New to Audiology

[shesallcali]

Hi everyone!
So, I recently just shadowed my cousin who is a Speech pathologist and it lead me to think about Audiology. I have been looking at different schools and requirements and was wondering if anyone had any other advice.
I am going to be a sophomore at UC Davis, and some of you may know we dont have any majors relating to Audiology at all. I was planning on double majoring in Human Development and Communication.

I guess I would just want to see the different schools people are attending what scores/GPA/coursework they did to complete it.
Are there any students who majored in something non-related to Aud/SPeech?

I plan on going around this summer and looking for audiologists to shadow and talk to.

Thanks everyone! anything can help

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SoCalAud]

Hi everyone!
So, I recently just shadowed my cousin who is a Speech pathologist and it lead me to think about Audiology. I have been looking at different schools and requirements and was wondering if anyone had any other advice.
I am going to be a sophomore at UC Davis, and some of you may know we dont have any majors relating to Audiology at all. I was planning on double majoring in Human Development and Communication.

I guess I would just want to see the different schools people are attending what scores/GPA/coursework they did to complete it.
Are there any students who majored in something non-related to Aud/SPeech?

I plan on going around this summer and looking for audiologists to shadow and talk to.

Thanks everyone! anything can help

Hi shesallcali, welcome to the forum!

I can understand that Davis doesn't offer a communicative disorders program and that's completely okay. Prospective AuD students with non-hearing science major can apply to many of the AuD programs, however, some programs have strict policies which I think it's a little unfair.

Being a Human Development major is good, but you may want to check with some AuD programs and see what they require non-comm dis majors to do prior to starting the AuD program.

Regarding the GPA and GRE scores, most schools accept GPAs from 3.0 to 4.0, it just depends on the school. (Avg GPA is 3.5 and GRE is 1100). Check out www.asha.org/edfind. Work as hard as you can on your GPA. Just don't stress out and think that it has to be a 3.9 or a perfect 4.0.

I am a late college starter, so right now I'm, theoretically, a junior at Cal State Fullerton as a communicative disorder major. There aren't very many classes here related to audiology, except for Intro to Audiology and Aural Rehabilitation, the rest are SLP stuff. The info and advice I get mostly comes from this forum, audiology professors, my very own audiologist and ENT. I know for a fact that there is a department of Otolaryngology inside UC Davis because one of my professors got her PhD there. Contact the front desk and see if you can arrange an appointment with an ENT or audiologist.

I hope this helps! I'd be happy to help you out if you have any more questions.

-Steph

 

[Cochlear]

If it makes you feel any better, my undergrad degree is in journalism but my college forced us non-science majors to take chem, bio, physics regardless so I ended up meeting the basic science requirements for most AuD programs anyway. Personally I think it's good to draw people in who may offer different perspectives/skills and aren't necessarily speech majors. The field will never expand if it recruits solely from the pool of available speech pathology/communication sciences majors.

In short, don't worry so much about your major! Instead focus on getting a solid GPA, doing well on the GRE and spending some time shadowing an audiologist.

 

[shesallcali]

Thank you so much to both of you. The info really helped. Right now I am on summer break so I am just trying to look into aud a little more and all that.

 

[AudioEngineer]

Welcome shesallcali!

My major in undergrad was Human Development, but I came up far short of many of the requirements for ANY school. Be sure you meet the basic sciences for all of the schools, while you are doing your research. Once you find that this IS your path and locate the schools you want to attend, work hard to meet their prereqs for undergrad coursework. If you want to stay in CA, there's only one college (SDSU/UCSD joint program), and it is a tough shell...

There are a few schools, and I am attending one, who encourage students from diverse undergrad disciplines. These schools require a strong background in the basic sciences, but then teach everything Comm Disorder.

If you decide to study audiology, work on the Communication Disorders prereqs of some of the bigger programs, and you should be good until you find out where you want to go.

Good luck!
----------
Hello, SoCal.

Now I'm, theoretically, a junior at Cal State Fullerton as a communicative disorder major. There aren't very many classes here related to audiology, except for Intro to Audiology and Aural Rehabilitation, the rest are SLP stuff.

My wife's parents are CSUF people, living in Yorba Linda. My father-in-law is a professor in the math department there (no stones please). My mother-in-law is an SLP with local schools who got her MS at CSUF ages ago!

 

[Dustbug10]

If it makes you feel any better, my undergrad degree is in journalism but my college forced us non-science majors to take chem, bio, physics regardless so I ended up meeting the basic science requirements for most AuD programs anyway. Personally I think it's good to draw people in who may offer different perspectives/skills and aren't necessarily speech majors. The field will never expand if it recruits solely from the pool of available speech pathology/communication sciences majors.

In short, don't worry so much about your major! Instead focus on getting a solid GPA, doing well on the GRE and spending some time shadowing an audiologist.

Which is why we need our own undergrad major.

 

[rEliseMe]

Which is why we need our own undergrad major.

I agree. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of opportunities for learning in undergrad because the communication sciences major is heavily tailored towards SLP.

 

[AudioEngineer]

Which is why we need our own undergrad major.

While I agree that a lot could be covered in undergrad, the truth is, I think there is a distint advantage to the SLP/audiology hybrid approach. The truth is, most of your audiology patients will have or develop a speech disorder. It helps that you will have the background I never will.

