mudlark

I'm sure that you are a bright and capable person. That being said, if the only contact I ever had with you was this SOP, I would think that you are absolutely not ready for grad school. I'm sure that you can do much better, and I don't mean that you *actually* aren't ready for grad school, just that in this case you come across as very unprepared. First off: Do not, do not, do NOT use this anecdote. High school should be irrelevant at your stage of the game, and a story about a bad teacher you had when you were 18 doesn't tell adcoms anything about who you are as a scholar now. Deconstructing the word 'text' sounds like a cool undergrad discussion to have, but it really is terribly cliched. Deconstruction has been done to death. Also, deconstruction is a serious challenge to structuralism, which is what Saussure inaugurated. You can't deconstruct anything in a Saussurean fashion. (And 'in a Sassurian fashion' is both a typo and a dangling modifier.) Besides, Saussure has been dead and gone for decades upon decades. His insight that signifiers are arbitrary will be incredibly old news to every professor on the adcom. The fact that signifiers are arbitrary absolutely does not mean that "a valid common definition cannot be coined". Saussure believed that communities determine meaning. He believed that meaning changes with use, but believed in meaning. This section says incorrect things about largely irrelevant ideas. Best case scenario, you run the risk of boring them with this section. Worst case scenario, you run the risk of looking out of date and ill-informed. English scholars might not like hearing language referred to as 'superficial'. 'Coerced' and 'oversight' are both mis-used here, and you the referent of 'which' is unclear--I know it refers to the expectations, but it sounds like it refers to the oversight. Again, not an interesting idea. This has been discussed ad infinitum decades ago. Frankly, this all makes you sound uncommitted, and like you've sacrificed depth for the sake of breadth. I get the sense that you've studied a lot of different things, but there's no coherent thread through them. Your thesis topic is one that gets chosen a lot by people who are dabblers and want to do a little kids lit, a little medieval, a little film, a little 20th C... you need to really work to show that you're doing something rigorous and inventive with this topic, since at first glance it looks... well... fluffy. Giving a more detailed version of your argument would help. The insight that the film is different than the book is obvious. How is it different? To what end? What have key critics said about the process of adaptation, and how are you building on them or challenging them? Your account of your thesis is very vague right now. If you only have a vague concept about where it's going right now, then maybe this is not the time to apply for grad school. Doing graduate level research should be primarily about contributing to an ongoing critical discussion. Following your own interests is part of that, of course, but it shouldn't be the only reason you want to go. Saying that you want to explore your interests won't convince anyone to fund your studies. It sounds solipsistic. Your topic is way too broad here. Twentieth century British literature? Which? What decade? Pre-war? Post-war? What genre? Critical theory is also a huge, huge field with a complex history and about a kazillion schools of thought. You need focus--this could cover anything from a post-structuralist Marxist reading of P.G. Wodehouse to a formalist linguistic project on... I dunno. One of the other bazillion British authors from the 20th C. If you're applying for an Old and Middle English program, you need to mention which old and middle English authors and texts you want to work with. The fact that Tolkien picks up on some old tropes does not change the fact that your undergrad thesis is about a 20th C adaptation of a 20th C book. You need to prove that you can work with medieval texts. Graduate TA programs are not unique, and I'm sure that there are other schools with similar academics. This sounds over the top. You need to get in contact with any professors who support you, like your letter writers, and talk to them about grad school. Tell them why you want to go, and what you want to work on, and explicitly ask them if they think your proposed topic is feasible. Ask for suggestions about how to focus your ideas. Then get to the library, and do a preliminary lit review of the key elements of your proposal. Read what academics are writing NOW, as in during the past 5-10 years, on your areas of interest. Find a niche that hasn't been covered yet, and make it your own. I think these two steps of prep work are absolutely necessary if you're going to get this in shape. This is probably the harshest critique I've written on this site. I hope that it doesn't come across as mean-spirited, and that it helps somewhat. I'd just hate to tell you polite half-compliments when I really do think that you need to put a lot more work into this. I sincerely wish you good luck in forming your goals.

To be honest, her comment doesn't sound that bad to me at all. But I wasn't in the room. I would go see the professor in person, and ask if, now that the term has progressed, she still feels that she would be able to write you a very strong letter of recommendation. If she really has changed her mind about you, she'll take it as an out. If this is some kind of personality clash or misunderstanding, you might be able to sort things out and feel more comfortable in the classroom. A civil, face-to-face conversation is almost always the best option.

I think it is mostly style, yes. There are two schools of thought on this. Some people like anecdotes. I really don't see the point of them. The professors that I trust also don't like them. If the origin of your interest in the topic isn't directly relevant to your project and qualifications, don't include it. I had a successful round of applications with an SOP that didn't mention my background at all until the very end, and then only gave relevant educational information about projects completed, etc.

