knp

As someone who found out about the GRFP in November and has been researching it recently, my impression from some of last year's example essays is that you won't be disqualified on that basis unless the rules have changed again—I found a set of example essays on Alex Lang's website (Matheus Fernandes, awarded 2015) that have neither broader impact nor intellectual merit sections and that got an award. (And his reviews don't mention anything about his lack of categories!) It's possible the application has changed in minor ways this year, but I viewed his example as a sign that you didn't need to do the full multi-subheading treatment of some of the other examples if you could address the topics clearly without them. Edit: in the other thread, I see that the rules did change on this from last year to this year, so never mind, but I'm going to leave this here rather than have a mysterious blank post.

A theme coalesces! (Probably a holiday-appropriate one, too.) The things people say:

Every post in this conversation is more helpful and informative than anything I've read on the topic on the CHE fora. Although I'm not in graduate school yet, an early thank you for writing!

Those are legitimate fears! I'm a thin white lady who presents as straight and people still say bad things about my intellectual competence. High school was particularly bad for that, because it was a very good school where everyone fetishized math skill; I was decidedly below average at math. I had great language skills, though, so I ended up getting into and deciding to attend a pretty cool university. One of my acquaintances asked me one day in May where I was going. I said the school's name. "You? But YOU'RE STUPID." I got a little nastiness from my school counselor, too ("YOU broke LOW NUMBER on the SAT? Who'd have thought!"), although we got along fine after she finally got to know me a little bit. My senior yearbook is full of people "lightheartedly" joking about how they had spent four years thinking I was an idiot, but now they guessed that wasn't totally true after all! But I don't need any sympathy! That was seven years ago now, and my life has been great since then. I was also really lucky, because after I moved out of the weirdly math-and-science-centric universe there, I have ended up with a persona that is almost always read as "smart." I can't imagine how much it would suck to have my worth so strongly tied to my inherent characteristics, since even the more mild stuff I have to put up with as a woman who displays no other obvious reasons to take her less seriously gets on my last nerve. So, good luck! We need a lot more education professionals who don't pull nonsense like my school counselor! You sound like a thoughtful person, so I hope you get into a school you'll love. Because education is a field that aims to make a positive difference in the lives of this country's children, I would hope that at least one (and hopefully most) of your programs views your past experiences as a qualification. As I'm sure you know better than I do, that doesn't always happen, but applying to so many schools was probably a wise strategy, and I hope you get into a bunch of them.

In my statements where I applied for a different field than I pursued in undergrad, this is the structure I used. It is not a complete essay structure, since it doesn't include introduction, conclusion, fit, or whatever, but it is what I used for the part of my essay when I was explaining my background. Here is the Topic I am interested in studying in New Field. Here is my background with New Field as a discipline, specifically as qualifies me to pursue Topic. Before I realized that I wanted to study Topic through New Field, I studied Topic through Old Field. Here are the things that I learned in Old Field that may help me with studying Topic in New Field. This paragraph is OPTIONAL. If you switched to machine learning, like, two years and two internships ago, you might be able to omit it entirely if you wanted. But if you switched to it, like, only in your senior year and with limited research experience, it's good to include your background with other topics, with maybe one sentence for what you learned from each. Anyway let's talk some more about what I am Proposing to Do at Your Institution. (Conclusion, fit paragraph, whatever.) As long as you present your history as a two-part thing, I don't think you should appear too unfocused. There are only two parts: Current Interests (all within or related to machine learning) and Past Interests (which are going to be relegated to a single paragraph in which you talk about what, if anything, relevant for machine learning that you took away from each of them). The fact that in the past you cycled through several interests is irrelevant, because none of them are your current interest any more. PS Trying new things in one's first years of undergrad is not only totally normal, but should be encouraged!

It all depends on the relative scarcity of your other options, no? If deleting this school would take you from four applications down to three, I'd advise you apply. What could it hurt? Visit weekend could turn out way better than you're expecting, and a phone call is actually a pretty nice gesture. On the other hand, if this would be your eleventh application, I'd advise you not to bother if you don't want to. You've met him in person, so it's your call; I'm pretty sure there's no wrong answer here, though.

I know that psychology is a particularly distinct field, so I should really probably avoid giving any advice about it at all. At the same time, I have read this, it's interesting, is routinely recommended by others on the academic, and you might find it helpful. http://psychology.unl.edu/psichi/Graduate_School_Application_Kisses_of_Death.pdf

Summary: this time, you did nothing wrong! But for all the reasons listed above, you should be careful with gifts of alcohol in the future. It can be perfectly fine, but sometimes it isn't, so it requires a lot more contextual knowledge than the average gift.

