treaclemineroad

I got my letter from Dal confirming my SLP application is complete. Unfortunately, I was a dunce and did not notice that they want TWO transcripts per school, so they used the one transcript per school from my Audiology application to fulfill the SLP quota. Hopefully they will be chill about the other transcripts being late for Aud. Honestly I don't understand why they need two. Like, consider using a photocopier, maybe? I'm not made out of money. Don't mind me, I'm just grumping.

I'm in the same boat as you for both of my Dal applications (I applied to Aud too). I'm not too worried, I've seen in threads for past years that they tend to take a long time.

I don't know how CSDCAS posts a breakdown but I know that ORPAS has a publically available chart to show how GPA/subGPA is calculated, and they should email you in early February to tell you what they calculated. At least that was the case last year, according to the 2015 thread. I don't know firsthand. By the way, did you get all your LoR stuff sorted out OK?

Oh lord, that sounds ridiculously stressful. I hope everything gets sorted out for you soon. I can now attest that when you finally do get all your LoRs submitted, it is an amazing feeling of relief. My last reference person just finished uploading to Alberta and McGill, so I can finally breathe. I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.

Thanks! I think I'll do that too. Guessing can too easily lead to overestimating or underestimating one's GPA, esp. because apparently Alberta's system considers an A to be a 4.0? But I don't know whether to go by their system or not? So it's simpler just to let them come to their own conclusions based on the data. I am going out of my mind about these last LoRs. This last one, she's already submitted one of the letters, I don't understand what the hold-up is on the other two. Please just upload it so I can BREATHE. Calling to remind her is so awkward, too. I feel like I'm being a pest. [/whining]

I don't know if anyone will be answer this question yet since the U of Alberta deadline is still a ways off but -- I know that you can submit your application even if you've got outstanding LoRs, but does anyone know if you can still monitor the status of LoR receipt once your application is submitted? I'd like to get the submission out of the way like I have with all the other applications but I also want to be able to see whether my last outstanding LoR has been submitted yet.

For Ontario schools, it's $300 for the first school (+$100 for subsequent schools, but there are only 2 English-language SLP schools in Ontario, so at best that's still $200 each if you're an anglophone). Absolutely ridiculous, I backed out of that one quickly.

That is very sweet to say, thank you! Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good about the academic side of my stats. I've got volunteer hours in... I guess sort of tangentially related stuff, like day care supervision, tutoring, and other stuff with kids, but I don't know if that will count for anything. I'm feeling OK about it, but there are definitely more balanced candidates than me out there. Hopefully there will be a good variety of prospective students accepted (and, selfishly, I hope that includes me, heh). This advice is too late to benefit anyone applying this year, but maybe for people in future application years: in order to get that GRE score, I read "Cracking the GRE Premium Edition with 6 Practice Tests" back-to-front and practiced with Magoosh GRE Vocab flashcard apps on my phone. The former is really savvy about the weird, illogical aspects of the GRE and has a sense of humour about it, a pretty decent read.

I don't know this for certain but I'm fairly sure it's automated, I can't imagine they'd make it manual. One of my references submitted my letter pretty quickly after I made it available to him, like a couple of days. I'm game for this. I often end up being creepy in people's post history, trying to find their stats, so might as well make it easy. SubGPA: 3.99 GRE: V165/Q162/AW5.5 Volunteer/Work: ~20 hours volunteering with/job shadowing with SLPs, research assistant position with phonologist References: 2 academic references, both of which should be quite good; neither of them are thesis supervisors, although one is the phonologist for whom I worked as an RA. 1 professional reference from an SLP I volunteered with, which should be good as long as she gets it done in time (it's the only thing left outstanding on all of my applications). Schools Applied: Dalhousie, McGill, U of Alberta (also applying to audiology at Dal) Worries: I don't have a lot of volunteer experience. I'm also not on a thesis track for my major. Times Applied Previously: 0

I have submitted my McGill application. The CV does not have a required page count. And yes, once you have submitted, you'll be able to upload transcripts, your CV, as well as a course description of your stats prereq to proof that you have studied ANOVA.

No, sorry, I don't. You'd think it would be part of the first section but apparently not? Very strange.

