Personal Statement General Advice/Tips?

[autismadvocate]

I've helped my friends with their letters of intent/personal statements for both med school and law school, and I've noticed that each field had its own distinct things it was looking for. For instance, law schools wanted to get a good feel for who the applicant was as a person, whereas med schools wanted to get a sense for the qualifications and achievements of the applicant. I was wondering if SLP Master's programs had any such vibe to their letters of intent?

 

I wrote a letter of intent already, which goes through my life as it relates to SLP/autism/journey to grad school chronologically. While it's written in essay format, it has a slight informal vibe, which was my way of getting the reader to try to get to know/like me while reading about my accomplishments - since I didn't know which vibe SLP schools go for most, I just kind of meshed the feel for law school and the feel for med school together. But if it turns out they like one or the other of the two styles of letters of intents more, I'll edit it to reflect more of that style.

 

My other, more specific concern with it is that in my letter of intent I focused A LOT on autism. That is, after all, the reason I want to become an SLP (family member on the spectrum and a lot of personal/professional/volunteer experience), what I have a very long history with (which is what tends to happen with family members), and it's the population I want to work with as an SLP. But I was wondering if they might think I went a bit too far focusing on the one thing - like I might give off the vibe that I'm a one-trick pony or I don't care about the other disorders we'll study in grad school, neither of which are the case.

 

Advice, comments, thoughts, etc are all greatly appreciated! :)

[ehemingway]

I ended up writing about my culture-rich background, how I planned to bring those experiences into the field and marry them with my extensive (for a 21-year old) background. I went formal with regard to contractions, grammar, etc. and I certainly didn't try to win the crowd at a poetry slam. I think it varies, but from what my professors stated, they prefer you err on the side of formality.

[NCAR823]

@autismadvocate, I've been helping a lot of friends finalize their essays, and I prefer formal essays. I think focusing on one topic is good; it's your Master's, you want to come across as mature, sophisticated, and with direction. Like you, most of my experience centers around literacy, and I want to study literacy so much of my essay addresses the concentration. The only way it could be disadvantageous would be if you used that essay to get into a program without an Autism concentration.

[autismadvocate]

I'm applying to Florida State, University of Central Florida, Marshall University, and Texas State for sure. Those are my main ones I want to go to and they all have autism concentrations, etc available, at least according to ASHA. I may apply to others so I have a safety - I'm worried that applying to only 4 is too low? Like, I don't want to risk not getting in anywhere, but I don't want to pay for more applications than necessary either.

 

I think I'm a fairly good applicant for most of those schools - as far as stats go, I graduated with a 3.9 in Psych (getting my post-bacc now, carrying a 3.91 GPA), for GRE got 167 Verbal, 155 Quantitative, 5.5 Writing, and I'm basically trilingual, so I think those are pretty good qualifications...which would ordinarily make me think applying to four schools is okay, but I hear SLP schools are super competitive, so I'm wondering if I shouldn't apply for more.

 

Maybe I'll make it a bit more formal, given what you guys said...

[NCAR823]

You're a strong candidate. I am also pretty much trilingual (Spanish and Portuguese). Originally I thought I wanted to do a bilingual concentration, but I have found greater interest in reading disorders and literacy. For that reason, l am only applying to two top 25 ranked schools. I'm not worried about getting in. I am pretty confident I will be accepted at MGH Institute, and I will probably be waitlisted at UNC. If not, I have no problem taking a second year and exploring my options. I'm just glad to send these off!! Tonight, por fin!

[autismadvocate]

Wow! Congratulations on getting them all finished! I'll admit, even though I hit the first deadline in two weeks I still have a bit of work left to do on my apps.

 

The thing that made me nervous about only applying to four schools was that I read a blog post about a girl who seemed to have reasonably good stats, applied to six schools, and didn't get into a single one because of the competitiveness of everything. By the time I finished the post, I wanted to apply to at least 10 schools, but I'm only definitely applying to the four.

 

Glad that someone else also uses the 'pretty much trilingual' label. I always am stumped at how to label my degree of fluency in either of my foreign languages (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese - I know, not a combination you'd expect, lol), because when someone else asks me if I'm fluent, the answer's no because fluent is a really big word that encompasses a lot more than I am. Yet if I just say I can communicate well in both languages, I feel like people think I'm someone with a terrible accent who maybe made it up to Spanish II (or Chinese II) in school. Truth is I'm somewhere in between (although way closer to fluent than the Spanish II level, haha), but I have both languages to the level where I'm fine in academic, personal, and professional environments...hence the label 'pretty much' because for all practical purposes I am.