r/slpGradSchool

Hi everyone,

I hope all is well and you're having a great week. I enrolled in an anatomy/physiology class at ENMU. Classes started today, and I am currently on the waitlist. I worry that I won't get into this class, and I need it to apply for graduate school. Any advice? My go-to was to email the professor, but I don't see it listed anywhere in the add/drop class page.

I found some upsetting news today that i took unnecessary courses at a online university this summer when i didn’t have to and spent over $2000 out of pocket for these classes.

Some background information: I’m currently a first year grad student and before i started this semester I needed two classes (Aural Rehab and 25 guided hour lab). I took a separate local leveling program but these credits were not offered so I was referred to this online university in a different state from my grad program that I have already been accepted into.

I only really needed to take 3 classes total (AR, 25 guided observations lab + the lecture class) but the director of the program said I didn’t have the prerequisites for those classes so if i wanted to take these classes i needed to take Articulation and Phonology, and Language Science and Disorders as well. I advocated several times through email that i’ve taken similar courses in my leveling program including sending transcripts of those courses and even showing that I was enrolled in similar courses in my grad program that I was starting in fall, but they insisted I signed up for those courses. The program director also had to request approval from the Dean for this workload request because I was being asked to be enrolled in 12 credits, which is a significantly higher workload for the 8-week summer semester. The Dean described it as the equivalent of taking 24 credits across a 16-week semester. I also sent her my transcripts too in attempt to dismiss these prerequisite.

I feel like it’s important to mention that this was the day before the summer classes started and I was feeling very desperate as I needed to take AR and get my 25 hours of guided observations for me to start in my graduate program in the fall.

I eventually got approved for the workload and I think it is safe to say that I was in the trenches this past summer. I think I cried almost every sunday thinking I wasn’t going to have enough time to finish all my assignments. I had no such thing of a personal life. Everyday I woke up to do my classes until it was time to fall asleep. Fortunately, I got all A’s in my classes.

Flash forward to the present. I am in my grad program and I am talking to someone that was in my leveling program (online as well so I never interacted with her until now), who also enrolled to the same online university this summer to get the prerequisite credits we needed for our grad program. She told me that she only took those credits we needed and that they never required her to take the other prerequisites. I was absolutely livid!!! I went through absolute hell this summer only to hear that someone with the exact same educational background as me did not need to take the same workload. I would’ve saved so much money and tears this summer if they would’ve just let me take the classes I needed 😭

Personally I’m not planning on taking action or sharing the university information. I really am trying to find the light out of this situation because I have much bigger fish to fry. I just overall feel like I was taken advantage of because I was very desperate to get enrolled into these courses I needed for my grad program last minute.

Hi there! I’m currently going through grad school orientation and was wondering how many hours a week outside of class and clinic you normally put in. My program director told us to expect to do 9 hours of work outside of class for every credit hour as well as 20 hours outside of clinical. How does this line up to your average workload outside of class?

Hey everyone!

I just started grad school. And I’m a very type B person. I’ve never had an actual calendar and I’m not even sure which is the way to set one up. Any recommendations? I got an actual planner but it’s not big enough to fit in everything. It’s mostly for big events. Please help!

Thank y’all!

Hi!!

I applied to USAHS for summer, but received my application interview yesterday. The advisor I saw told me “we would really like to expedite your application and have to apply for Fall” AKA Sep 3, 2 weeks away. I’ve already done FAFSA and everything, so I bit the bullet and said sure let’s do it.

My actual interview is next week, but I’m curious- Does this seem like a good thing? Obviously it’s not an acceptance, but they seem like they either want to fill the cohort, or maybe my application is strong enough they want me sooner?

Not sure, let me know your thoughts!!

(Also, I’ve been working as an SLPA!)

heyyy. I’m starting grad school next week and I’m trying to set myself up for success before classes and clinicals start.

I’m making a clinic binder where I will track client documentation, sessions, eval dates, etc. I’m also putting resource pages in the binder like brain anatomy, ipa chart, phonemic development info

What other resources would be good to add? I’m wanting to find good clinical writing examples and different documentation examples for reference. I also really struggle with literacy so I don’t even know what’s the most important literacy info to put in the binder!!

ALSO: What could you NOT live without in grad school? Anything that made your life so much easier?

In undergrad I had a clinical block alongside a lot of graduate students and I always saw how stressed and frantic they were. Im trying soooo hard to start the semester calmly and collected but Im starting to get nervous!

I’m currently completing a 6 week placement in a medical hospital setting and was placed at risk of failing during the mid evaluation.

Some of my weaknesses were clinical reasoning, and disorganised communication (unclear and jumbled, often get flustered when talking due to anxiety).

The prospect of failing is causing me a lot anxiety and stress. Im determined to work hard and show my supervisors the ways I am keen to improve. I am also checking in with my university coordinator every week to communicate the things I am doing. But I still cannot get passed the prospect of failing as I’m typically a driven student who has not previously failed a unit. I’ve reached out to university counselling to help with the performance anxiety I face and the attached stress this is giving me.