I wondered whether maybe people who are usually inclined to this kind of discussion are just... referencing previous years' threads? I tend to check to see whether a question has already been answered on gradcafe before I ask here, and it usually has. Optimistically (or not, depending on how you look at it), it could also mean that there is, by some arbitrary happenstance, less competition this year. Or something else entirely, I dunno. I'd be up for discussion regardless, since it's all I've really been thinking about for the past while. Right now I'm just waiting on reference letters. It's so hard to leave my future in someone else's hands, I find it very difficult to restrain myself from checking up with my last pending reference every day. I don't want to be a pest, though. Argh :\ What is everyone's first-choice school? I've been eyeing Dal for ages but now I'm wondering whether McGill might be a better choice. Also, is anyone else also applying to audiology?

It seems like this thread is really dominated by ORPAS-related stuff this year. It's also fairly quiet. I decided to back out of my ORPAS application the other day just because it's 3x as expensive to apply to your first school in Ontario as it is to apply to any other Canadian school. (And I would only ever apply to U of T, since I've previously attended Western and it... did not agree with me, in short.) Kind of ridiculous, in my opinion. I wouldn't mind staying in Ontario, but I'm not so attached that I would pick U of Toronto over Dal or McGill. Did anyone else balk at that application cost? It was worth it for OUAC because there was a fair bit of choice, but when there's only so many SLP schools in Ontario, I just couldn't rationalize the price tag.

Ohh OK, cool. So US schools compute your GPA differently than Ontario does? And yes, I know, I wasn't trying to tag you. You're fairly active on this thread, so I figured you'd see my message

@OverCaffeinated, I'm not applying to any American schools so I don't have an answer for you (sorry) but I'm curious about your signature. What's the CSDCAS bit all about, if you don't mind me asking?

Oh OK, so you didn't get into the specifics (or did you?) of the funding, just the general categories? Hopefully that will work just fine. I hadn't run into that section of the U of A application because the U of A application is a bit more wieldy in general, doesn't make me fill out completely unrelated information in order to send out reference requests. Makes me give them some points, honestly. I hate it when universities have bad websites. It does seem bizarre to ask after scholarships this early, when a lot of scholarships are specific to the school you're attending. I can see how it would be important to know that we can pay for it, but at the same time, why does it matter where the money is coming from? Weird. Anyway, thanks! That makes me feel better about that section.

I've finally started tackling my applications properly now that Fall '15 finals are over, and I noticed that for Dalhousie, if you want to request references electronically, you apparently have to also enter information about how you intend to fund your graduate studies -- scholarships and loans, and so on. This seems kind of ridiculous. I definitely haven't already started applying for scholarship funding. Is this unusual? I wish there was a way of sending off my reference requests before getting funding sorted out, since I'd like to maximize the amount of time my references have to write something up.

I have the opposite problem, which makes me feel like a bit of a tool for even mentioning it -- my GPA is quite high but I haven't had as much time as I'd like to rack up volunteer hours. I'm just over the requirement for those schools (like Western, and... what is it, U of T?) who have a minimum volunteer hour requirement. Does anybody know which schools have a reputation for leaning harder on GPA than others? Also, anybody writing the GREs soon or have written them recently? I write mine on Thursday and, although I've studied, it's a bit of a question mark since I haven't done any real standardized testing since grade 9. I don't know how much Dalhousie and U of Alberta actually care about the GRE score, or even what's considered a "good" score

I am in the same boat as you, serendipity, my GPA is quite good if I say so myself (although I've never been able to pin down exactly what it is on the 4.0 scale -- overall GPA 11.80 and subGPA 11.90 on the 12.0 scale, which I assume is somewhere on the high end of 3.90-4.0? Possibly?) but I haven't got as much volunteer experience as I'd like, probably not much more than the minimum. Mostly TBI-related, mostly adults. I'd be interested to know which schools prioritize GPA over volunteer work, so I know where to concentrate my efforts, if anyone knows. Also haven't taken the GRE yet, although I'm... maybe not as stressed as I should be about that, to be honest. It sounds pretty straightforward to me. Just brush up on the math basics, take a bunch of practice tests, and there are plenty of testing dates before the admission deadlines. This thread is a bit funny so far, seems like everyone wants help and nobody can really be called an expert on the subject -- I want to help those who are asking for it but I don't know any better than you guys do. It's early yet, though. Hopefully we'll be able to assuage some of the stress as more information circulates. Does anybody know some general admission reputations for the various Canadian schools? As in, which schools are harder to get into, which schools prioritize which aspects of an applicant's application? I'm still trying to decide where I should apply. I'd love to go to Dalhousie, though. That's my no.1 choice.