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I am planning to apply to a few schools for my AuD starting on Fall 2010 and I am panicking because of my lack of extra-curricular activities in the field. I consider myself a non-traditional student, working full-time hours while attending school full-time. Consequently, my GPA is not the greatest: a 3.4 and I have not done much outside of attending class and working.
According to all my professors, schools look for a high GPA, GRE score, and lots of experience volunteering in the field.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can play down my lack of activities and involvement outside class in my application? Will the acceptance committee care that I have had to support myself throughout school?

Thanks!!

Well your GPA is not bad. If you look at some schools people have gotten in with less than a 3.0, it always depends on the applicant pool for that year. If you have not done any volunteer work or observation outside of school I would suggest trying to get on board now. Even if it does not reflect your application, you will be more knowledegable when it comes to interviews. Schools look at GRE scores, so do fairly well there. They also look at your letter of intent, so you might want to include your "non traditional status". They are also looking at what makes you stand out, good letters of recommendation. I am also applying for fall 2010. I just submitted my letters of rec, and starting to apply. What schools are you looking at?

I did a year for AmeriCorps and an internship with an Audiologist but I haven't really done much else since the undergrad program that I'm coming from concentrates mostly on Speech pathology.
I'm looking at University of Florida, University of South Florida, and Northwestern U at the moment.

I'm also worried about letters of recommendation since I only went to school for class and tests, therefore I didn't really make any special connections with teachers. The two that I finally convinced to write me a letter will only write two letters each so that would only allow me to apply to 2 schools....Any suggestions? Would I be able to include a letter from someone whom I worked for if that was Audiology/teaching related?

Thanks!

Oh okay, well that makes sense. I would definetely ask the Audiologist that you did an internship with. Hopefully that person knows you at least enough to make a good recommendation for you. I see, Northwestern is an acellerated program I believe (3 years). Good luck.
I am applying to a total of 6 programs, so we will see.

The audiologist is one of two people I already mentioned. How did you manage to get your professors to write you 6 letters each?

I'm actually applying to NU because of the accelerated program. 3 years are better than 4! :-)

Do you know what research areas they are best known for?

As far as research goes- I do not know. You can go to ASHA's website and look at NU and it will tell you an overview of the research that specific university does. I guess they just agreed to writing 6. My program has a focus for speech pathology because of our graduate program, there is no graduate program for Audiology. I guess when you are asked to write letters of rec, you might expect more than 4 schools. I would ask anyone who knows you and is in the professional community (Audiology and other subjects). If you had any teaching experience with someone and you feel they will write you a good letter, then ask away. You should start to get these started, as applications are due soon.

Originally Posted by AuDFall2010

I did a year for AmeriCorps and an internship with an Audiologist but I haven't really done much else since the undergrad program that I'm coming from concentrates mostly on Speech pathology.
I'm looking at University of Florida, University of South Florida, and Northwestern U at the moment.

I'm also worried about letters of recommendation since I only went to school for class and tests, therefore I didn't really make any special connections with teachers. The two that I finally convinced to write me a letter will only write two letters each so that would only allow me to apply to 2 schools....Any suggestions? Would I be able to include a letter from someone whom I worked for if that was Audiology/teaching related?

Thanks!

Does each letter they wrote have some sort of an official seal of some sort? If not and it is just standard letter typed with their signature at the end. Xerox a bunch of copies to send to more than two schools. I would suggest being as detail specific as possible about your internship, putting procedures that you watched or learned, special cases that seemed too stand out, special encounters with patients, your relationship with the doctor and even what kind of hearing aids they fitted. No detail is too small your trying to make it seem like you covered a large array of Audiology knowledge in one internship, i would even go as far as to list the services the Audiologist provided.