2021 Canadian SLP Thread

[Wuglette]

3 minutes ago, nessiespeech said:

Hey guys! Does anyone know when McMaster usually starts sending out interview offers? 

Officially, I think they send them out March 2nd. But in last year's thread someone said that they received an MMI offer on February 19th. So hopefully we will hear from them soon!

[Wuglette]

Does anyone know anything about Ottawa's MMI process (when they hold their interviews and when they send out their interview offers)? 

[neuroling]

I realize there's no real 'formula' but does anyone know how heavily UAlberta and Dalhousie weigh the GRE? It is more of a pre-req or an actual consideration in admissions?

[JennSed]

47 minutes ago, neuroling said:

I realize there's no real 'formula' but does anyone know how heavily UAlberta and Dalhousie weigh the GRE? It is more of a pre-req or an actual consideration in admissions?

Hey, I wouldn't worry too much about the GRE at UofA. They don't weigh it very heavily - most people in the program right now with me did not do well on the GRE haha. I think they use it more to "weed people out" since a lot of people see that pre-req and don't end up applying there, so it reduces their applicants to people who will put in the extra effort.

[neuroling]

Hey guys! One more question -

does everyone have this scary (lol) red text on their UBC app? I took all of the pre-reqs as approved classes, so it didn't occur to me to upload anything in this area but I noticed that my application is still listed as 'in progress' because I don't have it. I'm just concerned that they won't consider me or something because I didn't upload something for all of the doc sections

[Wugs]

9 hours ago, neuroling said:

Hey guys! One more question -

does everyone have this scary (lol) red text on their UBC app? I took all of the pre-reqs as approved classes, so it didn't occur to me to upload anything in this area but I noticed that my application is still listed as 'in progress' because I don't have it. I'm just concerned that they won't consider me or something because I didn't upload something for all of the doc sections

I don't see this on mine -- but I did upload syllabi for my non-approved courses. Strange it's showing up for you if all yours are approved!

[neuroling]

26 minutes ago, Wugs said:

I don't see this on mine -- but I did upload syllabi for my non-approved courses. Strange it's showing up for you if all yours are approved!

Super strange! I went back through the application to check and I definitely followed their instructions - I dont think this is worth following up with them over so I guess its just a waiting game now

[s.slp]

On 2/10/2021 at 10:31 AM, Wuglette said:

On 2/10/2021 at 10:24 AM, nessiespeech said:

Hey guys! Does anyone know when McMaster usually starts sending out interview offers? 

Officially, I think they send them out March 2nd. But in last year's thread someone said that they received an MMI offer on February 19th. So hopefully we will hear from them soon!

Yes I found out about my interview on Feb 19th and I had until Feb 26th to accept or decline the offer. I was surprised because last year it also said we would find out on March 2nd.

Also I'm in my first year at UofA but I was also accepted at McMaster, Western, UBC, and Dalhousie so please feel free to send any questions you have! 

[Speechies22]

21 minutes ago, s.slp said:

Yes I found out about my interview on Feb 19th and I had until Feb 26th to accept or decline the offer. I was surprised because last year it also said we would find out on March 2nd.

Also I'm in my first year at UofA but I was also accepted at McMaster, Western, UBC, and Dalhousie so please feel free to send any questions you have! 

Congratulations on all those acceptances! Do you mind sharing your stats ?  

[s.slp]

19 minutes ago, Speechies22 said:

Congratulations on all those acceptances! Do you mind sharing your stats ?  

Thank you! And sure

Degree: BA (major linguistics, minor psychology)

SubGPA from ORPAS: 3.9 (I don't know my cGPA but it was definitely lower!)

GRE: Verbal reasoning - 163; Quantitative reasoning - 154; Analytical writing - 4.5

Volunteering: 4 summers with a stroke recovery group, 1 summer as the leader of an aphasia conversation group, small amount of volunteering with an SLP in a school, created AAC boards with an SLP in a hospital

Research: 3 years as a research assistant in a ling lab with 1 year as a field worker as well. (This was a paid position)

Other: had a second part-time job on campus related to community/school engagement so I made sure to include that aspect in my letters

Hope this help  

Edited February 11, 2021 by s.slp

[Speechies22]

17 minutes ago, s.slp said:

Thank you! And sure

Degree: BA (major linguistics, minor psychology)

SubGPA from ORPAS: 3.9 (I don't know my cGPA but it was definitely lower!)

