I was applying, I just told myself, "Get in first... pay for it later..." 
So, when I got my acceptances, and I really looked at the price tag I thought... there´s no way I´d be willing to accept this much debt. It was pointless applying there because $100,000 of debt was not acceptable to me. "Pay for it later" was a bad mentality that lead me to wasting around $200 in application fees plus paying to send 10 transcripts, and 2 GRE scores. So... about $300+ dollars total were wasted. I should have put that money towards schools I would have realistically considered attending. 
Hope that helps! 

The SLP program at the University of New Mexico is very LGBTQ friendly, in my experience. I'm gay and totally open about it in my grad program. My husband regularly stops by the department or comes to events with me, classmates/faculty/staff ask about him (the way they would ask about any other spouse/significant other). I feel totally comfortable discussing it if it is relevant to a class discussion (i.e., "oh my husband's cousin is on the autism spectrum and...") There are several "safe zone" flags or stickers on faculty office doors. In our clinic we provide voice feminization services to the transgender community (I heard through the grapevine, but I can't verify this, that a few years ago one student was assigned to work with the voice fem group in clinic and asked not to because it went against "her beliefs"; the department chair explained kindly that she needed to act like a professional and provide quality care to her client or she wouldn't be able to graduate from our program). I have several LGBTQ classmates (some who are as you said, "obviously not straight"). This has been my experience both in my academic department and on the campus as a whole (getting health insurance for us both through my assistantship, student family housing, student health center, campus gym, etc). 
I think it is worth mentioning that I find New Mexico very comfortable with diversity in general. Racially/ethnically it is a "minority is the majority" state. 
Apart from the academic department and UNM campus, my partner and I feel pretty good about being a gay couple in Albuquerque. My husband is out at his job (mentioned it casually in the interview even); we've not had any issues holding hands, etc in public. Now don't get me wrong and think Albuquerque or all of NM is a paradise - it has issues (drugs, crime, etc), but we've found it to be a very accepting place for us. 
As you're looking at schools, you might google the university name and "safe zone" or "LGBTQ Ally list" or something like that. If you can't find it, see if the school has an LGBTQ or multicultural resource center that you can contact about it. Here's the one from my university: http://lgbtqrc.unm.edu/out-and-ally-list.html as an example. Many schools maintain a list like this. If you find it, see if you can search for faculty in your intended department. 

It's pretty obvious I'm not straight. ? Does anyone know of any schools with really accepting programs? My undergraduate program had a few bigoted professors who made things difficult. If you're in a program that's LGBT friendly, please let me know!

I think @bibliophile222 got it exactly right! 

In a research paper you would want to type out the whole thing first, then put the acronym in parentheses and use the acronym in the rest of the paper, like so: "I have wanted to be a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) since..." They'll like it if you follow the APA style!

@AnnaB70 I did four classes online through Utah State University (I wrote about my experience on my blog too), and I liked it a lot. They were the MOST organized online classes I'd ever taken - seriously. And I got several admissions offers. I applied to schools that would let me finish the rest of my leveling courses as part of my masters. I'd be happy to tell you more about my experience at USU or at UNM where I'm in grad school. Feel free to PM me or email me through my blog

I hired a coach, mostly for editing purposes but she assisted with a few other aspects of the process as well. Feel free to message me if you want to know more about it! 

From past experience narrated by friend, consultancies do not really help much. They basically key in information that you give them. As for the essays, they mostly follow templates that they have - most universities would be able to recognize the exact consultancy each candidate comes from. 
Instead, it really helps to begin early and write out multiple iterations of your essays. Get your friends and professors to read through and give you comments! 

"Since these languages may be responsible for some English errors a child has"
Let's all remember that dialectical differences are not errors.
You could base the targets off their dialect so to see if their production is considered accurate in AAE.

Hi Lily, 
I would say forget rankings - they're kind of meaningless in the job market; During observations I did before grad school, I saw clinicians from top programs working in the same hospital with clinicians from "all the other" ranked programs. Even if you decide to go on in academia, they don't mean much.
I think cost is a big consideration - probably the biggest. I interviewed probably about half-a-dozen SLP's and they all told me to go to the most affordable school. While others clearly disagree, I think an extra $23,000 is a huge amount of money to be paying off in debt. That's a new car or two... or a down payment on a house!  
I'm also interested in bilingualism and multiculturalism. I was lucky that my most affordable school also had an emphasis in bilingualism/multiculturalism. I'm sorry that didn't align so nicely for you. Don't worry - you can pick up that extra training in other ways. Maybe there are classes in the education or special ed (or even other!) departments at both universities on multiculturalism. You can take them as an elective. You're going to do Continuing Ed. credits for the rest of your career. I think TC Columbia offers their bilingual program as a certificate you can do separate from the graduate program. There are posters and presentations at ASHA every year (I'm applying now to present one!) on multiculturalism. The books and articles on topics of interest are available to you. 
Finally, in my program I haven't even taken one of the special "bilingual/multicultural" assessment or development classes and I've already learned a ton about those topics. During your "regular" classes on assessment, intervention, etc - you should be covering these issues because they're kind of an inherent part of what we do. I ask questions about diverse populations all the time in classes not labeled "multicultural." When you get to chose a topic for an in-class research project, select something about "bilingual assessment" and you'll be reading the same literature / articles / journals as someone in a program with a "bilingual emphasis." 