Does anyone have any idea about getting over the idea of failing and just keep trying my absolute best? Any tips about explicitly showing my progress to the supervisors?

Very overwhelmed. Comps are in 2 months and just feeling like there's no way I'll be able to review all the information and have a solid grip on it. I already struggle since I take longer to learn... I'm seriously freaking out.

Study tips welcome.

Edit: originally wrote this mid-panic attack last night but I’m feeling much better after a good nights sleep😅. Let me know what study tips you used that you found helpful for both comps and Praxis!

So I work full time and have a toddler so I am hoping for something flexible and on the less expensive side so I can pay as I go but my other conxern is if it is an actual good school to attend. I can only do online though. Thanks in advance!!

Hello all!

I’m entering grad school in a few weeks and I’m trying to get a picture of the workload compared to my undergrad experience. For the Fall, I will be taking 8 classes, 15 credits. I’m in classes 3 days out of the week, with 2 of those days being clinical because we receive a patient in the first semester. I will be TAing 20 hours a week and babysitting 7 hours a week.

My academic journey hasn't been typical. I switched into SLP the second half of my junior year. I wanted to graduate on time, so I took a lot of extra classes. During my undergrad, I was in classes 5 days a week taking three different 18-credit semesters, two years of summer classes, and winter classes this year. I used to work at a coffee shop 20 hours a week while in school and I babysat for 7 hours a week. I took classes such as anatomy, hearing science, phonetics, and observations in th same semester. (Side note: I also took a gap year after my sophomore year and worked as a full-time infant/toddler teacher at 20 years old.. I am 23 currently)

I feel overall that I strained myself a lot in my undergrad. Between supporting myself financially and emotionally through school, my father unexpectedly passing away in March of this year (my mom hasn't been in my life since I was 5), and just the struggle of an 18-credit workload, it was difficult. I got through it though, ended with a 3.7 GPA and, I got into grad school. Do people feel as though this is comparable to the workload I will be enduring during grad school?

I mention this because in conversations with my professors, I've brought up that I feel prepared as a result of my past semester workloads and they pretty much shut me down and said it's going to be much more difficult. I could get that opinion if for the last four years I did the minimum 12-15 credits a semester and didn't have a job, but that wasn't my reality and they know that. I also feel like working as a full-time teacher so young gave me a different perspective on professionalism, collaboration, and time management.

TLDR: out of field student with nearly non related experience feeling nervous

Hi folks! I’m a out of field student (computer science major) and now planing to take phonetics and audiology the upcoming fall at ENMU. My plan is just take 2 courses each semester and applying for 2028 Fall. The reason why SLP is because it’s relatively stable and you’ll get a job if you can pass the exam and I do feel like it’s a rewarding job. Plus I’m a bilingual so I feel like I can help more people.

I’m going start my first day as a behavior tech next Monday! So excited but also nervous because that would be the only experience that is healthcare related. I don’t have any work experience before because I just graduated, I’ve always hated computer science so I feel like I wasted my whole undergrad life. When I browsing this sub, I feel like everyone has tons of volunteers, labs, shadowing, fancy experiences related to SLP and also so involved in many clubs. I feel like I have no leadership skills and not involved at all.

It just makes me doubt myself…Am I really for this field? I feel like SLP is so medical related(what I want to say is that it’s so intense that you wanna learn new things everyday you need to keep your brain active and looking for things to boost your overall strength every seconds) I want to look for some volunteer work too so that at least I can put something more than a BT job on my resume.

I really wanna know if there are SLPs who just go to school and finish the coursework with average efforts but still make it to be a good SLP.

Hey there!

I was accepted into WCU Online MS SLP Program in California! While I am very excited to start this journey, I am also nervous about the workload and trying to balance it with working. I just moved here and got hired at an ABA clinic for the flexibility.

I was wondering if anyone has gone through the WCU program and provide any insight on the workload expectations, how you balanced this program with other responsibilities, if you felt prepared after you graduated, what clinical were like and if you were about to obtain employment afterwards. Also if you want to through any tips or advice in their for graduate school in general that would be very helpful!!

I appreciate it! Thank you!!

Hi all!

I currently work as an SLPA and am working toward my master’s degree in CSD. I love languages and speak three fluently: English, Spanish, and French. I can also speak some Italian and Portuguese.

For those of you who are also interested in languages and are in the field of speech therapy (or on your way there), what are your plans?

Do you have a particular setting in mind? Would you like to work in a private practice focused specifically on language? What age groups do you think would be best to work with if you want to have this type of focus? And what do you do to maintain the languages you speak?

Sorry for all the questions! My cohort is lovely, but there are only a handful of us who speak more than one language, and even fewer who are interested in focusing on language.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has taken a similar path or has thoughts on how to incorporate multilingualism into a career in speech-language pathology.

Thank you!

