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2nd year Dal Student

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  1. 2nd year Dal Student
    Hello, so I have heard it is technically possible! But not easy. I haven't heard anyone in the last few years do it. So first semester, all the classes are the same, but second semester 4 out of 5 are the same. I am not sure how that would affect trying to make the switch after the first year. At the start of the school year I would recommend talking to a professor, perhaps Janet or the director of the program Dr. Kiefte. You can either speak to them directly or have one of your class reps or presidents ask as well if you'd like to remain anonymous. I would like to note though, every instance of this I have heard from the faculty, it's always someone from Speech wanting to transfer to Audio ahaha. But all in all, I dont think transferring is a 100% sure thing from my understanding but still a possibility and although not all too often, has been done.
  2. 2nd year Dal Student
    Congrats on your acceptance! Partway through the summer, the president of the student council will be making an official fb group that you will use for communication for your entire degree. In the meantime, I do highly encourage you make some sort of chat so you can start connecting with others! Starting the program can be super daunting, walking into a room of almost 40 people may give you major (undeserved) imposter syndrome. Many of my classmates have said they were either grateful they met up with a few people before classes started for a friendly face or wish they did since the first few classes were scary for them socially. But either way of course, we all became very close and comfortable around each other
  3. 2nd year Dal Student
    There are definitely 13 for audiology, I am not too sure how many SLP spots, but likely around 25
  4. 2nd year Dal Student
    Hi everyone, here are some Dal admission updates: 22 seats have been confirmed. I am not confident in the number of total seats, I think it's around 37 or 38 for SLP and audiology together. There are 10 people who have been offered admission but have not responded though, the deadline to do so is tomorrow. Janet will likely be sending out another round of offers next week. There is still hope! And just to repeat some advice I recommended earlier: in the meantime, stay busy, spend time with friends and family, enjoy your hobbies, foster the side of you outside of these applications because you are wayyyy more than what these universities decide
  5. 2nd year Dal Student
    Dal reserves half of its seats for Maritimers! I was stressed since a lot of schools do that, but as someone from ontario, I still got in!
  6. 2nd year Dal Student
    I agree! Also, many organizations beyond grad school collect this information as a way to collect stats on who is applying. I cant imagine a grad school would have a specific quota for bisexual people, especially when there can be much improvement in equity and inclusion in the programs (This is a common perspective among my classmates, as a second year audio student). To the OP SoaringSLP is replying to, I am sure that you are feeling frustrated and looking for reasons that may justify what you perceive to be unfair, but it is not appropriate to direct that frustration to a marginalized community. This is also a good point. Non-diverse classes can negatively impact the entire profession and diversity helps us best support our patients. For example, during the newcomer sceenings, my SLP middle eastern classmate was able to speak Arabic to the Syrian refugee children, which helped them feel more comfortable and open up. My queer classmates are passionate about gender-affirming health care and are interested in voice therapy for transgender clients. My friend who is of Pakistani descent automatically knew how to pronounce a patient of similar descent's name, and I could see how the patient smiled with familiarity and relief. It's cheesy but its true, although programs have a long way to go in terms of equity and equal representation, I've seen myself the positive impact of how diversity improves the quality of our care
  7. 2nd year Dal Student
    Hey everyone, current 2nd year Dal student here! First and foremost, I know you all worked incredibly hard for this and I'm super proud of you all 😄 Im crossing my fingers for you! Here is some info on what acceptances were like, at least 2 years ago: Dal students got their acceptances all throughout the summer, often with no warning. One of my friends got accepted 2 weeks before the program started. TWO of my classmates got accepted to Western while we were still in class during the first week of school ahaha. So it seems that there was a lot of movement on the waitlists. Unfortunately, I know that at Dal last year, there was no movement on the waitlist. Everyone who was offered a position accepted. However, I dont know when they got their acceptance, I just heard that from the faculty. I know this waiting time absolutely positively sucks. It's stressful not knowing what your life is going to be like in just a few months and you've put SO much of yourself into these applications. I have two pieces of advice: 1) stay busy, stay distracted, and cultivate other aspects of your life outside of school so that even if you dont get accepted, you can more easily recognize parts of your identity outside of being a prospective SLP student. Because remember, you are more than these applications! You are a full human being and acceptances are important, but they do not define you. 2) This will likely be unpopular: while youre waiting on a response do not ask people who were accepted their scores. Their scores do not effectively give you any indication if you will be accepted or not and what you are most likely doing is comparing yourself to the top of the class. Certain schools may lean more heavily on certain aspects of an application, but they do consider apps holistically. Schools don't send out acceptances linearly by going down sGPA and caspr scores, thats just not how it works. Plus, each school has a different criteria that we may have inklings but dont truly know what they look at. For example, I got immediately rejected from Mac (my sGPA was too low to even get an interview) yet I got an acceptance from U of T April 1st. I also got 3 waitlists, McGill, Western and Dal, yet I only got off the waitlist for Dal. There was NO way for me to have predicted these results if I compared my sGPA to other people I assure you. Trust me, I hate how schools leave you in the dark and you're just trying to get some sliver of info, but I assure you that it is not productive. Anyway, let me know if you have any questions about the Dal program, Im happy to help in anyway I can
