For me to improve, please give me a rating. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best), what rating would you give me? Please include any areas I should improve on too, and if I should elaborate or if anything is not clear, ok? Thank you so much!
--------------
To the Admission Committee:
It is my strong and genuine desire to be granted admission to the graduate program in Speech and Language Pathology with a specialization in Feeding and Swallowing at the University of Northern Colorado. I am a well-rounded, enthusiastic, and motivated Asian woman seeking to further her development as a professional and as an individual, and a fantastic candidate for this program because of my educational, research, teaching, and leadership background, a passion that stems from a true calling for service, and desire to improve the lives of others in need.
After high school, I pursued a college education at The University of Texas at Austin, where I had the life changing opportunity to tutor students in after-school programs. Tri-lingual in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, I tutored the children in different languages with their homework. This experience enhanced my desire for understanding children, and created in me an awareness of the importance of being able to communicate with others. Concurrently, I took a course called CSD 317M Communication with the Multi-Disabled that taught me about difficulties that can happen at birth that affects speech and language such as developmental delays. This experience oriented me in my decision to work with newborns and to see them through life for early childhood development in preparing them for everyday communication, school, and their adult lives.
At present, I am a speech language pathologist-assistant at Resource Therapy Center. I plan over 24 sessions with patients on a weekly basis from the Spanish-English bilingual community in Pasadena, TX in a clinical setting. My most interesting case is addressing the needs of a student that was born with a cleft palate and another student that shows symptoms of Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Working with these two students allowed me to use Kaufman Speech Praxis Materials to address their speech language goals, and helped me to become interested in feeding and swallowing in children from birth and how it effects speech and language later in life.
The quality of instruction at your university will help me to achieve my goal of becoming a valuable Speech and Language Pathologist in the medical setting and early childhood education. Being given this educational opportunity will enable me to meet a profound need in preparing these children for communication in their life, school, and family for them to function and grow into their adult lives.
Although my grades were not strong in my early years of college, my study skills and my test taking skills improved after I discovered my calling for the Speech Language Pathology field. I paid attention to the details more in my studies, and I had a greater sense of urgency when tackling my courses. The urgency was motivated by the fact that I can help another person. Once accepted into your program, I will be committed and dedicated to making the most of every opportunity that is given to me for the greater good of others.
Hanh, a personal statement is not formatted as a letter to the admissions committee. You need to reformat the paper into an essay format. All you have to do to do that is to remove the greeting portion at the start of your paper. Using a scale of 1-10, I would grade this essay an 8, only because of the formatting problem and the wordiness of the essay. You can actually delete the first part of your essay that only contains word fillers. This is the part of the essay that does not actually say anything about you and your application in a direct manner and is therefore useless to the admissions officer who has only a few minutes to decide whether the essay he is reading is worth reading to the end or not.
You also need to revise the following:
- You should instead be talking about how the university course offerings specifically have motivated you to pursue a degree there. Mention some specific programs that the university offers which helped you come to this decision.
Finally, delete this last part:
- Try to avoid discussing any negative aspect of your academics in your personal statement unless asked by the prompt to do so. You do not want to leave an impression that you are not worthy of attendance at their university. The admissions officer will find out about your grades through the transcript of records you submitted anyway and that will speak volumes more about you than any defense you can present about why you had bad grades. If they don't ask, you don't tell. That will be sure to help your essay along as well.
