You can contact the Office of Student Affairs in the College of Health Sciences (859-218-0493), or you can email the CSD Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Richard Andreatta.
The application packet and instructions are made available by early December each year. The application is completed online. Visit the admission section of the CSD Website for detailed information on requirements, prerequisites, and procedures for application to the CSD undergraduate program.
Minimum requirements for the application include:
- 42 earned credit hours by the time of application.
- Completion of Intro to Psychology or an equivalent general psychology course or AP credit by the time of application
- * Completion of CSD 277 - Intro to CSD or an equivalent course from another institution by the time of application
- 3.0 cumulative GPA.
* Transfer students from outside of UK will have the CSD 277 course admissions requirement automatically waived, if they are coming from a university that doesn't have an equivalent class. In addition, the program will consider, on a case-by-case basis, requests to waive the CSD 277 admissions requirement for current UK students who are applying to the major during their Junior or Senior years. Under either of these two conditions, accepted students will simply take CSD 277 during their 1st Fall semester of the program.
Students apply to the program during their sophomore year. Preparation of all application materials should occur during the late Fall semester of your sophomore year, with submission of your materials during December or January to meet the Feb 1st deadline. (Please note: If Feb 1st falls on a weekend day, applications will be due the following Monday.)
The application consists of 5 parts: (1) your cumulative GPA, (2) three letters of recommendation, (3) descriptions of at least three personal/professional experiences, (4) descriptions of at least three community-based experiences, and lastly (5) a personal essay based on a prompt question. (Please note: Standardized test scores (SAT and ACT) are no longer used in the assessment of applications.)
The CSD undergrad program is considered a selective major because we require a formal application to be accepted as a major. We are selective because of the pre-professional nature of our program and the reality of limited resources to accommodate large numbers of students. Our major only accepts approximately 60 students per academic year. The total number of applications each year varies considerably, so the percentage of students who are not accepted also fluctuates. In other words, regardless of the size of the application pool, the number of students we can take remains at approximately 60.
Generally speaking, we take a holistic approach to admissions. The faculty evaluates all components of a given application (See FAQ #5) and works to select a group of students for admission who have the best overall set of evaluation ratings. The faculty’s first procedure is to produce a "first ordering" of all the applicants based on our minimum requirements. Students who do not meet the stated minimum requirements (See FAQ #3) are eliminated from the pool of applicants. This initial procedure helps us organize the entire pool so we can proceed with a more detailed discussion on the qualitative aspects of each application (personal essay/response, letters of rec, & personal/professional and community experiences). To evaluate the personal essay/response and letters of rec, 2 or more faculty members judge and rate the quality of each essay and letter of rec and assign them a numerical ranking (1 to 5). The personal/professional and community service factors are also judged by two or more faculty in terms of experience type, quality, and frequency of service, and are also given a numerical ranking. Lastly, the faculty review the students' transcripts and their past courses to evaluate their rigor, subject type, and relation to our major. When all applications have been completely evaluated, students who possess the best overall set of rankings and scores are selected for admission. The evaluation process is not an exact science, but the faculty does the very best they can to balance all elements of the application to arrive at a fair selection for admission.
For the past several years, the average GPA of students accepted into the CSD program has been approximately 3.5 to 3.75. But please remember that GPA is only one part of the entire application.
We DO NOT ONLY use the cumulative GPA to decide on admission. During deliberations, the faculty weighs the applicant’s GPA along with ALL the other parts of the application (See FAQ #3 & #5 above). The only time GPA scores are used alone is to eliminate applicants from consideration whose GPA falls below the stated minimum requirement of a 3.0 (See FAQ #3).
Absolutely, you have a chance! Admissions are based on ALL application elements balanced together, not just on GPA scores (except for the meeting of minimum program requirements). One of the reasons we review the rigor of a student's past coursework is to account for students who start in a very difficult major, such as engineering or nursing. We want to acknowledge a difficult set of classes taken when you were in another major, where A's and B's are harder to achieve.