Asking this for a high schooler who most likely wants to go into SLP, but is currently looking at undergrad schools. They’re interested in schools that don’t have CSD as a major because of the undergraduate experience/student life. For example, they would love to attend Yale and study Linguistics or Cognitive Science, and undergrad debt would be minimal because of great financial aid. However, they would obviously have to do equivalency/leveling before slp grad school, so by how much would that slow down their career? And would that affect grad school placement? I understand that it may depend by undergrad school, and money isn’t the biggest factor for our family but still an important consideration. And the few non-csd undergrads our kid is looking into are all t20 private universities. We appreciate any advice or help!

Hi everyone, I am currently a sophomore at UC Irvine and I am switching my major to Language & Sciences because in my freshman year I discovered SLP and I fell in love! But I was wondering if I should switch undergrad schools because UCI does not have many resources/classes that help me be an SLP, though they do have a major in range but it is not the same. I just feel that UCI doesn’t have the right tools to get to my goal. I’ve tried to look for people in my school doing SLP or something similar but everyone is doing something in stem. Please share your advice I really appreciate it!!!

This was definitely my bad, I only applied to one school (Queens College) because it’s a cost saver and an easy commute but I didn’t get in. I wanted to know which schools ( in the nyc area) I should apply to this time around and what I should do to make my application better.

My gpa was 3.5, I was in an on campus lab for two years, had 4 jobs dinning hall employee 1 year, wellness mentor 1 year, summer camp counselor and a financial literacy mentor. Lastly I was in a volunteer club for a year. if it helps I only got one b- in a major related class the rest were A or A-.

I admittedly didn’t take the GRE bc im so bad at math but im thinking that’s what needs to happen this time around.

any advice would be super appreciated!!

Hello fellow grad students!
I am starting my in-person MS SLP program is less than two weeks.

I don’t have a lot of experience working with kids, or people in general, except for the two jobs I had during high school.

I am super nervous about clinic. I did my 25 observation hours on Master Clinician a year ago and feel like I’ve forgotten everything, ugh.

Any advice? How do I build rapport with both younger and elderly clients? Many people in my cohort have shadowed an SLP or were RBTs, but not me. I feel behind and would greatly appreciate any help or advice. Thank you!

Sooooo I've reached the end of externship, and I passed!

Quick recap: From the beginning all the way until around week 10/11 (so 1-2 weeks before the end), I was struggling heavily. I was unable to lead sessions, I kept getting the answers wrong, and I was genuinely at risk of failing. I was crying every single day and was genuinely miserable (or felt that way). 

Now that I've ended, I can safely say that this is really something that is temporary and everyone of us has to go through this and that's okay.

Out of my 12 week externship, I spent most of it observing and even by the end of these three months, I honestly can’t say that I am fully independent. This isn’t the case for most students, because not only is the expectation that we can lead the entire case load by the end of the externship, but that expectation is typically met. However, I was just one of those cases that did not end up meeting it, and that’s okay. 

I feel like it was a struggle feeling confident because it seems like no one ever struggles this way at an externship, and that made me feel so inadequate and like the biggest failure. More often than not, when you think of a  bad externship, people usually say it is because their supervisor is wack, and that wasn’t the case for me. While it was a bit rocky at the beginning, my supervisor was a lot nicer and a lot more supportive than most and would constantly try to help me, and I just, for some reason, couldn’t do what needed to be done. And now that I am at the end, I am realizing that’s okay. 

Not every setting is for everyone, and not everything will come easy to you. And comparing yourself to any other student is not going to help you in the long run. 

I did end up passing, and I am finally done and am never looking back at that place, or even the setting. I followed through with all the advice that I got in the comments and they truly did help. 

That being said, if you’re in your externship and you’re struggling and feel like this field isn't for you because you aren’t doing your best (or maybe your best isn’t the best for that setting), just remember that it’s okay, it’s going to pass by, and then you never have to look back again. The only way through is through, and once you're done, there are countless other opportunities and settings and locations that you can trial next. As someone said before, the externship and clinicals in general are not only there to help you build your clinical and therapeutic skills, but to also help you determine what’s not right for you!

Edit: Overall, some poepl can pick up any skill in 2 weeks, and others (like me :)), need at least 3 months, and that's okay!

Greetings, soon-to-be SLPs!

I wanted to start a thread here about the changes to CPT code 92507 proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and scheduled to roll out on January 1, 2027.

I'm an SLP in private practice in Austin, TX, and our feeling is that reimbursement rates should never be tied to patient diagnosis. The proposed code changes will reimburse less for patients diagnosed with voice or fluency disorders, creating barriers to care for and discrimination against these populations by disincentivizing providers from treating them.

SLPs would also be discriminated against by becoming the only healthcare profession for whom rates would be tied to patient diagnosis rather than to our time and qualifications. This is explicitly not the case for physicians, for example, because of the "cherry-picking" it could cause.

Dysphonia International and the Stuttering Foundation have also expressed concern about potential discrimination against the populations they represent.

The owner of my practice created a website with more detailed information, as well as instructions for submitting comments to ASHA and CMS requesting a delay in implementation of these changes. I'm happy to post it here.

I genuinely believe speaking out against these changes is paramount to the future of our profession. Thank you for reading!!