Best clinically-focused universities

[estel]

Hi all! I'm having trouble narrowing down my search for grad schools. My advisor has told me that the highly-ranked schools are ranked highly based on their research funding, which indicates that the "top schools" are more research-focused than clinically-focused. Does anyone have recommendations of strong clinical programs? I can relocate anywhere in the US. I'd like to do medical or hearing-related clinical work.

 

My stats:

GPA: Undergrad (Linguistics) 3.90 (last 2 years 4.0), postbac (CSD) 4.0

GRE: 166V/164Q/5.5W

Experiences: Lots of experience working with kids, worked at a summer camp for people of all ages on the autism spectrum, lots of unrelated extracurriculars, wrote a senior thesis for linguistics, did a summer research internship in psychology, worked as a linguistics TA, did some shadowing last year and will do 25 hours this spring.

 

Any recommendations on strong clinical programs? Am I a strong applicant? Thanks so much!

[DogLover123]

Hi! I’m currently attending ASU’s graduate program. They are ranked about #17 nationally, I believe. I have to say that a lot of our clinical faculty have they’re masters or are there just to focus on clinic and are not doing research. They care about you so much and want to grow you into a clinician. That’s why they are there. Because it is in Tempe there are many medical focused options across the San tan valley. You do a 5 week rotation in addition to clinic, where you follow a medical SLP. Which is a really cool experience. They also have a hearing supervisor who I am under now. She has a a group of clients, kids and adults, with different varying levels of hearing loss. Some of them even use sign language. I didn’t even know this was a population we could work with but it has been an amazing experience. They also do a hearing loss Summer camp during the summer semester. I think it’s worth looking into. They only downside may be the heat. If you have any other questions feel free to ask or direct message me. 

[bibliophile222]

I dont necessarily agree that if a school is more research-oriented then the clinical experience isn't as good. I'm sure it's possible, but I feel like the culture and values of the program and connections with off-campus placement sites also has a lot to do with it. I'm at UVM, which is ranked in the top 50 and therefore fairly research-oriented, but I've also had great clinic experiences to date. Some of our professors are also clinical supervisors, but we also have other supervisors that don't focus on research. Our clinic director does not have a Ph.D but does have 15+ years of experience in a variety of settings.

Our program also places a high priority on students evaluating the clinical supervisors. I think they really take our feedback to heart and weed out off-campus supervisors who get negative feedback. I've heard a lot of horror stories about terrible supervisors but mine have all been good.

[futurespeechpath1]

Looking at your signature I think all the schools you've chosen aside from SXU are research focused! Rush and Northwestern are also great for that too!