[REQUEST] Please, proofread by Statement of Reseacrh Interests.

[naija chux]

Hello,

 

Please can someone kindly help proofread and critique my Statement of Research Interests (pdf). I am applying for Masters and the school asked for it not Statement of Purpose nor Personal Statement. Thanks for your time.

[Cookie]

I'm not in your field, but a quick read tells me that this is too general and doesn't show specific "Research interests". 

[Dedi]

I agree with Cookie--my SOP has more narrowly defined research interests than this Research Statement. I'm not sure if you've even taken the time to research what you specifically want to do. Keep in mind that you aren't bound to a project before grad school even starts. Many students change their interests during grad school, I've heard. The point is that you want to start finding a niche in the lab and in grad school. What can you discover that no one else has looked into yet?

[fuzzylogician]

First of all, since the school is just asking for one document, you can safely think of it as what we refer to here on the board as the statement of purpose. There is lots of advice you can find about how to write a strong SOP here and elsewhere. 

 

Second, as others have already noted, your statement doesn't give enough details about your interests. The questions you open with are extremely broad, and the motivation to be able to 'grasp the underlying concepts of the above questions in such a way that I can share the ideas and visualizations with anyone' makes it sound like you should read more on wikipedia, not go to graduate school to get a PhD. On a similar note, the goals you describe in the second paragraph are very vague, e.g. "I intend being a professional who can harness the power of data." One suggestion that may help is to turn your second paragraph into the opening paragraph, to define your interest in big data, then work on refining the first paragraph and present actual workable questions that are more precise. The first half of the second paragraph, until Witten et al... is not necessary there at all, it too is very generic. There are issues with your other paragraphs but you need to seriously revise the beginning before attending to the rest. 

[naija chux]

Thanks for taking time to read and reply.

I would make the necessary corrections.

Thanks!

[naija chux]

Hello kind people. Once again thanks for taking time out to read version one of my statement of research.

 

I took to your corrections and made my research interest more specific. Can you please kindly critique the updated version of my Statement of Research Interests (pdf). Thanks for your help.

Edited May 30, 2014 by naija chux

[Dedi]

Your ideas are quite interesting. Network analysis is a pretty hot topic right now so I hope you can find a niche within all those researchers. Have you read Connected? That book may be of interest to you, especially the economy and politics chapters (as you mentioned the stock market and elections).

[naija chux]

Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, I have read the book. It was one of the readings in two Social network analysis classes I took online and I read it on both occasions. Any comments on the document it self?

[Dedi]

There are minor grammatical errors but that can be cleared if you take it to a writing center or at least your advisor/supervisor. The overall content is good and it is conveyed in a precise and simple way (for some reason, a lot of people want to impress the adcom with a lot of flowery language. Unless one is a English major, it looks really out of place and feels awkward). I tend to be a little harsh about being precise, but this is good. I don't see anything that doesn't need to be there. The goal is for every word/sentence/paragraph to have a meaningful place in papers (not just SOPs, but manuscripts as well).

 

Fix the grammatical errors, and I think you're good. Of course, get multiple opinions before you send it in. There's always something to fix.

[naija chux]

Thank you. Would proofread it for the 3456734th time and fix the grammatical errors. English is not my first language though but would use a dictionary to try fix it up if need be. Thanks a lot for your reply. I am grateful.