Becoming an audiologist typically takes two degrees: a bachelor's degree first, then a Doctor of Audiology (AuD), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics says usually runs 4 years after the bachelor's.
The path runs through a clinical externship year before graduation hands off to the Praxis exam and a state license.
Here is the full audiologist schooling path, degree by degree.
What degree does an audiologist need?
The degree is the Doctor of Audiology (AuD).
The Bureau of Labor Statistics states it directly: audiologists typically need a Doctor of Audiology (AuD) degree, which typically takes 4 years, and entry to an AuD program requires a bachelor's degree.
So the schooling question splits into two halves — what to study in undergrad, and what the AuD program itself involves.
The rest of this page takes them in order.
The AuD is the field's entry-level clinical doctorate.
ASHA's 2025 CSD Education Survey (academic year 2024-2025) counts 81 institutions offering an entry-level clinical doctoral degree in audiology, a count that includes programs beyond the accredited list, such as those holding other accreditation statuses or in development.
The accredited list is tighter: the CAA, the Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, reported 77 AuD programs as of July 2026 — 76 accredited, including 5 consortia, plus 1 candidate program.
Accreditation follows you to certification.
ASHA's 2020 CCC-A certification standards require applicants to hold a doctoral degree in audiology from a CAA-accredited program, a program in CAA candidacy status, or the equivalent.
A second accreditor works in the same space: Nova Southeastern's AuD, for example, is dually accredited by the CAA and the ACAE.
ACAE's Developing Status, though, only means a new program may admit students — it is not accreditation, and it guarantees nothing about future accreditation.
The pipeline is small and cohort-based.
AuD programs enrolled 792 first-year students in 2024-2025 and granted 777 entry-level clinical doctoral degrees, against a mean per-program capacity of 13.1 seats and a median of 12 new admits.
What the degree leads into — the clinical work, the settings, the specialties — is the wider career story.
The audiologist career guide covers the licensed job from the outside in; this page stays on the schooling.
Check accreditation before you apply
What do you study in undergrad first?
No single major is the gate.
Syracuse's AuD does not require an undergraduate degree in communication sciences — any accredited bachelor's degree makes a student eligible.
University of the Pacific's San Francisco program accepts bachelor's degrees in any major, East Tennessee State University does not require a CSD bachelor's, and the University of Maryland admits students without a hearing and speech sciences degree, with preparatory coursework to complete.
Where no major is required, prerequisites can still apply.
In ASHA's 2025 survey, 37 of 68 responding AuD programs — 54.4% — set prerequisite requirements for applicants whose undergraduate degree is not in communication sciences and disorders, and 31, or 45.6%, did not.
California State University, Northridge, shows what a program-level requirement looks like: a bachelor's in communication disorders, or at least 18 units of communication disorders prerequisites.
Auburn accepts applicants from any discipline but adds foundation courses in language development and phonetics for students without a speech, language and hearing sciences bachelor's.
Grades and test scores are program-specific too.
UNC-Chapel Hill's admitted-student profile lists a 3.0 minimum GPA and a three-year average admitted GPA of 3.82, with GRE scores optional; Syracuse sets a 3.0 minimum, recommends 3.4 or above to be competitive, and makes the GRE optional as well.
Across the 2024-2025 cycle, only 8 of 74 responding programs — 10.8% — required GRE scores for admission.
The offer numbers give the odds a shape, with a catch.
AuD programs received 4,671 applications in 2024-2025 and made 2,388 offers of admission, a 51.1% offer rate across programs.
The count is of applications, not unique applicants, so it is an offer rate per application rather than an acceptance rate per applicant.
Grades still cluster high where the offers land: the mean GPA range of students offered admission ran from 3.16 to 3.99.
What happens in the AuD program?
Formats differ more than the degree title suggests.
Utah's AuD is a 4-year post-baccalaureate professional degree, the University of South Florida's is a 4-year, 101-credit residential program, and LSU Health New Orleans spreads its curriculum across 11 semesters full time.
James Madison University runs an 11-semester, 4-year residential program with cohorts of 6 to 8 students.
Accelerated three-year tracks compress the same qualification.
Northwestern's AuD runs 12 quarters, the University of Cincinnati's is a nine-semester program with a summer start, and Nova Southeastern's is three years and eight semesters over 119 credit hours.
The named coursework areas are clinical.
ASHA's coursework outline for audiology certification — the outline it uses to evaluate degrees from programs outside CAA accreditation — lists required areas including acoustics for speech and hearing sciences, counseling techniques, and a neuroscience overview.
The research load is light.
In 2024-2025, 64.7% of responding programs required a capstone project for the degree, and only 4.4% — 3 programs — required a thesis, which is the clinical doctorate's fingerprint.
Funding exists but is not the default: 26.6% of admission offers in 2024-2025 came with funding, mostly assistantships and scholarships.
Among the 635 students offered admission with funding, 36.7% were offered assistantships and 56.9% scholarships.
James Madison, for one, offers graduate assistantships that pair a tuition waiver with a stipend.
Online, the picture inverts: the online AuD programs this page covers are for people who are already audiologists.
Drexel's online AuD Bridge requires a master's in audiology or the equivalent, at least 3 years of full-time audiology experience, and a license or documented eligibility to provide audiological services.
