Syracuse University 2016

[alicecdstudent]

Is anyone here going to attend MS-SLP program Syracuse this coming Fall? I was accepted and I am thinking of attending this school. I thought it would be nice to make some new friends. 

[EmilyGCH]

Hi! I was also accepted to the MS-SLP program at Syracuse (without a background track) and highly considering attending. I just registered to attend the open house on April 1st. 

[limegreen19]

Hi guys, I may be attending Syracuse. Is there a FB group yet? @EmilyGCH what did you think of the open house? I thought everyone was so nice, but it felt a little rushed. Wish we could've had more time.

[alicecdstudent]

On April 2, 2016 at 8:41 PM, limegreen19 said:

Hi guys, I may be attending Syracuse. Is there a FB group yet? @EmilyGCH what did you think of the open house? I thought everyone was so nice, but it felt a little rushed. Wish we could've had more time.

There is no FB group yet, I think we should make one. I did not go to the open house as I had class that week. How was the open house?

[limegreen19]

12 hours ago, alicecdstudent said:

There is no FB group yet, I think we should make one. I did not go to the open house as I had class that week. How was the open house?

It was pretty standard - I think most open houses have the same kind of structure. There was an overview of the program and all the faculty introduced themselves, answering questions. Then some of the students came and answered questions. We had maybe half an hour with the students, which I felt wasn't really enough. Then we had a tour of the labs & clinic. There's lots of rooms and a lot of cute painted walls in some of them. It had more personality than some other school's on-campus clinics. The observation for the majority of the therapy rooms is through a video camera system, and 2 rooms will have the one-way mirror that's pretty common in other schools clinics. If you're interested in research they have some pretty sweet equipment in the labs, like EEG, ultrasound (they use this as biofeedback in both research/therapy, pretty cool), motion tracking, etc.. We had lunch afterwards with the accepted & current students but it was kinda cut short by the current student's next class.

One con that I found was that the building itself doesn't look very exciting (concrete and pretty boring-looking), and its location is separated from the main campus. There's not many buildings around it, so there's not too much going on. It used to be located on main campus, right across from all the restaurants/stores, but they recently moved it to this new location. They said it was a tradeoff between the building (apparently it was really old) and the prime location in the center of everything, but they seemed to be really happy with the change overall. I'm not that bothered by these things, but thought I'd just put it out there.

[alicecdstudent]

On April 4, 2016 at 7:06 AM, limegreen19 said:

It was pretty standard - I think most open houses have the same kind of structure. There was an overview of the program and all the faculty introduced themselves, answering questions. Then some of the students came and answered questions. We had maybe half an hour with the students, which I felt wasn't really enough. Then we had a tour of the labs & clinic. There's lots of rooms and a lot of cute painted walls in some of them. It had more personality than some other school's on-campus clinics. The observation for the majority of the therapy rooms is through a video camera system, and 2 rooms will have the one-way mirror that's pretty common in other schools clinics. If you're interested in research they have some pretty sweet equipment in the labs, like EEG, ultrasound (they use this as biofeedback in both research/therapy, pretty cool), motion tracking, etc.. We had lunch afterwards with the accepted & current students but it was kinda cut short by the current student's next class.

One con that I found was that the building itself doesn't look very exciting (concrete and pretty boring-looking), and its location is separated from the main campus. There's not many buildings around it, so there's not too much going on. It used to be located on main campus, right across from all the restaurants/stores, but they recently moved it to this new location. They said it was a tradeoff between the building (apparently it was really old) and the prime location in the center of everything, but they seemed to be really happy with the change overall. I'm not that bothered by these things, but thought I'd just put it out there.

Thanks for the information @limegreen19! I really appreciate it.

[limegreen19]

@alicecdstudentnp I wanted to give u the full picture with pros/cons  thank u for linking the fb group on the other thread!

[rzilby]

Hey all, I was just accepted off the waitlist with funding. I sent my deposit to Montclair, which is the in-state school and cheaper, but I wanted to get some more information about the program from you guys. Did you visit? What made you choose Syracuse over the other schools?

[limegreen19]

@rzilbyYooo I'm from NJ too!! I was also accepted to Montclair. My situation is a bit diff because Syracuse is actually cheaper for me than Montclair so take that as you will. None of the NJ schools were really appealing to me mostly because they're not strong research universities - which contributes to their lower rankings (>#100 on the US News). That doesn't mean they are BAD programs at all! They'll absolutely provide good education, get you the same degree/license and give you well-rounded clinical experiences...but they don't have strong publishing presence in the academic world. I really wanted to get involved in labs, potentially do a thesis, and keep the option open for a PhD - which is not the norm - so don't feel like you have to put so much emphasis on research. Keeping all of this in mind- if you want to work in NJ after you graduate, then yes DEF go to school in NJ, where you'll do your externships and make those connections for the CFY. But if you want to work in NY state at all - even slightly - you should go to a NY school because I've heard the TSSLD (NY state specific teaching license for SLPs) is a bitch to get if you do grad school elsewhere.

Here's some things about Montclair that turned me off when I visited last spring: the program is 2.5 years for in-field and 3 years for out-of-field (the 3 years OOF is expected but 2.5 is a bit long for those in-field). The clinic&CSD dept building is beautiful and modern....but it's an external site separated from main campus and it's located in a professional park with other businesses. It was hard to find because it didn't really look like it was part of the university. The clinic at Syracuse is in "South campus" which is separated as well from main campus, but it is still in the immediate university area with buses running to/from that location. Other than those two things, nothing else really stood out in a bad way about Montclair.

So basically for me, I chose SU for cost and research. There's also a variety of placement locations in the city (3 major hospitals in the city, many school districts, private practices, rehab centers, etc...)