caterpillar

My husband did, back in 2014 - see signature.

I know my husband would be happy to answer questions, feel free to PM me.

When we moved to AR, I emailed a ton of rental agencies in the April prior and gathered a list of people who said they'd accept student loans as income. Then in June, I went back through all their listings, found a place that was for rent about a month out, and applied for it. We were lucky that they were willing to hold the unit for us without charging rent until August 1st, and all the lease signing/application was able to be done online. It worked out pretty well with a little bit of prep work in advance.

This was honestly kind of an issue for my husband. He made it through it (graduating in August!) but it was pretty isolating, especially because there was a pretty significant age difference between him and the rest of his cohort. Being excluded from cohort social events, either intentionally or unintentionally, was not a great feeling for him.

Probably. UCA had a significant increase in the number of students applying for fall 2015 as compared to previous years.

This is UCA's course sequence. I would be surprised if any SLP schools manage a full time 2 year program at 9 units or less per term. ASHA has a lot of requirements for them to meet.

Something else to consider when looking at places to apply is how they let you do your clinical placement. At UCA, your last two semesters (spring and summer) are 100% clinical placements in a school and then medical setting, but they let you do the placement anywhere in the country. We're not from Arkansas nor was it on the list of places I ever thought I'd find myself living, but the discomfort/challenges we've faced in living here have been easier to deal with because we know that in December, we're leaving the state for good. This wasn't something that was advertised on the website (my husband was notified partway through his first term) so it may be something you can email programs and ask about, if you find yourself having to choose between a less desirable location that's cheaper and one that you like better but is more expensive.

UCA, FHSU, and USM are all under $20k for out of state tuition.

Congratulations!! Let me know if you want any info about Conway or UCA, I'm happy to relay them to my husband.

This same scenario is ultimately the reason my husband chose UCA over FHSU. FHSU wasn't going to have funding information until after responses were due, so we went with the guaranteed money over the "maybe".

Disclaimer that I am not a POC so this is all speculative/born of what I learned from a Sociology minor, but: It could be a lot of things. As noted before, institutionalized racism is alive and well in America, and starts long before the admissions committee. There are lots of different ways that a POC can be disadvantaged prior to applying, many of them that directly impact probability of admission. And even if all other things are equal, there's still that possibility that the admissions committee can be swayed via unconscious (or conscious) racism. Twinguy also brings up a good point.

Anecdotally... my husband's observations of SLP undergrads (post-bacc or otherwise) is that it draws interest from a diverse range of people. At the graduate level, however, that diversity is much less obvious.

Fort Hays State's acceptance is a small letter.

We were in California too, and after being rejected from West Coast schools in his first year applying, decided to cast a wider net. Our thought process was "where DON'T people want to live?" and that's how we narrowed down the list of safety schools. Definitely Twinguy's point #2 was conclusion we came to, as well.

When my husband was accepted by the department (this was a CSDCAS app), he was then instructed to apply to the graduate school as a formality. So that meant another wait while we paid for the app fee and all his transcripts to be sent yet again and admission to eventually be granted. He was eventually given a list of the classes he was supposed to sign up for, I believe around May. He didn't get the department handbook until late June/early July. There was an orientation the week before classes were supposed to start. A lot of the information trickled out to him over the course of a couple months. Since all the classes he's supposed to take are only offered once a year and nobody gets the option of taking different classes than the rest of the cohort, there was no rush to get that information out so that people could register ASAP.