SOP Personalization Regarding POIs

[Rose Tyler]

I'm working on my personalized statements of purpose for each school that I'm applying to and trying to include information on which professors I'd most like to work with and why. I'm worried that my responses are a little too standard. To the effect of "I'm interested in working with this professor because they do work in this disorder and I'm interested in researching that same disorder." Should I attempt to mention specific articles or ideas for research directions that I have? In one paper, a POI mentioned that more research could be done with a certain population that I'm interested in studying. Should I bring that up?

 

On that same front, I'm having difficulty getting access to some professors' papers. I mostly use Google Scholar to find articles (searching by author) and then hope that my university library has access to some of them. One professor in particular doesn't seem to have many papers listed on Scholar published before 2000 and I can't access any of the ones that do show up.

 

Sorry if I'm over-thinking things. Crunch time is coming up faster than I realized and I'm starting to feel a little frantic.

[Generis]

A lot of it might sound standard, but it's important to say why you want to work with that POI and what in your background prepared you for it. I wouldn't mention specific articles, but you could mention specific ideas or researchs interests you are particularly interested in.

 

If you are interested in a POI but don't have access to their articles, you can try messaging them to say you are interested in their work and wanted to read more before you apply, but don't have access. I've already had a POI gladly send over some articles that are too recent to be in my access =)