Personal/professional experiences are those related to observation of CSD professionals out in the field, volunteering for health care-related organizations, or working in CSD-related areas. It is strongly recommended that students have a minimum of 3 different and unique personal experiences for their application.
There really is no set number of hours that are needed for the application. Instead, what we consider to be more important is the quality of your experiences and an indication that you have committed a good amount of time to each. For example, spending two or three weeks observing one site is probably a better experience than spending 1 hour at 3 different locations.
For community service, these are typically experiences that are unrelated to healthcare or CSD, such as participation in UK Fusion, DanceBlue, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, mission trips, working as a resident assistant, or any other experience that demonstrates your leadership and personal relationship skills. It is strongly recommended that students have a minimum of 3 different and unique community service experiences for their application.
The personal essay/response is VERY important. The personal essay/response should be a well-crafted and well-written example of your writing skills. The personal essay/response functions as an important indicator of the quality of your writing and thus should be proofed very carefully. Writing is a VERY important part of the major and CSD profession. Excellent writing skills are highly valued by the faculty. All applicants will be asked to write an essay to a prompt question that will be posted along with the application materials. Please take this part of the application seriously because it often is the deciding factor when faculty are judging between two applications.
Ideally, letters of rec should come from professors who can discuss the quality of your academic promise and performance in courses or who have advised you personally. Letters may also come from employers, coaches, or other professionals whom you have shadowed. These individuals should know about your integrity, work-ethic and skills with a good deal of depth. Please DO NOT submit letters of rec from any family members or relatives, personal friends, former caretakers, or the parents from a babysitting job. These types of letters of recommendation are not useful and are viewed poorly by the faculty.
Generally speaking, your letter writer should be made aware of the competitive nature of the program and thus be instructed to provide honest opinions and concrete examples of your work ethic, integrity, academic performance, promise as a health care professional, and/or any other personal quality they see as beneficial toward a successful career in CSD. The more specific your letter writer can be, the better. Generic and vague letters of rec are not useful for our deliberations.
Yes. You can apply to our program without having to be a current UK student. Applying to our program is completely separate from the transfer process to UK. If accepted into the CSD program, you would need to transfer into UK in the same way that any other transfer student would. It is best to transfer to UK after you have heard of our admissions decision. (Please Note: If you are a transfer student, the requirement of having CSD 277 - Intro to CSD to apply will be waived if your current institution does not have an equivalent class. If you are accepted into the CSD major, you will take CSD 277 during the first semester of your program (the fall of Junior year)
Yes, you may re-apply to the CSD program.
Each year, the pool of applicants is treated independently of any past applications. Nonetheless, the faculty do take into consideration 2nd time applicants. Students who plan to re-apply, should proactively make every effort to distinguish themselves and make marked improvements to their application packet. To this end, it will be important that 2nd time applicants meet personally with their academic advisor to discuss where improvements can be made and if re-application is a realistic goal.
No. The CSD major is structured sequentially, with completion of specific classes necessary in order to be prepared to take later occurring courses. The CSD undergraduate program is 4 semesters long. No exceptions will be made for any student requesting a change in course sequence and/or requesting that the CSD program be shortened or compressed.
No, unfortunately, this is not allowed because of the class size limitations that our program has. Only accepted majors are allowed into CSD courses.
In short, the GPA is not the sole factor in admissions. A high GPA can be offset by lower rankings on other components of the application packet. We have had several cases in the past of students who were not accepted into our program even though they had excellent GPA’s. The reason that they were not accepted, even though they had strong GPAs, included the following: lackluster letters of rec, weakly written personal essay/response, or fewer than three personal and community-based experiences. We cannot emphasize enough that our decision process for admissions takes ALL parts of a student’s application into account.
Yes. We do inspect transcripts for the rigor of the courses and/or previous majors that you have taken. The history, quality, and rigor of your classwork before your application matter very much in the faculty's evaluation of the applications.