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College of Human Science and Services - Communicative Disorders

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• Fernwood Building
  3071 Kingstown Road
  Kingston, RI 02881
  401.874.5969 (p)
  401.874.4404 (f)
  

Application and Admission

Graduate Program Application Guidelines

1. Apply online by going to the Graduate School web site.
2. Included with the online application will be space for you to send in a personal statement (required) and your application fee payment. Also included will be instructions for letters of recommendation that may be submitted electronically by the persons writing your letters.
3. Official college transcripts MUST be sent by the institution to: Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Rhode Island, Independence Square II, Suite I, Kingston, RI 02881. Unofficial transcripts will not be accepted.
4. If you are applying for in-state or regional tuition, your Certificate of Residency must be sent directly to the Department of Communicative Disorders (See address in #3 above).
5. When taking the GREs, please remember to use the following codes: 3919 (college) and 0620 (department). If your GREs are not coded properly, we will not receive them and your application will not be considered complete. MAT scores must be sent to the department if you are taking these in lieu of the GREs. Another important note about the GREs or MATs. If you are applying for fall admission you must take the exams no later than February 1st; if you are applying for spring admission, the exams must be taken by September 15th. Taking them later than these prescribed dates places the applicant at risk for not having a complete application and thus not considered for admission.
6. The completed application package (application with personal statement + letters of recommendation + GRE scores (or MATs) + all necessary transcripts + application fee) must be received by the department on or before October 15th to be considered for spring admission and March 1st to be considered for fall admission.
7. Please note that completed applications are NOT reviewed until after the application deadline.

8. If you are an international student, please note that to be considered for admission to master’s or doctoral level graduate programs, the URI Graduate School requires that you have completed a baccalaureate degree at an accredited institution in the United States OR the equivalent of a four-year degree at an international university. Please note that three-year bachelor’s degrees from India and some Asian countries are not considered equivalent; applicants with these degrees must undertake additional coursework before becoming eligible for graduate study at URI. Please link to the following site for more information: http://www.uri.edu/gsadmis/gs_apply_int2.htm.

Graduate Program Admission Information

The Department of Communicative Disorders' M.S. in Speech Pathology program is highly competitive, meaning that we have many more applications each year than we have available slots for graduate students wishing to complete our program. Historically, we have had approximately five openings for spring admission and between 15-20 openings for fall admission each year. These numbers will fluctuate depending on the number of graduates we have had the previous semester.

Admission is determined by committee, with each committee person reviewing each student's qualifications carefully reviewing the applicant's GPA, reference letters, personal statement and GRE scores. The committeeperson's role is to determine which applicants are most likely able to successfully complete the academic and clinical rigors of a graduate program in speech-language pathology based on the materials submitted.

To be competitive for the acceptance into our graduate program, students who apply:

• Should have at the very minimum a 3.0 GPA from their undergraduate program. Note that the average accepted student for 2011 had a 3.6 GPA.
• Although two reference letters are required, we recommend three, with two of the reference letters you submit from persons who can make judgments about your past academic work and can speculate on your ability to successfully complete graduate-level work. A third reference letter should be from an individual who can comment about your interpersonal skills.
• We carefully read the personal statements submitted both for style and content so we would encourage all applicants to spend time writing their statement; they are important.
• Although we would never suggest that GRE scores are not important in the application process, good GRE scores tend to help applicants more than poor GRE scores tend to hinder applicants. However, we do look closely at the analytical writing score, where a 4.0 or higher is preferred. Students accepted for 2011 averaged 540 Verbal, 590 Quantitative, and 4.2 Analytical Writing scores.
• Some students take the MAT instead of the GREs. Although there is no minimum MAT score, we do look more favorably at percentile rankings of 50 or above.

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