GRE: Verbal reasoning - 163; Quantitative reasoning - 154; Analytical writing - 4.5

Volunteering: 4 summers with a stroke recovery group, 1 summer as the leader of an aphasia conversation group, small amount of volunteering with an SLP in a school, created AAC boards with an SLP in a hospital

Research: 3 years as a research assistant in a ling lab with 1 year as a field worker as well. (This was a paid position)

Other: had a second part-time job on campus related to community/school engagement so I made sure to include that aspect in my letters

Hope this help  

Your background and experience sound amazing! Thank you for sharing  

[coco_SLP]

28 minutes ago, s.slp said:

Thank you! And sure

Degree: BA (major linguistics, minor psychology)

SubGPA from ORPAS: 3.9 (I don't know my cGPA but it was definitely lower!)

GRE: Verbal reasoning - 163; Quantitative reasoning - 154; Analytical writing - 4.5

Volunteering: 4 summers with a stroke recovery group, 1 summer as the leader of an aphasia conversation group, small amount of volunteering with an SLP in a school, created AAC boards with an SLP in a hospital

Research: 3 years as a research assistant in a ling lab with 1 year as a field worker as well. (This was a paid position)

Other: had a second part-time job on campus related to community/school engagement so I made sure to include that aspect in my letters

Hope this help  

Wow, those are amazing stats, thank you for sharing! If you don't mind me asking, is there a particular reason you chose UA over the other schools? This is my first year applying and I've applied to several of those schools as well, and everyone keeps asking me which one is my top choice and honestly I'm not 100% which would one would be! I go back and forth over it all the time. I know this field is super competitive and I'd be happy to be accepted anywhere, but I'm a little curious about how schools rank in other people's books. 

I suppose I could extend this question to everyone here, if anyone else would like to answer what their top choice(s) are and why!  

[somethingcleveraboutspeech]

Hello!

Does anyone know where we should send updated transcripts if they're currently available? Should I send to ORPAS or straight to the universities (only applied to Ontario programs)?

[coco_SLP]

7 minutes ago, somethingcleveraboutspeech said:

Hello!

Does anyone know where we should send updated transcripts if they're currently available? Should I send to ORPAS or straight to the universities (only applied to Ontario programs)?

Hey! I was in the same boat the other week. You do it through ORPAS. What I had to do was go to ORPAS -> Transcripts -> Add Transcript Request and then once that was filled out, you have to go to Review and Submit and then re-submit your application (and pay any fees if there is another transcript request fee, if your school has them). At this point there might be the brief waiting period where you can't login to ORAPS (they say wait one business day) but for me it was available again later that night, and my GPA had been re-calculated almost as soon as they received my transcript the next day.

I had contacted ORPAS via SAM before I did this, and have now done this myself (like a week ago) so I can 100% confirm this is the right way to do it! 

If you need any clarification let me know! 

P.S. The only issue is if you're doing this for updated grades for a prereq course listed under the Personal Submissions, sadly you can't update your personal submissions, only upload a new transcript and have your GPA recalculated. SAM told me that the schools would have to look at my transcripts themselves to see the updated prereq grade.

Edited February 11, 2021 by coco_SLP

[somethingcleveraboutspeech]

8 minutes ago, coco_SLP said:

Hey! I was in the same boat the other week. You do it through ORPAS. What I had to do was go to ORPAS -> Transcripts -> Add Transcript Request and then once that was filled out, you have to go to Review and Submit and then re-submit your application (and pay any fees if there is another transcript request fee, if your school has them). At this point there might be the brief waiting period where you can't login to ORAPS (they say wait one business day) but for me it was available again later that night, and my GPA had been re-calculated almost as soon as they received my transcript the next day.

I had contacted ORPAS via SAM before I did this, and have now done this myself (like a week ago) so I can 100% confirm this is the right way to do it! 

If you need any clarification let me know! 

P.S. The only issue is if you're doing this for updated grades for a prereq course listed under the Personal Submissions, sadly you can't update your personal submissions, only upload a new transcript and have your GPA recalculated. SAM told me that the schools would have to look at my transcripts themselves to see the updated prereq grade.

This is so helpful, thank you!

I am relieved to hear that my GPA will be recalculated! Bummer about the prereqs under Personal Submissions, but I know the universities will see the grades eventually. 

[coco_SLP]

2 minutes ago, somethingcleveraboutspeech said:

This is so helpful, thank you!

I am relieved to hear that my GPA will be recalculated! Bummer about the prereqs under Personal Submissions, but I know the universities will see the grades eventually. 

No worries! I was relieved too. I was scared that if I got my school to send an updated transcript, then it would be seen as "late" (since it was past the January 30 deadline) but SAM told me that as long as ORPAS had received the payment and request by January 8th and a transcript by the 30th that I would be okay. 

