Affiliated with the Mayo Clinic, the Mayo School of Health Sciences is a private allied health professions school that offers an electrocardiography program at its campuses in Rochester, Minnesota and Scottsdale, Arizona. To qualify for admission to the program, students must have either a two-year associate degree in a healthcare-related field like radiography or nursing, or a high school diploma with college-level coursework in anatomy, mathematics, English or communications, medical terminology, patient care, and physics. Prospective students must also pass a drug screening and a criminal background check. Admission to the program is competitive; only eight students in Rochester and three in Scottsdale receive an invitation to attend each year. The 18-month program allows students to gain hands-on training in the Mayo Clinic's echocardiography laboratory. The school offers a limited number of grants, scholarships, and loan programs for allied health students with financial need.
Mayo School of Health Sciences
Siebens Medical Education Building 11
200 1st St. SW
Rochester, MN 55905
(507) 284-3678
http://www.mayo.edu
The Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church founded Seattle University in 1891; since that time, the school has grown to an enrollment of more than 4,200 students. The university offers a Bachelor of Science in diagnostic sonography with an emphasis on cardiac and vascular sonogram techniques. The program requires four years of study to complete and includes four clinical rotations at facilities in the Seattle area, one of which takes places over the course of students' entire senior year. In addition to the core requirements for the major, students also take classes in biology, anatomy, physics, and calculus. According to the 2009 Barron's Profiles of American Colleges, approximately two-thirds of all students receive some type of financial aid.
Seattle University
901 12th Ave.
P.O. Box 222000
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 296-2000
http://seattleu.edu/
At its training center in Halethorpe Maryland, the University of Maryland at Baltimore County offers a certificate program in cardiac diagnostic medical sonography. Students must volunteer for 40 hours or more in a healthcare setting, write an admissions essay and complete 60 credits of college-level coursework in fields like English, mathematics, statistics, anatomy, physics, biology, medical terminology, medical ethics and law, communications, psychology, and computer science. Those admitted to the program spend 13.5 months in laboratories, classrooms, and clinical training sites like The John Hopkins Hospital, St. Joseph Medical Center, and the University of Maryland Medical Center. Although the school does not participate in federal or state financial aid, Sallie Mae student loans are available for qualified students.
University of Maryland at Baltimore County
1450 South Rolling Road
Halethorpe, MD 21227
443-543-5400
http://umbc.edu/trainctr/