First, my credentials. Well. I can spell my own name, though I don't usually know exactly how old I am. I'm within a year or two, but I'm usually wrong until I've done some subtraction. I teach composition and like to write calculus equations on the board when I take classes in poetry writing. But, here's my real credentials: consider what is written herein in conjunction with what the various instructions on SOPs that you've read have said, with the requirements the program you are applying to has put forth, and with your own experience as a writer. Do you think I know what I'm talking about? Should you pay any attention to it? Is any of it useful?
 
Second, I'm not going to give you a formula for what the standard SOP is like, or a list of things the various thousands of admissions committees will be looking for. There are plenty of prescriptions on the internet, many of them written by professors who have presumably gotten sick of badly written SOPs.
 
Third, I'm not promising that SOP writing be easier after this. It'll be harder, actually. I'm not promising that you'll get in to any place you desire, or that there is any one best thing to put in the SOP to get noticed. That would be totally impossible. Each discipline has its own needs and values, as does each university, each department, and each faculty member on the admissions committee (adcomm). There is no one size and it doesn't fit most, let alone all. There are conventions (use Standard English, for one), but other than include your research interests, I won't advocate that any one thing is strictly necessary. I leave that up to the more knowledgeable.
 
The advice:
 
First thing is to deeply understand that you should write an SOP for each program. Most people take this to mean write one master SOP and then tweak as necessary to make the one SOP applicable to each university (U of A becomes U of B, Professor X becomes Professor Y). You can do that. You can be very successful doing that. You most likely, really shouldn't do it.
 
The next thing to understand is the SOP's purpose. Why do the adcomms want to see SOPs? Shouldn't transcripts, letters of recommendation, and a writing sample do it? After all, transcripts and samples show the actual scholarship and the letters verify it. The SOP isn't for showing scholarship off, or to act like a resume, or anything. So why do the adcomms want an SOP? Why are the SOPs one of those make-it-or-fail things? What is the SOP's purpose? In job hunting terms, the SOP is like a cover letter. The cover letter is to make clear connections between the resume and the job ad. For you, its primary purpose is to make the adcomm offer you admission with full funding. For the adcomm, its primary purpose is to help them see how you would fit into their program (make connections between their program and you). By fit, I mean do they have faculty (or enough faculty) in your area of research interest that can advise, mentor, supervise, and/or committee you through the program to get your degree? Do you have the kind of understanding of the discipline, your research interests, and their program that would make you successful? Do they have something to teach you? Offer you? What can you offer them? They want to brag on you as much as you want to brag about them. If they offer you admission, will you be a good scholar? A good student? Here is the most basic question the SOP should answer: What is it about you that makes you a better prospect than everyone else who's applying?
 
Understanding the SOP's purpose, in practical terms, means that you will know what to put into it and what to leave out of it. And how to phrase it.
 
So, with the purpose in mind, there comes the question: what should you put into it and leave out of it? What format should you use? (MLA? APA? Is footnoting okay?! What about citation?!) Should I stick in a personal story that everyone seems to recommend, except for the half that don't? My research interests? The story about why I got on F in that one, very important class? I'm not going to answer those questions because I can't. Every discipline and department is different. I will give you an answer you won't like: research. Find out the requirements each program you're interested in has for the SOP, think of the SOP's purpose: and now research.
 
