Speech and Language Pathology

I've alluded to the Master's program that I've been eying for a while, and now that I've done a bit of looking into it, I think I can talk about it with a bit of confidence. I'm going to be trying to get into Speech and Language Pathology (as if the title of this post wasn't a dead giveaway).

It's a type of medical therapy and I basically help people with speaking problems. This can range from kids with mental or medical problems, or people who have suffered brain injuries in accidents.

I'm a type of doctor right?

To be honest, I'm really not too picky with what I do. As long as I'm helping someone and it's somehow related to Psychology. I originally got the suggestion from a fellow Psych classmate to enter the field and decided to go to a recent conference held by the department to get a better idea of what it was like.

First thing I notice, there is A LOT of women in Speech Pathology. I mean, there are a lot of women in Psychology to begin with, but it's even disproportionate there. Also, very few Asians. Though it could possibly be because maybe male/Asian speech pathologists don't like conferences? Either way, there was about 100 people there, a dozen males and a dozen Asians.

And only one Asian male, yours truly.

I was there mostly to figure out what I needed to have done in order to get into the program next Fall. First off, I need to do the GRE or Graduate Record Examination. It's a standard test for anyone wanting to get into Graduate studies in many English speaking areas. I'm only required to do the standard one but I've heard a lot of horror stories about the exam in general so not looking forward to that.

I'm also going to need to take Linguistics in the Winter, also haven't heard that many great stories about Linguistics. So fun times with that as well. I didn't think I'd have to keep taking courses after I had gotten my degree but what do I know?

Time to buy more of these.

That is assuming that I get in of course. There were a lot of people at that conference and it's hard to say how many were people trying to get into the program. I'd estimate maybe half of them? There are only 40 spots open a term and it's fairly competitive.

Apparently the minimum GPA requirement changes each year (depending on the students that apply and what not) but last year the minimum was 3.7. I'm sitting at a 3.3, maybe a 3.4? I'm hoping to use the grades from the next two terms to bump it up.

Or maybe they'll let me in because I'm technically a minority in this program. Yay for being the rare Asian male.

If anyone has any suggestions or helpful tips that be great. I think TriGirl is also a Speech Pathologist? And I am vaguely aware of other Bloggers off getting their Masters.

I hope I get in, it be nice having some form of direction once again.