  8. 2nd year Dal Student
    From my understanding, it depends if youre waitlisted. If not on the list, you may get a rejection earlier (like now or in the next few weeks). If you are, you will either get an acceptance throughout the summer. On Sept 14th, I got an email saying that the waiting list was finally closed and I think thats the latest you'll get a rejection
  9. 2nd year Dal Student
    SLP is around 24 students, Audio is 13! Total we were 37 I think Edit: I realized someone else already answered this question earlier. I cant delete posts so enjoy this repetitive info lol
  10. 2nd year Dal Student
    Hello! I applied to both Audio & SLP at Dal last year. I was accepted Audio on Mar 29th (exactly a year ago today ?). Im assuming its faster since there are significantly less applicants, not sure though. I didnt hear anything about my SLP app so I just assumed I was flat out rejected ahaha. But on April 20th, I was offered a seat! Talking to my classmates, several of them were taken off the waitlist throughout the summer. I believe the lastest was 2 weeks before class started in September. Interestingly, two of my classmates got accepted off of western's waitlist like mid september. They were literally sitting in lecture at Dal when they got the email and they were like "?" ahaha.
  11. 2nd year Dal Student
    Hey! Im in my first year at Dal right now! I applied to both the SLP and Audio program. With my sGPA of 3.81 on a 4.0 scale (calculated by ORPAS, not sure if Dal's is different), 20 hours of SLP experience and the majority of my CV experience not being SLP related (Tutoring, research assistant, peer mentor, swim instructor etc.) I also didnt write a thesis. I got accepted to the Audio program and was waitlisted for SLP and eventually got in. From my experience, since most people are applying to the ontario schools, there is so much more info on what they are looking for. Tbh, even though I got accepted into both programs, idk exactly what they look for ? From what I gathered though, I was a stronger applicant than many others in my class. I dont know their exact stats since its a bit tacky to ask lol. But I know for a fact Dal dont care about what program we took (we have such a diverse crew, one of the may things I love about Dal) or care if youre not going straight from undergrad. We range from early 20s to early 30s. My advice is unfortunately pretty generic and basic: have diverse experiences (whether or not SLP and highlight how they can relate to SLP related skills), emphasize experiences that taught you diverse and inclusion, try to come off as a really well-rounded person by being both smart and good with people. Thats all I have from the top of my head!
  12. 2nd year Dal Student
    To add to what people have already said, the only places that I have HEARD based on this forum (so limited sample), the only places that have accepted a sGPA under 3.7 is UBC and Alberta. The people who have said this tended to have hundreds of volunteer hours, maybe a CDA degree. But be warned, they, by policy/law, reserve half of their seats for people who are from their provinces. So if you are from else where, you may be at a disadvantage as youre competing for half of the spots.
  13. 2nd year Dal Student
    My profs were really nice and willing to write one even though I didnt know the well! So for one I kinda talked to a few times because I helped tutor some kids in the class, so we chatted a bit though didnt really talk about academic stuff and I was never her student. But the other is a woman I had never talked to before in my life before asking for a reference lol. It was online, I never turned my camera on or spoke in class. I asked if she would write me a reference and she agreed! For both profs, I provided them with key traits relevant to the profession I wanted to highlight, my CV and the due dates. All in all, I dont think that its super important for you to have a relationship at all with the profs, esp if theyre sweet and just want their students to succeed. I was super worried bc I thought it was the weakest part of my application, but I applied to 7 schools total and got 4 acceptances, so it must've been enough!
  14. 2nd year Dal Student
    I took it last year! My biggest piece of advice is learn how to say formally and academically, "I dont know, here are some options to find out." I found for most of the prompts, there was no clear solution and I felt stressed and inadequate lol. My biggest regret isnt preparing how to say, "comfort them, we can google the answer, we can ask a professional, do more research." Try to make that sentence as specific to the situation as possible! After taking the test, my take away from the casper is trying to see if you have empathy, if you can admit you dont know whats going on and ability to generate possible solutions. I bought a study book, bought an online module and watched a few youtube videos. I do think that if I just watched the youtube videos, that would've been more than enough to prepare me.
  15. 2nd year Dal Student
    I went to York, so I dont know how it works for McGill exactly. For York, I went to the online system and asked them to send my digital transcripts to dal. Dal Should have on their website what email to send it too!