ATSU's post-professional AuD is likewise for practicing audiologists.
The certification standards point the same direction — at least 50% of the CCC-A's supervised clinical practicum must happen on site and in person.
Is the 4th-year externship part of the degree?
Yes — at the four-year programs this page draws on, the externship year sits inside the degree rather than after it.
Pitt's AuD takes four years including a one-year externship, with the extern terms billed at a per-credit rate.
At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), the final three semesters are a full-time clinical rotation of at least 32 hours a week, at a site the student applies to, interviews for and is offered.
Placements can range widely: at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, the last three semesters of the AuD — its externship — may be located anywhere in the United States.
San Diego State's joint program with UCSD has students log 900 or so clinical hours before a 12-month, full-time externship of at least 1,850 hours, figures the program publishes itself.
On an accelerated calendar, the externship lands differently: Northwestern's three-year program puts it in the third year, when tuition drops to one third of the regular per-quarter rate.
ASHA's certification standards treat the supervised clinical practicum as part of the qualification rather than an add-on.
At least 50% of it must be on site and in person, with telepractice counting for up to 40% and clinical simulation up to 10%.
The supervisor must be an ASHA-certified audiologist with at least 9 months of full-time clinical experience and at least 2 hours of professional development in clinical instruction or supervision.
The standards also define a make-up path: an applicant who did not complete the full practicum inside the degree has 24 months from application receipt to start the remainder, and 48 months from that start to finish it.
Pay and tuition vary by program.
Some programs cut extern-year tuition — Northwestern charges a third of the regular rate and Pitt bills per credit.
Some externships are paid: the American Academy of Audiology's HEARCareers board lists paid fourth-year externships, and OHSU's LEND audiology training program runs 12-month externships with a modest stipend for third- and fourth-year students.
Neither is universal, so treat each opening's terms as its own.
For planning the year itself, the National Student Academy of Audiology publishes an externship timeline, an externship guide, clinical education guidelines and past externship survey results.
Can you become an audiologist without a doctorate?
For the audiologist title, the schooling route on this page is the one the field is built around.
BLS says audiologists typically need the AuD.
ASHA's certification standards require a doctoral degree in audiology from a CAA-accredited program, a program in CAA candidacy, or the equivalent.
And the degree ASHA's own survey counts is the entry-level clinical doctorate — that is what the 81 institutions in its count offer.
Licensure has its own nuances: each state's board sets the degree it accepts.
At least two states' statutes still accept a master's in audiology — Iowa's code allows a master's degree (with its own supervised clinical-hour and post-degree experience conditions) or, instead, a doctoral degree, and Maine's accepts a master's or doctoral degree (or a board-determined equivalent).
Confirm the degree rule with the board where you plan to practice.
The online route is no shortcut either: the online AuD programs this page covers are post-professional, built for people who are already practicing.
The hearing-care jobs that skip the doctorate are real, but they are different credentials, not lesser audiology degrees.
Hearing aid specialists — dispensing professionals regulated by state or provincial authorities, with rules that vary by jurisdiction, as the International Hearing Society describes them — have a typical entry education, per BLS, of a high school diploma or equivalent with moderate-term on-the-job training.
BLS notes audiologists may work with audiology assistants, which BLS classifies as a type of medical assistant — support roles beside the audiologist, not lesser audiology degrees.
One bridge runs the other way: an AuD program can fold those other credentials into the degree.
Drexel's entry-level AuD builds in milestones toward an audiology assistant credential, hearing instrument specialist eligibility and a master's degree on the way to the doctorate — a structure for students who want the dispensing and support credentials en route rather than instead.
What comes after graduation: the Praxis and your license?
The exam comes first, and ASHA recommends taking it before you leave: ASHA recommends that AuD students take the Praxis Audiology exam during their final year.
The current test is the Praxis Audiology (5343): computer-delivered, 2 hours long, with 120 selected-response questions and a $146 test fee set by ETS.
ASHA's certification requires a passing score, and the score must be earned no earlier than 5 years before the certification application and no later than 2 years after ASHA receives it.
The score to know is 162.
ASHA's required score on the 5343 is 162 on a 100-200 scale — the 170 that circulates in older advice belongs to the previous 5342 and 0342 test versions, which ASHA still accepts where a state requires that version.
For licensure, each state sets its own passing score, and most adopt ASHA's score, though some sit higher or lower.
Then the license.
BLS reports that all states require audiologists to be licensed, with requirements that vary by state but typically include an AuD from an accredited program.
The audiology board or licensing agency in the state where you plan to practice sets the details: which degree it accepts, which exam and score it takes, what supervised experience it wants and what it charges.
The state's own rules, not this page, are the final word on licensure.
One credential rhythm to plan for after that: ASHA-certified audiologists maintain the CCC-A with at least 30 professional development hours (3.0 ASHA CEUs) per 3-year maintenance interval, including at least 1 PDH in ethics and 2 PDHs in cultural and community-responsive practice topics.
Career information, not licensing, legal, medical or other professional advice. Degree, accreditation, exam and license requirements change; confirm current requirements with ASHA, the CAA, ETS and the audiology licensing board or agency in the state where you plan to practice.
Scores, versions and rules change