[s.slp]

1 hour ago, coco_SLP said:

Wow, those are amazing stats, thank you for sharing! If you don't mind me asking, is there a particular reason you chose UA over the other schools?

Thank you! I went with UofA for a number of reasons. I heard that UofA had a much better clinical focus than UBC where they are more focused on theory and research. Since I know I want to be a clinician rather than a researcher I had placed UBC fairly low on my list. Dalhousie was last on my list because it was the farthest school from home and the only 3 year program. I chose not to attend McMaster because of their accreditation status being somewhat of an unknown and their focus on problem-based group learning, which is not my preferred learning style. So then Western and UofA were left and I ultimately went with UofA because it was closer to home, I had heard only good things about their program, and I really didn't know a lot about Western's program. This was my (condensed for clarity lol) thought process but it was definitely a decision I had to think about for a long time! I only made my final decision the night before the response deadlines in April!

Edited February 11, 2021 by s.slp

[coco_SLP]

4 minutes ago, s.slp said:

Thank you! I went with UofA for a number of reasons. I heard that UofA had a much better clinical focus than UBC where they are more focused on theory and research. Since I know I want to be a clinician rather than a researcher I had placed UBC fairly low on my list. Dalhousie was last on my list because it was the farthest school from home and the only 3 year program. I chose not to attend McMaster because of their accreditation status being somewhat of an unknown and their focus on problem-based group learning, which is not my preferred learning style. So then Western and UofA were left and I ultimately went with UofA because it was closer to home, I had heard only good things about their program, and I really didn't know a lot about Western's program. This was my (condensed for clarity lol) thought process but it was definitely a decision I had to think about for a long time! I only made my final decision the night before the response deadlines in April!

Thank you so much for your response! I really appreciate it. I too also place Dalhousie lower on my list because of it being 3 years and more expensive, as well as McMaster's still being new and being PBL definitely makes me a bit hesitant about it as well. I think McGill and UA are my frontrunners right now. For the longest time McGill was my frontrunner, but I'm not the greatest with French and worry about the difficulty with clinical placements without it. Lately UA has been making its way up my ranks, so it's nice to hear from someone who attends there. 

Thank you for sharing!

[Wuglette]

On 2/10/2021 at 4:30 PM, Wuglette said:

Does anyone know anything about Ottawa's MMI process (when they hold their interviews and when they send out their interview offers)? 

Update: I emailed to ask and apparently they no longer do the MMIs at Ottawa (which is a huge relief!) as they have replaced it with the CASper test and the language tests.

[Luck26]

On 2/11/2021 at 12:27 AM, neuroling said:

Hey guys! One more question -

does everyone have this scary (lol) red text on their UBC app? I took all of the pre-reqs as approved classes, so it didn't occur to me to upload anything in this area but I noticed that my application is still listed as 'in progress' because I don't have it. I'm just concerned that they won't consider me or something because I didn't upload something for all of the doc sections

Hey I have that on my UBC application as well but  all of my prerequisites are the approved UBC courses so clearly I don't need to upload syllabi because they are approved. So I think that just automatically shows up if you don't upload anything it is not necessarily that you are missing something

[neuroling]

4 hours ago, Luck26 said:

Hey I have that on my UBC application as well but  all of my prerequisites are the approved UBC courses so clearly I don't need to upload syllabi because they are approved. So I think that just automatically shows up if you don't upload anything it is not necessarily that you are missing something

Great, thank you so much! 

[happyeveryday]

Is anyone else still waiting to hear from Dal? My portal has not been updated to show they have received anything and I have not received and email. 

[coco_SLP]

38 minutes ago, happyeveryday said:

Is anyone else still waiting to hear from Dal? My portal has not been updated to show they have received anything and I have not received and email. 

I still haven't! Nothing changed on my portal and no email yet. They said it could take up to 5 weeks from the deadline, so there's still a bit of time before that, and I'm not sure if they'll be working over reading week or not. Also I'm sure they're probably busy with how they have people submit things both via mail and online, so I think we still have a bit of time before we should be a bit concerned.

I'll put an update on here when I do hear back!

[neuroling]

 

1 hour ago, happyeveryday said:

Is anyone else still waiting to hear from Dal? My portal has not been updated to show they have received anything and I have not received and email. 

I applied in late december and also don't see anything on my portal. It's comforting to know I'm not the only one 

[NDspeechie]

I'd love to hear everyones stats  I'm a little antsy with this wait!