I had missed that the professor who was letting this go on was your advisor; that's a big problem! But, although I've never done this on a graduate advisor, I don't think that my strategy is necessarily confrontational. It can be! Personally, I do sometimes skirt the line of confrontation, since I am a Mean Meaniepants who is just not very nice to poor Nigels (of whatever gender). But I don't think the phrases I'm using have to seem confrontational, and a big part of why I get away with them is (I'm guessing) that I transform back into all smiles and pleasantness as soon as I get the floor back. "Oh, how interesting! But the second part of my point, following up on that,* is xyz." The first sentence might or might not have an edge to it, depending on the context. I personally don't mind if a little bit of bite sneaks into my words, but I obviously DON'T recommend that—by the time I'm saying the second sentence, though, I'm radiating happiness and light. This tends to defuse any hard feelings that either the words themselves or my tone might have initially created, and I think is why this almost always works out for me. Not only do I view this pattern as not a confrontation, actually, but I don't think it's about Nigel at all. The spark was my frustration with him, sure, but what that classroom situation has shown me is that the professor needs to be prompted to take me and my ideas more seriously. This is how I make that happen. Most professors and bosses with whom I've dealt with this issue have not been committed to sexism or any other reason/-ism that might lead them to listen to Nigel more than the quieter students.** They just kind of passively go along with the social norms that oh yes Nigel is speaking a lot, so we should all listen to Nigel, as he is clearly a serious student. After all, confidence is the primary indicator of intelligence, right? Refusing to be disrupted by Nigel tends to short-circuit the Nigel-centric cycle, and now KNP has moved herself into the category of "serious student." (This transition tends to happen quite quickly, actually—if it's a running battle over the course of the semester, the problem is particularly serious and goes beyond the bounds of my current advice.) KNP will probably not talk as much as Nigel, but when she has something to say, she is not going to be knocked out of contributing it to the conversation. This pig-headed, self-assured, utterly pleasant refusal to get pushed out of the conversation doesn't really disrupt the patriarchy—it moves me from the bottom of the serious/not-serious dichotomy that is so affected by all the noxious assumptions permeating our culture and up into the "serious" category, rather than changing the makeup of the categories. This approach has major pros and cons. It is much less likely to backfire in a way you can't recover from than is actually calling structural factors into the conversation—I am perfectly aware of how well "this mode of valuing participation makes classist/etc assumptions!" does not go. At the same time, I don't think it does much to disrupt the patriarchy, which is itself a bummer. It does do a little, but not a lot. My "oh what were you saying earlier [before Nigel cut you off]?" thing is an attempt at both common courtesy and to make room for other students stampeded by Nigel who, unlike me and Nigel, are not the reincarnated form of a big yellow bulldozer.*** That said, I've never advised this strategy to anybody else before. It works gangbusters for me, but it's a strategy I've created to deal with the raw material of my own personality and instincts. I have a Temper, for instance. At this point, my temper is entirely under control but, in its mildest form, still readily accessible—when I want it to, I can let flash across my face/through the tone of a single sentence. I used to want to get rid of my temper entirely, if possible, but I've come to see it as a huge asset to my experience as a young woman who wants to be taken seriously, both in fancy undergraduate classrooms and at the academic-ish museums where I've worked since graduation. I am easily frustrated, easily made angry—letting a microsecond flash of that shine through before I turn into a big ball of "I'm so pleased we're all listening to the point I'm making" sunshine has been a miracle cure for a lot of bad situations. The temper says "I'm not [ducking] around" and the smile says "but I'm absolutely positive I must have been misinterpreting your tone! I am quite sure you do, in fact, respect me!" I don't know how much, if any of this, would be helpful for others—the blog post makes me suspect that at least a little of it is, which is part of why I typed this, but it was also fun pinning down a reflex that's long been in the back of my mind. *Almost never actually follows up on that, but even if not, the social grace softens the transition. Like a politician—what, you think I didn't answer the question? I said I answered the question, so... **If they actively think that women students or poor students or students of color are silly and less worth listening to, this strategy fails me every single time. This, instead, is for dealing with people who perpetuate those same bad ideas just by not having awoken to fighting their own prejudices. ***I think part of the reason I have no sympathy for this is that I have some innate Nigel tendencies I have worked very hard to eliminate, and you know how people are annoyed by flaws that remind them of themselves.

