If I'm getting a master's/PhD in speech-language pathology, what should I get my bachelor's in?

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My plan right now is to get a master’s or PhD in speech-language pathology, and I know it’s most common to get a bachelor’s in communication sciences and disorders, but are there other pathways available, like linguistics? If I did major in, say, linguistics as an undergrad, would that be a hindrance or an advantage to my applications for grad school?
Thanks, y’all!!

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Hi, hopefully some more people will chime in here but my daughter is an undergrad currently planning to apply for SLP programs. What she has found is that a lot of schools have something called a bridging year or post-baccalaureate year where you can make up the course work that you would have gotten with the communication disorders major, if you went to a school without that major. She’s majoring in psychology. I think linguistics might be another good option, but you probably would have to do that bridging year. (So in other words, 4 year undergrad with the linguistics major, one year bridging year, and then the 2 year SLP masters program).

I’d suggest checking out some SLP grad school admissions websites and look at what they require for coursework for admissions.

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My D is currently in a MS in speech pathology program. She didn’t decide on that route until her junior year of college so she got a BS in psychology at her LAC and then went on to a MS in speech program. I’ll describe what I see to be the three main pathways to get into this field.

  1. Going into speech pathology as an undergrad. I’d believe this is the cheapest and probably the most stress-free way to go. But one would have to be fairly sure that he/she wanted speech pathology as a career early on. My D did not even consider speech pathology as a career path until further down the road.

  2. Getting an undergrad degree in another subject and getting into a program for speech pathology that directly accepts students without a background in the field. My D got a BS in psychology, had a theater minor, and took a lot of STEM courses in college (2 each in bio, chem, physics, calculus) and she did a good bit of research as an undergrad. She also demonstrated interest in the field by shadowing a number of SLPs and taking an intro to speech course at a local college over her breaks. I’ve heard her mention that others in her program came in with linguistics majors, education majors, and a few older students came in as a career change (two with business majors undergrad). It sounds like one can study a wide variety of things undergrad. My D and I did a lot of research together and found very few programs that take students without a background in speech pathology directly into a MS program. And the programs for students without a background in speech pathology were often longer (2 semesters on average so students could take the coursework they didn’t get as an undergrad) than they would be if they had done speech undergrad. The speech pathology programs we found that took students without a background in the field were few in number and competitive in terms of admissions. It will be important to research each program you are considering to see if they will take students without a background in the field – this information is generally found online. My D had a limited number of schools she applied to and fortunately got good results.

  3. Another option (and my D’s fallback position) was to take a year after getting her BS, take speech prerequisites at a local college, and then apply to a wider group of schools for a MS in speech pathology. However, one thing that frustrated my D was that different schools had somewhat different sets of prerequisites for their master’s programs.

Hope this helps you a bit. FWIW my D is in her last semester of her MS program and absolutely loves the field of speech pathology.

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One of my closest friends is a speech-language pathologist. She majored in communication sciences and disorders in college, but most MS programs in the field will accept students with any major. She did say, though, that students in her program (at Columbia) who didn’t have a CSD or speech/hearing sciences major had a lot of catching up to do, and she was glad she majored in CSD in undergrad because she had a better foundation for the classes she had to take.

So, if you know that you want to be an SLP and the schools you like have the major, I’d recommend majoring in communication sciences and disorders, or speech and hearing science, or a related field. But if your favorite colleges don’t have that major, or you want to explore some other careers, you can major in something else (psychology is a popular major) and get into one of the many MS programs that doesn’t require a major.

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I am an SLP. I attended UVA and was admitted into their non-CS major track. I entered the field after spending 15 years in another career. I had to take a few pre-requisite classes. And it took 3 years to complete. Some majors that would make a good fit include linguistics, education, and vocal performance. Taking anatomy/neuro-anatomy classes would be helpful, too. I work in a school and one of the teacher’s daughter’s wanted to get a Master’s degree in Communication Disorders. Her school did not have a program, so she looked at two of the programs at other colleges in the state and tried to mirror them as much as possible. She ended up creating her own major, which was approved by the Dean and was admitted to UVA this past fall. Good luck!

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