Research is one of the basic keys to writing an SOP. It's no different than the writing sample you'll be including in your application packet. For each program you apply to, do some research. How much research you need to do depends on a lot of things, the least of which is your personality. More research does not automatically mean a better SOP. Less research doesn't automatically mean a better one, either. What makes the right amount of research? The ability to craft an SOP that is specific for the program that you're getting into. Here's some ideas (not an exhaustive, inclusive list of what to do) on what to research:
The program itself. Look at the recent graduates and, if possible, read their theses and/or dissertations, at least in part. The acknowledgements can give you an idea about the program's culture. The introduction can give you an idea about what kind of scholarship the program produces and expects. It will also, and this is very important, give you an idea as to how the program uses language. If you speak to them in their own language, that helps your case. You've likely done this, if not, seriously, you should have done this. Look at the program's website and read it all. What kind of classes are offered for both undergrad and grad. Who are the faculty, the tenured, the assistant, the visiting, the emeritus, and the graduate students. What kind of ties to the community (both academic and their local town) do they like to talk about? Do they talk about how their graduate students are working with community partners? Do they host conferences? What happened at the last one? This gives you a taste of the program's culture. The faculty. All of them that might be on the adcomm and the ones that are relevant or somewhat relevant to your interests. Crack open JSTOR etc. and search for recent faculty publications. If you're basing your interest on a faculty member on the interests they've got listed on the site and a reference to them in an article from a decade ago, or worse, only their reputation, you don't have a strong basis to establish clear reasons why they have anything to offer you. Read their recent publications, see who they name drop in terms of theory, other faculty, and so on. Make a list of what each faculty member can offer you in terms of research, not just the ones that are directly related to it. If you're into studying apples, but Dr. V works with oranges, think about how Dr. V's work might help you out. Take notes when you research. Each program has a bunch of people, and you're likely applying to multiple programs. It's easier to refer to notes than to go back and look it up all over again. What's happening in the field with your current research interests, if necessary. This is so you can situate your research interests in the discipline, and then situation your research interests in the program. You can just tell them what you're research interests are and leave the situating to them, but you can lose that chance to sell yourself as the best amongst the rest. Research you. Yup. You. Scribble out some lists or paragraphs or whatever that inventories you. Who are your influences? Who are the theorists you keep coming back to? Who are the theorists you loathe, mock, and/or ridicule? What are your research interests in general and specifically and anywhere in between? Some SOPs will need to be more general, some will need to be more specific. Length restrictions, what you found out about the program, the faculty, the state of the discipline, and so on, can alter this for you. What kind of scholar are you? Student? What's the difference? How do you manage your time? Stress? Health? Do you expect to bring your dog? Do you have health issues? Do you have any academic things that are a negative? If you do, how negative are they? It's easy to see that as an either it's entirely bad, or it's somewhere in the huge good category, but some things are negatives that need to be addressed for certain programs, while other negatives can be ignored, or you should discuss with the one relevant letter writer so they can address it. While Sam ultimately received a C in the Research Methods course, the grade doesn't reflect the actual scholarship as Sam fell ill during the mid-term and consequently failed it; my course policies do not permit re-taking the test. What are the good things about you? Not just the grades, awards, publications, and presentations, but also the character traits. What are you weaknesses? Don't do the job interview baloney, my greatest weakness is my perfectionism. Of course, the important, probably ought to be on the SOP questions: why grad school? What will you do with the degree you want? Why are into the research you're into? Why that particular school? Why are you worth admission and funding?
 
Research the assistanceships. Some SOPs will want you to write a bit about teaching or research with assistanceships in mind. So, do a bit of research on what these entail in the programs you're looking at. What do they do and how do they get it? Have you done assistanceships in the past? If so, what were they like? Do you have a teaching philosophy? If not, make one. Have you done anything that can be discussed in terms of the assistanceship? I taught kung-fu to white belt children, so I have teaching experience. I was part of the state herpetological society and went out to help them with their field counts twice a year. I learned that licking petrie dishes is always a bad idea, no matter how much they resemble pistachio ice cream.
 
Research SOPs. You're doing that, right? Go on to forums (like this one) and read the SOPs people have posted and then read the responses. Look particularly at SOPs in your discipline or related disciplines. Psychology might look at other social sciences. Physics might tell the joke about the Higgs Boson and Sunday mass. Bear in mind that the people responding to and/or criticizing the posted SOPs are likely not on an adcomm. Some have been  or will be, but it's not likely they'll be on the adcomm you're hoping will like you best. However, you can start to get a sense of what SOPs are like. What format is it in? Does yours look like everyone else's? Do you have the exact same opening sentence as half of the people hoping to get into a program in your discipline? I've always wanted to be a librarian since those wonderful, summer days I spent in my (relative of choice)'s home library. 
 
So, to take stock. First, understand the purpose. Second, research. A lot. Let the purpose of the SOP guide your research efforts.
 