  16. 2nd year Dal Student
    From my perspective, its better to shorten it! When I applied last year, I had a western SLP prof edit my SOI (I went to an open house, asked lots of questions and he offered). At first I said the full thing and later wrote SLP. He said "be consistent" so I changed them all to SLP. I dont have it listed in my signature, but I was accepted to Western Audiology right away and its the same admissions board for both programs, so I take it that was fine. I did the same with the school names, I called them UWO, U of T and Dalhousie. Now that I think about it, maybe that was a bit professional lol but I got accepted to all of them so I think its okay!
  17. 2nd year Dal Student
    I go to Dal and we dont have a full course on it but a few labs. So we had a session where we got into groups and were given a full brain and half a brain. Then we were given a packet and had time to try and identify features. A supervisor also went around and gave us more info. Then he took a brain and volunteer students were able to slice it if they wanted and he would show us the structures layer by layer. We had another larynx lab where we held and identified features of a trachea and that whole area, looking at the vocal folds and such. during these, we also got a glance at cadavers. I dont believe its mandatory and our professor really emphasized that he wanted everyone to feel okay and comfortable and to talk to him prior or during about any concerns.
  18. 2nd year Dal Student
    Nope! What I think I did was submit and pay and everything, and later sent in the documents. But also if you send documents before you submit your online form, thats fine too. I know right, I wish it was similar to ORPAS! Its a bit of a funny system ahaha
  19. 2nd year Dal Student
    Yes! I applied to 7 programs last year, 5 in SLP and 2 in Audiology. I had the same references write letters for both. There were some overlap between the two programs, but there were some sections that they had to write twice. So I let my references know and thanked them for that. Personally, my references didnt know me very well so I had to outline exactly what I wanted them to say. So I just did that for the additional paragraphs that they had to write. I hope it didnt add too much more work for them, but its not like they said no and in the end I got accepted to both programs!!
  20. 2nd year Dal Student
    HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR SGPA So this was a big stress for me since I wasn't sure how to do it before ORPAS calculated it for me, which unfortunately is a month after applications are due (around February). So I am creating this guideline for how to calculate it yourself and a screenshot of how ORPAS did mine. Disclaimer: this is me describing it to the best of my ability and I am pretty sure this is how it works, but I am in no way affiliated with ORPAS and not saying for sure this is correct. Use this as a guideline only!! Okay, here we go Pull up your transcript and make sure you have your grades and the length (one semester = 1.0 credit, 2 semesters = 2.0). Have this for over 20+ credits. Go to this website and convert each grade to their GPA form. Make sure you are using the appropriate column for your school! https://www.ouac.on.ca/guide/orpas-conversion-table/ Things get sticky if you didnt take a full course load every year, but have no stress. Lets say that you have calculated 17 credits so far and you need 3 more, except in one semester you took 4 classes. How do you choose what classes to calculate? What you do it convert the 4 classes into GPA form, average them (add together, divide by the amount there is). Now pretend that that average is its own "class" and its worth the remaining credits you need. In this example, it would be worth 3.0. In the screenshot below, I needed 11.0 (from my study abroad year, usually you wont need this many), so that is how much its worth. So now you should have a list of GPA and their length (i.e. 1.0, 2.0 etc). Next step, multiply the GPA with its weight. Ex: 3.7 worth 1.0 --> 3.7 x 1 = 3.7. 4.0 worth 2.0 --> 4 x 2 = 8 Now add those numbers together and divide by 20. This is finding the average. Taa daa! This should be your subGPA Here is how ORPAS calculated mine. Take note that I dont think the columns are the best organized. For example, Value = Length x GPA. Also, sGPA is Total Value / Length. Anyway, I hope this helps!!
  21. 2nd year Dal Student
    I use chrome and an ad blocker!! Super helpful.
  22. 2nd year Dal Student
    It depends on how your school reports grades on the transcript. Its great that youre using the conversion table, at the bottom is should tell you which column to use based on your school and that should answer exactly how to convert your 87. Just a note, if you arent already, make sure you are converting each course into their GPA form and then average that out. DO NOT take your percentage average then covert that one number.
  23. 2nd year Dal Student
    I believe they only calculate it after applications are due! Last year, ORPAS posted them in early February, like a month after apps were due.
  24. 2nd year Dal Student
    I cant say 100%, but I feel like they do nothing with it. When I applied last year, I found my prof's office address on campus from the atlas even though everyone was working from home and there didnt see to be any problems
  25. 2nd year Dal Student
    I second this ? I had a 3.81 sGPA, and as you can see, McMaster was the only school to outright reject me ? I was so sad when I didnt even make the cut off for the interview, esp since they said only the top 150 applicants get interviews. I was like "WHAT, are there even 150 SLP spots in canada???" But fear not, I did end up getting accepted to two other SLP programs!
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