Discussing why you want to attend a specific program in your personal statement

[futureSLPhopefullylol]

Does anyone have any tips as to how they are tailoring their personal statements to specific schools? I wrote one main personal statement and I am going to tweak it to each school by putting a paragraph as to why I want to attend that school. With some programs on my list I am having trouble finding more detailed info on their program (like Illinois, Urbana-Champiagn) and I don't want to say something generic. Any examples or tips to achieve this?! Thanks!

[Elska]

I ran into the same problem, so I researched the professors of each school and found at least one from each school who published research or developed a program that matched or were similar to my own interests and discussed why working/learning with/from that professor would further my own learning and future goals. 

[hopefulslp1]

I'm doing the same! Or i'm talking about their clinic and what they do there that interests me. I attended UIUC for my undergraduate degree and if you go to the faculty page and click on the associate professors there it will take you to their "website" and most talk about the research they are doing!

[futureSLPhopefullylol]

29 minutes ago, hopefulslp1 said:

I'm doing the same! Or i'm talking about their clinic and what they do there that interests me. I attended UIUC for my undergraduate degree and if you go to the faculty page and click on the associate professors there it will take you to their "website" and most talk about the research they are doing!

Ooh is there anything you could share about UIUC that makes it unique? How do you like the school and the area? Feel free to PM me if you want since that's a little off topic.

[broca's aphasia]

If you’re interested at all in research, search for research labs with faculty from your program.  There should be a faculty page that might hint at it, some are more blatant if others.  If not, a quick google search with your school’s name and research lab should suffice.  Pick a lab you think you’d be interested in working in and just touch on that for two or three sentences.  

[futureSLPhopefullylol]

1 hour ago, broca's aphasia said:

If you’re interested at all in research, search for research labs with faculty from your program.  There should be a faculty page that might hint at it, some are more blatant if others.  If not, a quick google search with your school’s name and research lab should suffice.  Pick a lab you think you’d be interested in working in and just touch on that for two or three sentences.  

I guess one of my biggest problems when it comes to this is that I do not want to do research tracks... I'm only really interested in clinical!

[broca's aphasia]

4 hours ago, futureSLPhopefullylol said:

I guess one of my biggest problems when it comes to this is that I do not want to do research tracks... I'm only really interested in clinical!

You could still use the same idea, but instead of mentioning the lab, mention what exciting clinical implications certain faculty or labs' research provides.  Talk about a certain professor or lab's findings that really gets you excited, especially if it's in an area you mentioned you want to focus in.