MooseGoose2324

I can absolutely understand the "cheapest is best" perspective. It obviously makes great sense from a financial standpoint, and the burden of massive student loans can profoundly impact a graduate's quality of life for years (or even decades) to come. For many people, cost is the #1 priority and that is absolutely their prerogative. However...I can also say with 100% certainty that all programs are not the same, and that attending a more expensive program at a well-known national university has afforded me opportunities for educational/professional/clinical enrichment and research that smaller programs in the state simply do not have access to. Guest lectures from other local highly-prestigious university professors and researchers (e.g., MIT), interdisciplinary collaboration with our school's other medical/rehab programs, and classes/clinical experience that other local programs do not include in their curriculum at all (e.g., in-depth literacy classes taught by top researchers in the field and experiential literacy work) are some of the examples that come immediately to mind in addition to top-notch on-campus facilities. Every semester, students from my school and my state's other big-name schools are selected for the top competitive clinical placement slots over students from the smaller state schools who have interviewed. This is not because brilliant, hard-working students aren't attending these smaller, low-ranked programs (they absolutely are - in droves) Students from the bigger/better schools simply have more resume bullets because of the additional educational/clinical opportunities and our faculty/clinical supervisors are perhaps more well-known to the interviewers. For the record - I completed all of my pre-reqs at a smaller state school. Their program was great - I loved the faculty, and the classes I took were excellent. I'm not trying to insult smaller or less-funded programs by any means. I very nearly decided to attend that state school's grad program because I had enjoyed my pre-reqs so much. Because I was (very fortunately) in a financial position to be able to attend the much bigger, more highly-ranked program I had been accepted to (the living stipend actually made it more lucrative for me to go there as opposed to the much cheaper school), I elected not to. I began my grad school experience imagining that the education I was going to receive and resume bullets I would earn would be similar to those I'd have garnered from the state school. Over the past year, I have been utterly blown away by how incorrect I had been in that assumption. I am still in touch with several students who are now in two smaller/lower-ranked programs and our experiences thus far have been drastically different. For some, the price point is quite necessarily the most important factor - and grad school absolutely IS what you make of it (some people in my cohort skip the amazing guest lectures and don't jump on many of the opportunities/resources available to them - which is incredibly shortsighted, considering how much $$$ some of them are paying). I just wanted to share my experience to say that, as much as people may wish it were so, all programs are not regarded equally. Prospective students should weigh the pros and cons of each program (financially, educationally, clinically, professionally, personally) and determine what will be best for their specific situation, career goals and future. Nobody should be going into crippling debt for an education - but I do think that defaulting to "choose the cheapest program" is not necessarily the best approach, here.

There is a sub-reddit for SLP that might fit the bill perfectly... https://www.reddit.com/r/slp/?

Is anybody else on pins and needles waiting for our first semester of grad school to start? I am going nuts…I've already gotten everything ready for orientation, ordered my books and read/re-read all of the info I've already been sent by my program about a billion times. This final week of waiting is killing me (we don't start until Sep 6th)! I'm a weird bundle of nerves and excitement. Is anybody else kind of freaking out? I feel like a little kid, haha. Also - I know this has been brought up before in these forums - but does everybody have an outfit picked out for their first day of orientation? My program's handbook has a section stating that they require business-casual for any time spent in the campus clinic/external clinical placements but they do not require it for regular class attendance. I'm thinking for orientation it'd be best to err on the side of caution and go business-casual to make a pleasant first impression? Anybody have similar concerns or thoughts?