Thanks!
On another note, it’s crazy that just about every health field nowadays seems to be Uber competitive- speech, pt, pa, nursing, obviously med school. I wonder if there’s any pathways that are not insanely competitive. What’s worse is that the majors in undergrad typically aren’t sufficiently employable on their own.
Radiation Therapy -at regional type schools. Don’t know but guessing not as competitive. I met wonderful people - people I was in awe of - when with them.
I am a doctor and employ lots of pre medical field students. Some PA, some medical school. Some graduate school in research etc. These are all “well” paid fields and good fields for life /work especially for female’s. No one says it’s easy but it’s more about what you want to do and not about the easiest path but I get what you are saying. Also some like PA are in a lot of demand and same with SPL. That drives the competition.
But at the end of the day you have to want to do it. My daughter has lots of different work with children. Nanny, reading tutor, preschool teacher being taught from someone from Stanford with classes outdoors… Lol to working with autism kids since high school and college.
She’s really enjoying her classes now. They have clinic like day one also.
Sorry. Mostly highly competitive. No free rides. Lol. It’s important to really want to do whatever and not the ease of getting into something you really don’t want to do.
Other NJ schools with SLP programs are Kean, Stockton, and Seton Hall. Montclair and Monmouth have minors. In eastern PA there’s West Chester, Univ of Scranton, Temple, La Salle, Marywood, St. Joes and a few others.
Nursing is probably the best known exception to this statement. But associates and bachelor’s degree programs in nursing do tend to be more competitive to get into than the colleges they are hosted in.
Here is a list of health care professions and the typical amounts of higher education required: Careers A-Z - Explore Healthcare Careers - Mayo Clinic College of Medicine & Science . However, it does not mention speech language pathologist.
My D attended a LAC undergrad that did not have any SLP prerequisite classes. She did not decide to pursue a career as a SLP until her junior year. Here are the options she found:
She did a great deal of research and found a few grad schools that would accept students into their Masters in speech pathology program without any prerequisite coursework. Some of the programs ran these students through an intensive summer program to complete the prerequisites. The program she ultimately attended accepted a small cohort of students who did not have a SLP background and those students took the prerequisite courses during the first two semesters of grad school – their Masters program ran a semester or two longer (depending on how loaded a schedule they took) as compared to the program for students with a SLP undergrad degree. My D’s preference was to get into one of these direct admit programs and she was successful in doing so. These programs seemed to be competitive in terms of admissions.
Her back-up plan was to take a year after her undergrad to complete the prerequisite coursework needed for the majority of MS in Speech degrees. Some colleges offer a post-bac program or she could have gone to a local college and pieced together the courses. One issue she found was that different Masters programs had somewhat different prerequisites.
A couple of things my D did while still an undergrad that affirmed her interest in the field and may have helped make her a more attractive candidate included: taking an intro to speech class at a local college and shadowing SLPs in a couple of different settings.
My D did need to complete a 9 month clinical fellowship after grad school. I think it is required for licensing by ASHA but I’m not certain. She found the job on her own and was paid during the clinical fellowship (but the pay was at a lower rate than a licensed SLP).
She is enjoying her career as a SLP.
Best of luck to your D moving forward.
I really don’t understand what you are saying here and how this relates to the SLP profession? (I worked with OT’s, and PT’s in my rehab teams.)
I’m a retired bilingual speech pathologist. I transferred from a private Catholic university to SDSU and completed my undergrad in Communicative Disorders. My grad degree was listed as Communicative Disorders with a specialty in Speech Pathology.
I had a phenomenal undergrad and grad program with world-wide experts in the field, but I guess it was “cheap”, so the where really didn’t matter. I was considered an expert in the fields of augmentative communication, phonology and bilingual language acquisition.
It’s a hard and competitive major because it has a plethora of subjects being covered and you have to be able to go in running to balance the workload and multitask the multiple disciplines. I recommend the major in undergrad.
We had a large university clinic with a good variety of clientele.
Being large had its advantages there because we were able to provide zero to low cost services-especially for clients who needed hearing aids.
Sometimes, the State covered eligible services. The alumni and large donors sponsored the clinics. We were on the hook for our tuition, housing, and expenses. We all worked different jobs.
There were no funds for sponsorships, stipends, nor grants for grad school.
It’s competitive because it HAS to be. They get really strong grad students who can handle patients with traumatic brain injury, myasthenia gravis, ALS, dementia, vocal paralysis, stroke, ADHD, Autism, Language disorders, cleft palate, dysphagia and articulation issues.
I hope your daughter makes some good choices in schools.
Oh…you mean the Clinical Fellowship Year (CFY) or whatever the state calls this.
The Clinical Fellowship Year is done after you complete your masters, but it is a PAID position. And it’s not affiliated with the university. You do this at a job site, and you must be supervised by a licensed and certified SLP for that year.
I’ve supervised a number of CFY folks over the years. It’s something we are asked to highly consider doing as the profession needs these folks!
And the clinical fellowship year IS required….but it’s a job!
I’m sending you a message.
This thread is about speech and language pathology. Please take discussion about other majors/professions to PM or to a new thread. Thank you.
@Knowsstuff above wrote about DPTs - so I thought maybe that was in discussion too although I hadn’t seen it go there. Sorry about that.
East Carolina University has a BS in Speech & Hearing Sciences
I thought of it - but it’s a big big school - and if Ohio U (same size as UCONN) is too big - then it might be an issue - but within driving range - and well known in health sciences.
Please keep this thread focused on the SLP profession. If interested in discussing other professions, start a new thread. Thank you for your understanding.
You are right in that many, many health care professions have become super competitive. Like medical school, it is also common to have a gap between undergrad and grad.
If she is interested in becoming an SLP, my advice is to choose a school that has the major. She can always change her mind.
I also advise joining the state organization. Students get a very, very discounted rate, and it will give her a chance to be involved and understand what is happening in the field.
I also recommend volunteering and keeping her grades up.
Agree with @twogirls – if your D is fairly certain she wants to pursue a career as a SLP the easiest and most cost effective plan would be to take that course of study as an undergrad. If she changes her mind down the road she could always switch her major.
Misericordia U. in PA has a direct-entry 5-year BS/MS program. Speech-Language Pathology - Misericordia University The school has invested heavily in their health professions programs generally, so there’s a good variety of majors that could be of interest, should she change her mind about SLP.
Some schools (ie SUNY Buffalo) have a minor in communication disorders. Using UB as an example: intro to CDS is a requirement, and students add 5 additional courses of their choosing. This makes it possible to fulfill grad school prerequisites as a minor (I just looked at my grad program’s prerequisites).
Keep in mind that ASHA has additional requirements- 3 credits of biology, 3 credits in a physical science, 3 credits in statistics, 6 credits in social sciences, and an English/writing course.
Interesting- my graduate program wants a minimum of an A- in the prerequisites.
I’m tagging onto to this, as well. I was a member of NSSLHA (National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association) and attended the National conferences at super discounted rates!
Had I known, how expensive the conferences were as an employed therapist, I would have attended more National conferences as a student!
All of my professors were invited national speakers. Of course we got all the “goodies” in class, but they would speak to the national audiences and have different information for those practicing professionals.
We also got a ton of freebies that would help us build our professional libraries and activities. It wasn’t just writing pens and stickers and buttons. There were samples of language-eliciting graphics.
There were valuable door prizes.
I got great ideas for therapy. I’m adding in one of the bags that I used to carry in my car to see pediatric patients. They knew I always had toys in this bag. I don’t mean to advertise for the advertiser but they gave a lot of freebie stuff.
