Make me stand out!

[speechie264]

Hello everyone, I am new to this website and was hoping for some advice.

Can anyone give me advice on the things I can do to stand out? (volunteering/shadowing/experiance) I have tried to reach out to some SLPs in schools setting but with little success. I still have a year as an undergrad, so I still have time to polish my resume.

Maybe share some of your experiences that were successful in getting you into grad school. I know it is very competitive, and I want to add to my resume to give me a higher chance on getting accepted into a grad program. I also like to mention that I do not have the best GPA according to the stats I have read. However, I am working on improving it.

Thank you so much.

[lookwhoslp]

I've had a horrible time with school SLPs as well. Try contacting your local hospital or children's hospital. See if they having something about volunteering or interning. You can check their volunteer page or SLP department page. I looked up the SLPs and emailed them, who then referred me to the volunteer person to get clearances done. But you can contact either. I'd suggest asking if you can shadow them for a day to see if you want to volunteer there. Then after your experience ask about volunteering more regularly.. You can even just volunteer for the hospital (doesn't have to be SLP ... they like seeing you have interests outside of SLP too). 

 

Try to do an independent study. You'll get to look into something that interests you with a professor's help. It usually has something to do with what the professor does, and you just look up articles and stuff and then either write a paper, make a poster or something along those lines. 

 

Find a club you enjoy-- like i said they like seeing you're just involved. Maybe join big brothers, big sisters... or a volunteer group (in something you are interested in... don't "force" it)... or just another group. If you're interested in business then maybe join a business club, if you like the enviro, then an enviro club. 

 

As for me, I've been an officer in the linguistics club, a member in the NSSLHA club and then I've just been volunteering at a children's hospital (in high school I worked at a daycare as well). I also do research with a  professor, work in his lab and I am doing an undergraduate thesis with him (but that's cause I like research... so don't feel forced to do it. That's why I mentioned independent study so you can just write a paper but not go through the research process). Besides these I've also travelled to Spain. In my personal statement I mostly talked about the differences between spain and here and how we communicate and also mentioned how I saw a kid who had a neonatal stroke develop in my daycare. I think i wrote a couple sentences on doing research and stuff too. Basically just use what you got but don't just list everything you've done... that'll be done in the resume part of the application. I just focused on two or three nd how those shaped me, I didn't just list them!

 

tl;dr... just find one or two things you REALLY enjoy and focus on those and use them in your application. Doesn't have to be in SLP, can be related.