I think, since the SLP can't really do much without the masters, the undergrad work should be more balanced, giving audiology classes earlier and having a separate emphasis that would allow you to diverge, like most degree programs. In this model, the basics would still be required courses, but students could meet remaining requirements by completing a few diverging classes.

However, this would make audiology an impossibility for students like me, who are possibly more qualified than a traditional track student due to acoustics experience. The'd never take me, if they need to have the foundation established by a specific undergrad program.

 

[rEliseMe]

...I think there is a distint advantage to the SLP/audiology hybrid approach. The truth is, most of your audiology patients will have or develop a speech disorder. It helps that you will have the background I never will.

While this is true, I believe that my undergraduate program (I can't speak for all, but I have heard from other students that my program is typical in this respect) has overprepared me for SLP and underprepared me for Audiology.

There were several classes that could have been mutually beneficial but instead focused on Audiology. For instance, our Child Development course offered tons of benchmarks for speech, but no information on hearing except when it develops in the womb (and it was so convoluted that I've totally forgotten). Were the professor smarter, she would have blended the two. Don't forget: SLPs need Audiology as much as Audiologists need SLP.

However, this would make audiology an impossibility for students like me, who are possibly more qualified than a traditional track student due to acoustics experience. The'd never take me, if they need to have the foundation established by a specific undergrad program.

Color me optimistic, but I think it's possible to have the best of both worlds. In my opinion, offering a strong Audiology degree would not create elitism in Audiology graduate programs because we depend so much on outsiders who stumble upon the field. However, for people like me who soak up knowledge and feel their classes are falling short of what they could offer, an Audiology degree would be very satisfying and free up a lot of time I otherwise spend on hunting down research articles.

You said it yourself in another thread: programs aren't looking for the best students, they're looking for the best fit. Having a bunch of knowledge about Audiology will make me a great student. It's what I do with it that will make me a good fit.

 

[AudioEngineer]

While this is true, I believe that my undergraduate program (I can't speak for all, but I have heard from other students that my program is typical in this respect) has overprepared me for SLP and underprepared me for Audiology.

There were several classes that could have been mutually beneficial but instead focused on Audiology. For instance, our Child Development course offered tons of benchmarks for speech, but no information on hearing except when it develops in the womb (and it was so convoluted that I've totally forgotten). Were the professor smarter, she would have blended the two. Don't forget: SLPs need Audiology as much as Audiologists need SLP.

Color me optimistic, but I think it's possible to have the best of both worlds. In my opinion, offering a strong Audiology degree would not create elitism in Audiology graduate programs because we depend so much on outsiders who stumble upon the field. However, for people like me who soak up knowledge and feel their classes are falling short of what they could offer, an Audiology degree would be very satisfying and free up a lot of time I otherwise spend on hunting down research articles.

I don't think that the issue is whether the programs or professors are smart or not. The truth is, the undergraduate programs, like the professional world, are heavily overpopulated by SLPs. I took a "Intro to SLP and Audiology" course. The course was taught by an SLP, she chose a book written by two noteworthy SLPs, who were also professors, and covered 19 chapters - 2 of which were focused on audiology. The issue is not whether they are smart or not. The real issue is that audiology is underrepresented and represented too late.

My mother-in-law, an SLP for 20+ years, has worked with audiologists on caseload and research work. She says that there is so much to both programs, but she lacked audiology information in undergrad and re-covered undergrad work in grad school. The simple answer would be to truly overview each career's info early on in the program and then offer divergent degree emphasis.

If you offer a separate undergrad degree for audiologists, you end up either discarding the material during grad school or excluding non-audiology undergrads from audiology grad programs for lack of required coursework. If I had to do 40 units of stuff to be an audiology grad student, I'd become a mechanic.

Lets not forget the original question and post. This career field needs people who migrated from another career. Perhaps I will have my work cut out for me, but I don't want to be left out because I didn't know what i wanted to be during undergrad.

 

[rEliseMe]

I don't think that the issue is whether the programs or professors are smart or not. The truth is, the undergraduate programs, like the professional world, are heavily overpopulated by SLPs.

This is true, but I didn't mean smart as in academic, I meant smart as in resourceful. This professor had a few very talented, very interested audiology students in her class. She could have used that and devised a project: group students together and have them teach the class a concept or set of ideas. That way, she wouldn't even really have to do any teaching regarding audiology. I am not satisfied with professors who are simply good clinicians (which I'm sure she was). It takes a special kind of person to be a professor, and I'm angry with my university because they don't understand that. Especially these days, with so many highly-qualified people in the unemployed pool, one would think that a much better professor would be available.

If you offer a separate undergrad degree for audiologists, you end up either discarding the material during grad school or excluding non-audiology undergrads from audiology grad programs for lack of required coursework.

I don't think this is true. I've been in classes before that were just the bare bones of something I've studied in depth in other classes. Professors do it even within the curriculum. Learning requires repetition. I wouldn't be altogether disappointed if I had a review of basic concepts (which I had previously studied in depth) in my first year of graduate school. On the other hand, I will be disappointed if I end up with a review of exactly the same concepts I had in undergraduate, without having learned anything else, which is what I'm afraid is going to happen.

I take my education into my own hands, but without some sort of guiding force I get lost. Our classes as undergraduates should be challenging because of the difficulty of material, not because of the workload. vive la revolucion!