Next, get the specific requirements for the SOP from each program. Make a list of similarities. If they all ask for a statement of your research interest, score! One sentence fits most! Most of them will be of different lengths and will have different ideas of what specific information they want. Most won't tell you enough, aside from length and one or two "should have" things. They mostly won't tell you if you should use APA or if you should footnote, or how to format it. Single space? Double space? They will tell you whether it should be on paper or what kind of file format to use. I have only one suggestion: consistency. Okay, two suggestions: unless otherwise specified, don't include anything other than the SOP. No bibliography or footnotes. If you quote or paraphrase someone, cite them in the text the way they do it in the average newspaper article. As Scooby says, "Ruh-roh!"
 
Now, start writing. Create something of a master SOP, or a set of master sentences for the SOPs. Some things should be in every one of them, like what your research interests are. Because length requirements are different for each program, you should work out more than one sentence or set of sentences for each thing you plan to put into more than one SOP. Have a more detailed explanation of your research interests and a more concise one. Even though this might be central and, perhaps, most important to the SOP, you don't want most of a short SOP taken up by one thing. Make these sentences do extra duties. If they can explain not only why you're into what you're into, but also why it's significant to the discipline/program, and how the program factors into it, bonus! The more functions one sentence can serve, with clear, readable logic, the more room you have in the length requirements to bring in other things. Think of this master SOP as more of a set of sentences you can hang on the individual SOP's unique structure. A flesh and skeleton metaphor can work here. You can order all SOPs at this point, you'll probably want to put research interests in the middle or toward the end, rather than in the first sentence, but the key here is that the skeleton of the individual SOP and most of its flesh will come from the needs of the program you're writing it for, not from some predetermined formula. No generically applicable, master SOP that has a few tweaks here and there.
 
Here's the thing. The SOP is one of the most important documents you'll write in your life. It's not something that should be done in a few hours, after looking at the program website and spending some time on the net searching for a how-to-write-an-SOP-guide. It takes work backed by research. The readers can tell quite easily how much research you've done on them by the way you structure and write your SOP. They can tell if you're sending out a generic SOP to several programs because it will be too general. You can't change faculty names in and out, along with a detail or two that makes it seem tailored to the program. The individual SOP should be tailored from the beginning. Some sentences won't change much, so you can pre-write them. But how they fit into each SOP, the reasoning you'll use to try to convince the adcomm that you're the best applicant, and the perspective you'll take all the way to the words you use should be done with the program in mind. It shouldn't be generic. Even if it doesn't seem noticeably generic to you, that doesn't mean that the adcomm won't notice it. They read many, many SOPs every year. People who read SOPs develop a sense about the generic, the cut and paste work.
 
How to name drop gracefully, or bring up the theory and histories and whatnot you're working with when there's only a teeny amount of space for everything? That's a bit easier than it might seem. It's not in the explanation; it's in the usage. If you can use the relevant theories and people and methodologies correctly in a sentence, you don't have to show the adcomm that you know how to use them, or how they're related, by explaining it. Trust them to have enough education to make a few connections for themselves when it comes to the discipline. Example: Novels such as Twilight exemplify how Marxist alienation can be applied to childbirth. My research interest lies in the alienation of women from the product of delivery in Modernist American fiction, such as Faulkner's Sound and the Fury. (Huh, I wonder if that would really work?) Two sentences and I've referenced theory, period, history, relevance for today, and some methodology (it's literature, not science). Use it, don't explain it.
 
If possible, have a professor you know read the SOP to your preferred school and give you some advice. They know more than most other groups of people. If not possible, your current university's writing center can help, or other people who are familiar with the field, or with writing. Your high school English teacher or your English major buddy can probably say something about your grammar, but might not be as helpful as expected. Example, in English, the convention is to speak of historical people in present tense. Shakespeare writes, "To be or not to be," because he thinks it is the question. History has kittens. Shakespeare has been dead for centuries, he can't write! Past tense! Shakespeare wrote, "To be or not to be," because thought it was the question. Someone in the field is preferable!
 
Finally, a word about my real credentials. The adcomm is going to do to your application what you've just done with this post. They are going to judge your credentials (your ethos, trustworthiness, veracity, credibility, knowledge, and so on) based on the impressions they get of you from what you've written. So, be knowledgeable about you, your field, and the program, and use that knowledge well.

What a great idea! 
One thing I'm curious about is applying for financial aid. In undergrad I know that FAFSA was filled out based upon our parent's finances. Is it the same or is it different for grad school? What if I've been working for a few years before applying to grad school?  
Thanks!
 