I turn into an ice queen made of knives when some guy transgresses the bounds of social behavior in this particular manner. There's a lot of "Excuse me, I wasn't finished" or "To return to the point So-and-so was making before we got off on this tangent." I am perhaps too pointed in my approach to saying them (the phrase "death glare" has been applied), but they're a helpful strategy for ignoring him. Because you're still ignoring him, after all—you're just channeling the conversation back around to what you wanted to say in the first place. For more, this is good: http://captainawkward.com/2015/11/05/786-trouble-dealing-with-male-grad-students-who-take-up-all-the-air/

+1. I uploaded an earlier draft of my SOP to one of my programs on my last run before submission. (I've added the gray redaction bars for internet reasons.) Behold that draft's fit paragraph. The preview window: a life-saver.

Some of my applications suggested a length, something like, "most successful statements of purpose are between 2 and 3 double spaced pages." In that case, going slightly over is probably fine. I expect that that's an extremely different situation than going past a stated maximum. What do you think you will gain by submitting 1000 words to a place that asked for an SOP of "no more than one page"? At best, you look like you didn't bother to read their directions.

I seem to have run into a bunch of 18th-century Americanist art history professors, but I went to school in the Northeast—they might tend to congregate there. I'm also aware of some really interesting work in 19th-century American photography studies, especially in the post-war west, although none of the works that jump to mind were written by tenured professors at PhD-granting institutions. There is something to be said to just working your way down the rankings in your discipline and looking up all the faculty with your regional interest, if listed by region, or through all of them because their department has an annoying website that doesn't provide any information about what each professor studies. Gahh! No!!

3/7! It's very exciting. The next one's due in two days, and it's the last hurdle, really. The last three should take like 4-5 hours more work total, maximum.

Way better! Definitely too long, though, and I would suggest targeting your second and third paragraphs for cuts—your first MA thesis and those handbooks you wrote are less relevant than your second thesis, so you should describe them in less detail. This may be me speaking as someone with a historical/anthropological viewpoint, but I still think you need to be more specific about the regions and periods of literature you're interested in. It sounds like you're interested in post-war English literature from India, primarily, but also from the United States? That's quite different than post-war literature everywhere, so it would be good to delineate your main area of focus. Again, you're not locked into it, but "so far I have a particular interest in works written by Indian authors, but I also have an interest in how similar issues played out in works by British and American authors in memoirs from later wars" is a necessary piece of information, and one that I would present in the introduction. I would also strongly suggest that you head over to the English literature/rhetoric and composition sub-forum and post either a new thread or a query in the Fall 2016 applicants' thread asking for someone to read this piece. I've given my thoughts about its form, but I think you would benefit from feedback from someone who has a better handle on the content! (Plus they are like the nicest forum, too.)

Yeah, I ended up using an entirely different paper for Penn than I did for all the ones with more average length requirements. My finished 25-page sample is not that different than the form it took when I first wrote it; it didn't cut so well, though, so I chose a different paper to serve as the basis of the 10-page one. It isn't the single finest thing I've ever written, but it's got my best and most argumentatively coherent single eight-page section to present along with two pages of intro/conclusion. Although honestly, I rather prefer cutting down extant work to writing new things about my past and future.

No idea, but do you know how much I enjoyed Penn's 10-page maximum?

Major thoughts This sounds like the start of something really interesting, but it's still really very rough from an academic standpoint. I want to know more about your project, but I am concerned about your ability to have a PhD-level proposal within the month. This needs way more about your research, way earlier: this is a little light on research interests for a master's application, and way light for a PhD application. Moreover, structurally, you don't tie it all together. You need to do that. Your first paragraph must have a "thesis statement" where you outline your academic interests, like "this leads me to my current application on portrayals of the Indian Navy in film vs literature which is an interesting question because films, a more "colonized" medium, have tended to display xyz characteristics in their portrayal of the military, while literature, which has an older tradition in India, has, contrary to what one might have expected, displayed abc characteristics." Make the case for why I, someone who studies genre in Anglophone African literature (for example), should care about the issues you raise! On the other hand, I am deeply skeptical of how a thesis claiming to argue about the "moral responsibility" of literature is going to go over in any American English department not closely associated with a religious tradition. Now, "what role does moral responsibility play within these works is fine," but I suspect that asking a yes/no normative question about what literature should do, ethically, will sink 100% of English applications. But it's not my field—have you found any English scholars who work on questions similar to the ones you want to ask? In general, see how detailed this exemplary SOP from UC Berkeley is! http://ls.berkeley.edu/files/statement_of_purpose.pdf (A classic of the academic internet.) It's significantly longer than most places want, but it is a really good model. Another thing to try might be writing your dissertation proposal. If you had to write one starting Monday, what would you write about? What sources would you use, what themes would you focus on, and what perspective would you take? Your statement of purpose must provide a preliminary answer to all of those questions; you haven't addressed them yet. Minor thoughts Although I would suggest some wording edits, your first sentence is a good hook. Whose Navy? India's? If so, that would be something to highlight as part of your background. Perhaps I'm being parochial, but when I hear "the Navy" in the context of an application to a US university, I assume US Navy. Writing-wise, put down the thesaurus, stop repeating words, and delete half the commas. (See below.) I get from the British spelling that you aren't from the States, which also comes through in a number of adjectives we would see as bragging. E.g. the custom here is to try to highlight our positive qualities as much as possible, without ever applying a positive adjective to ourselves. Instead, practice the "show, don't tell" school of writing. I wouldn't say "I'm hard-working," but if I want that idea to come across, I might make sure to mention just how many sources in how many different archives I used in my senior research project. This post explains in more detail: http://theprofessorisin.com/2015/02/06/americans-dont-brag/

