How early in advance do you write your SOP?

[Regenerative Christine]

For those applying/who have applied to graduate programs with a December deadline, how early in advance do you write your SOP?

 

Just to put things in perspective, I am applying to several Ph.D. programs and plan on working on my SOP in the coming weeks. Would just like to hear everyone else's plan of attack

[tll]

I'm currently sending mine out to friends, professor and other grads for reviews (going to upload mine on here soon too for feedback), but ASAIK, this is still early on to start with SOP. I just think the process of getting feedback would take sometime, and also I'm personalizing mine for each program I'm applying to so effectively that could take longer.

[geographyrocks]

When I applied last year, I started mine in July. Don't be fooled. These suckers look easy to write, but putting together a cohesive story that has just the right touch of everything is harder than it looks. I also wanted time to have different people review it and the rewrites in between. I had the writing center look at it first. Then I had two different faculty look it over.

[smg]

I started in August...maybe late July. 

[TakeruK]

For the SOP specific to PhD applications, my first deadline was December 1 and I started writing in earnest around November 1. However, I didn't start from scratch because I had written a similar thing for a fellowship application due in mid October. It might be more helpful to discuss the number of hours spent on the SOP and I would say I spent about 6 hours writing/revising the 500 or so words that make up them main template and then an additional 30-60 minutes or so to write the remaining ~250 words that make up the part where I discuss each school specifically.

 

I showed my SOP to one or two other people, but since I was the only one applying to US schools for PhD programs**, I didn't really do the whole SOP trade thing. In honesty, even if it were possible, I would not want to spend more time than what I already spent on my SOP since I don't think it is a very important aspect of my application. 6 hours + 0.5 hours per school was enough for my SOP to not sound bad, and I was happy with that.

 

(** I was in year 2 of a Canadian MSc, and so I was not in sync with most Canadian students who apply to US PhD programs). 

[victorydance]

Probably started mine in March/April. Really started working on it significantly over the summer. Still revising it now. My deadlines are for December-January. 

[bsharpe269]

I haven't done much with mine and will be applying for December/ January deadlines. Right now I'm just focusing on reading as many publications from possible mentors as possible so that I know their work as well as I can. I'm taking notes on this that will be used in my SOP but I haven't actually written the SOPs yet.

[Rose Tyler]

I started mine about a month ago. Every few days I pulled it out and made changes. Most of it has been rewritten at some point, some paragraphs multiple times. I'm finally starting to feel like I have a workable draft and hope to share it for feedback soon. It seems so simple, but it's probably the single hardest thing I've ever had to write.

[grad_wannabe]

I started mine back in July, just putting a few paragraphs into a word document, and have been working on it in a somewhat piecemeal fashion since then. I've been dumping notes into my phone (I'll be walking down the street and get a thought like "oh! I need to mention XYZ!") and then putting those notes into my document. 

 

What's been especially helpful is having actual conversations, over and over again, with people about what I want to do in grad school. Every time I vocalize my goals (ostensibly, an elevator-pitch version of my statement) I find myself crafting the wording slightly differently, drilling down on what exactly I find important. Then, through the actual having of the conversation and answering questions and talking out loud, the ideas become more concrete. Immediately after the conversation I again make notes on my phone, then go and dump those notes into my statement document. 

 

In the last few days I've started crafting the statement itself. 

[chewycandy]

I started it last week...still revising it every day. Good luck on your SOP writing!

[Crucial BBQ]

In reality I started writing mine a few years ago, but that is a story for another thread. 

 

I am going to start hammering out some first drafts beginning with next week and hope to have completed the final drafts by mid-Novemeber.