 

I have noticed a lot of people struggle with writing their personal statement / letter of intent. It is a weird piece of writing that most people have never done before. One thing I've heard multiple people say is, "I've never even read one before..." To help I'm putting together some example personal statements to share as a download on my blog. Is anyone willing to share theirs so I can include it in the download? It would really help because writing lots of examples myself is a slow process, haha. 
I am a little worried about people taking them and using them as their own (although I hope no one is stupid enough to do that). I think part of the answer to that worry is that just because a personal statement was part of one person's successful application doesn't mean it will work elsewhere. Each set of circumstances is unique. 
Anyway, I hope I can count on a few people to help out! Send me a private message and I'll share my email 

I asked the same thing back when I started my SLP program, so interviewed someone who had just finished and got some advice: http://www.thespeechblog.com/tips-for-grad-school-success/  He was in a situation very similar to mine. Maybe you could find someone in a situation like yours and speak with them?

I have noticed a lot of people struggle with writing their personal statement / letter of intent. It is a weird piece of writing that most people have never done before. One thing I've heard multiple people say is, "I've never even read one before..." To help I'm putting together some example personal statements to share as a download on my blog. Is anyone willing to share theirs so I can include it in the download? It would really help because writing lots of examples myself is a slow process, haha. 
I am a little worried about people taking them and using them as their own (although I hope no one is stupid enough to do that). I think part of the answer to that worry is that just because a personal statement was part of one person's successful application doesn't mean it will work elsewhere. Each set of circumstances is unique. 
Anyway, I hope I can count on a few people to help out! Send me a private message and I'll share my email 

My tip is to find a niche and dive deep through research (do a thesis project) and extra certifications. "Medical" is a pretty wide term that includes the entire lifespan and scope of disorders SLP's cover.  If you're willing to do a thesis project under a professor, 1) you'll probably make tons of connections on your own. I've had classmates do thesis projects related to aphasia and dysphagia in adults and they end up doing heavy recruiting and spending lots of time in hospitals. It is a great way to make connections. 2) That professor may be willing to "show you the ropes" on how to break into those areas. 3) You'll become quite an expert on the topic and sort of "prove yourself" as committed to that area. Finally, don't feel like you HAVE to be an expert when you interview. One of my SLP mentors told me she worked several years in schools and clinics before landing a great job at a hospital. She said that in her interview they asked about her variety of experience and she was honest, "I need to brush up on ____" but she still got the job. 
Other advice, listen to the professors and clinical instructors who are advising you. Many of them had (or still have!) long and varied careers before working at the university level. 
Finally, I'd say remember that it takes a bit of time. You're not going to land your dream job right out of school. It may take a few years to work your way up. Start in a SNF to get some good hard skills and experience. Be willing to move or have a long commute if it means you're learning invaluable skills. 
 

Your SLP major is awesome!! It is way better than mine (2.9 overall 3.2 major) and I was accepted to 2 schools  I agree with @mcamp. Definitely apply to schools that look at the last 60 units or focus on your major gpa. It is great that you are willing to move for school, because there are schools all over the country that take students with your stats. You'll just need to do some research, ASHA edfind is a great resource. 
Your variety of volunteer work is great, but are they SLP specific experiences? Do you shadow the SLP at the veterans home and pediatric hospital? If so, highlight those experiences in your letter of intent. If not, I would see if there was a way to volunteer with a SLP in those settings. Hands on experience is a major plus!! 
I personally think if you know your work/volunteer supervisors will write a better LOR than your professors, ask them to do it. I worked as an ABA therapist in a special education class and asked the teacher to write me one. I volunteered with a SLP in a clinic for a year, she also wrote me one. My last LOR was written by a professor I volunteered with but I did not take any of his classes. I had 2 professors agree to write me a LOR but I did not have a relationship with them and I wasn't exactly a memorable student. I figured their LORs would be very general. However, if a school requires that you provide LORs from professors then I would follow those instructions. 
You can do it, it is very possible for you! There is hope. Don't let your overall GPA hold you back. Good luck!

Wow @momoftwo! I have met several SLPs who started in your shoes. I know an SLP who now owns a clinic and employs over 100 SLPs, OTs, and PTs, and she had a tough time getting into graduate school because of her accent. But she started just like you - as a mother of a child who needed SLP services. I think SLPs like her (and soon-to-be-SLPs like you!) have a unique perspective that really enhances the education of others in the classroom. Obviously you don't have to have a child with a disability to become a therapist, but understand family perspectives is a huge part of what we do as SLPs. It's 1/3 of our evidence based practice! 
There is a huge need and interest in pediatric feeding specialists in our field. I think with your experiences you could craft an amazing application. I'm no expert, but I'd be willing to help if I can! I'll send you a private message on here with my email.