If a professor did that for me, I would think that was nice! But there's no way it can be necessary, since people get into good graduate schools all the time without having emailed a single POI. Plus it just feels so Georgian—when possible, I do use the "so-and-so told me to write to you" construction in my emails, but anything more would seem like a nice but optional flourish.

Besides the non-responses, I have been amazed at how nice everyone has been in their emails with me. It's wonderful! (On the other hand, I did go to Fancy But Large Cold And Impersonal University for my bachelor's, so I have the sense that my standards of what constitutes "nice" are maybe set lower than average.)

I would be down for limericks for Michigan! I have been known to answer questions that annoy me by breaking into awful poetry—I believe my AP Government exam was 2/3s completed in governmentally-themed verse. Maybe if we all do it together they'll get the hint.

Spitballing, here. I hate personal history statements. Alas, not writing them is not an option. Because I hate the "personal history" part of this ritual, my "basic" statement of purpose has 600 words on my research topic and 150 about my life and my qualifications to do the research. When faced with an application that requires a research statement and a statement of personal history, I basically cut those 150 words about my life out and turn them into 300 in a separate essay. So yes, my "personal history" statement is a lot about my research experience. What does the actual prompt in the actual personal history statement at your program say? These are different, you know! For instance, one of my schools' prompts was basically "tell us about yourself." Another one really wanted "tell us about yourself, and what diverse perspective can you bring to this program?" Looking at the wording of the questions let me talk more about diversity in the second one than was natural to do in the first. Does any of that help?

Seven. My ideal might be six, because man are there a lot of moving parts to keep track of with all these applications, but this is a number that feels good to me now. (Per my sidebar on the left: three are anthropology and four are history.)

Everything can always be shorter. Oh, you think that was a good point? Great! Now make it shorter.* *A few people really do write extremely concisely, but they are not you or I. Do feel free to keep in the description, but getting through it more quickly is important! Have you heard about that one spoon that helps Parkinson's sufferers eat independently? Someone who worked on that project might write, "Having watched my mother, who has Parkinson's, lose the ability to feed herself due to her tremors, I realized that there was an engineering solution that could help her with one of the symptoms of her disease. Thus, I figured out how to engineer the motion sensors in the spoon." In only half a sentence, we've gotten from this hypothetical person's personal motivations to their academic/professional work on the problem. Performing that switch in under 50 words will give you more time to talk about yourself in the rest of your statement.

I have a couple thoughts about your GPA, and I hope you will find one or the other helpful. First is that not already a great GPA, even if you feel that it could have been even higher? At my institution, that would've been a magna cum laude—none too shabby! Second, I have been told in clear terms that I am getting a superlative letter from one of my professors in part because I have been known to get Bs. (Although man, I hope he didn't put it in exactly those terms in the actual letter.) This is a baby-boomer professor with hippy tendencies. He tends to think we millennials are too grade-oriented—gee, with college getting ever more expensive and admissions ever more competitive, I wonder why?—and he likes that my transcript shows a couple risks. I would guess that that demographic and sentiment are common among admissions committees, so I wouldn't worry about them choosing someone with a 4.0 over you. Your grades are already superlative, so congratulations. PS Interesting topic! I was just thinking about Lear's madness in the wilderness earlier today, and I'd love to read anything you ever post about your topic on the internet. As far as random_grad's points, I'm not even in your discipline, but that post convinced me even so.