Grad Schools

So I've been really thinking about graduate schools lately (and looking into them thoroughly). It's been slightly stressful thinking about loans and GREs and whether I want to have to write a thesis or go the non-thesis route. I've been looking at different programs (like BYUs SLP (speech lang pathology) masters program which mainly pushes research in the clinical field---or like U of U's who pushes actually working in clinics with patients). Both of them are good areas, but I'm just not sure if I want to basically do research all my life (doing studies on kids) or just focusing on treatment. So I've decided my top 3 ultimate favorite graduate schools are at:

University of Utah
Arizona State Univ
Ohio Univ

Funny, but if I had my choice, I'd probably choose Arizona. The price isn't a kick in the stomach (compared to Boston Univ) and the program is both research and clinical based and Arizona doesn't have snow. =D Oh, and there is also a good large group of LDS kids there as well, so I won't be in a branch of 10 or less.

I feel like I've been jumping ahead of myself by looking into grad schools already, but then I think, "oh goodness. I have to apply by January of next year" which means that I have to have taken the GRE (and received a good/better score) and written all the essays and received recommendation letters...which leaves me only about 8 months before I should begin the application process and only a year before I find out what schools accepted/rejected me! Eeeek!