I definitely agree with the comments that you've structured this backwards, and that the tone seems a bit off. As far as selling yourself as a strong candidate, try the old creative writing advice to "Show, don't tell." For example, this paragraph: ...could be edited so that instead of telling them that you have the skills necessary to succeed as a researcher, you show them that you do by mentioning your latest or most important project. Nitpick edit: I'd change the order to "have utilized, been impacted by, and adapted to new media". The segment "impacted by, utilized" tripped me up when reading. This certainly is a "big question". It sounds like it's big enough to contain the entire discipline of communications, actually! What little chunk of it are you going to take and make your own? Is there a specific population or time period you're interested in? This really needs specifics, which are a great way to show that you have the experience and skills to frame a research question. Who are the key people who have worked on this before? Dropping in a few names of the foundational texts and authors in your discipline would help show that you know the lay of the land. This is one of the moments where you over-sell yourself and come across as a bit arrogant. What you have described here is a fairly standard undergraduate experience. You also won't endear yourself to any committee member who was a non-traditional student (or has a spouse or friends who were, or is a big supporter of non-traditional students...) by trumpeting your youth. I think this sentence should be cut. This is also the standard experience of people born in the 80s. Can you replace it with something that will stand out more? Good. Such as? How will you work on those challenges? Ok, awesome! A distinct research topic! This needs to come waaaaaaaay earlier in your SOP, like maybe in the first or second paragraph. Good, but I want to know more about that group. Which specific tools and methodological frameworks did you/will you use?. How exactly were they mis-perceived? Why is this group important? Has other research been done on them? How does yours fit in? You have a focus here, but you need to get into the how and so what? Also, I wouldn't say "big question" more than once. It's one of the moments where you kind of sound like a marketer. I would back off here. The committee determines whether you have those skills. Maybe phrase this in terms of having a good foundation, and School X providing the resources you need to continue developing? I feel like you already covered this territory in your last 'fit' paragraph. Why not combine them to economize space? Here's what I would do: 1. Bulk up paragraph one with specifics. Show, don't tell. 2. Delete paragraph two entirely. If you really can't bring yourself to get rid of one or two absolutely key points, move them to the fit paragraph. 3. Move the last part of paragraph four and the beginning of paragraph five to where paragraph two used to be. Use the space you've bought to flesh out your experience, and your research plans. This may take a couple of paragraphs. Include at least a cursory review of existing scholarship (a few big names) and some discussion of methodology. 4. Gather personal background stuff into one paragraph, and make sure that it has hard examples in it. 5. Combine existing fit paragraphs into one big finish. It seems like you have a clear topic in mind. Showcase it! The adcom already knows their school is great, and why. They don't know what your research is or why it matters. Sell your IDEAS, not your school selection. Hope this helps.

Ah, good. I don't know the material you're working with at all. I was trying to show a way to emphasize ideas over biography, so I'm not surprised that I screwed up the actual sense. Ok, that makes more sense, then. Still, I would make the personal stuff secondary to the ideas--begin a paragraph with something more rigorous, and then talk about how your personal travels help you understand it. Also, are there any skills or bits of information that you picked up on your travels? Did you make any connections with people down there, or become more sensitive to certain cultural issues? That would be a better way to mention your travels than to talk about how they inspired you to work on the topic, IMO. It's not so much about what spurred your interest as it is about what you're going to do with that interest if you're admitted. Cool. I'm hanging around here because I really love reading about other peoples' ideas (and it helps me procrastinate ). Thanks for sharing yours!

If you really want to include it, you might hedge it in language like "University of X's strong history of supporting MA students".

Hi! Current lit PhD here. I think this is a weak opener. You want to stand out from the pack. Taking high school Spanish and English is not noteworthy enough to include in an SOP, IMO, let alone start with. Why not rephrase it so that it's about your topic? Your opener could be: In this version, instead of picking up one SOP out of a katrillion and seeing "high school graduate", the committee members will see "researcher with a well-formed interest". Again, I'd lead with ideas first, personal hook second. I know that this is partly a stylistic preference, but I firmly believe that professors are more interested in your ideas than your feelings. So something like this: Then launch into Guatemala. As someone outside of your field, I find the jump from Spain to Guatemala a little abrupt. What's the specific link? I also think that you should replace your comments about interest and curiosity with clear plans to research specific topics, or use specific methodologies or tools. No complaints about this part. Looks good. I dunno... I feel like you're SHOWING this in the rest of the SOP, so you don't need to TELL us it again. A detailed research plan to give scholarly attention to underlooked texts speaks volumes about intellectual curiosity in a way that a paragraph like this can't. I'm confused about why you're mentioning a retired language professor by name, but not the people who would be able to supervise your work. I think that you need to be less personal/casual in this statement. Your vacations are not really relevant, for example. Reading this, I feel like you have energy and curiosity, but haven't put the work into channeling that into a coherent set of feasible research questions yet. That's fine, but it might not be good enough. A section on methodology, a brief review of criticism, or a sense of the conversation that you're intervening in, would all be more useful than the personal info you have here. I also think that this could be much more coherent. I'm not sure what time period you're dealing with, or whether you're doing a transnational project (Spain and Guatemala) or not. So more detail, please! You can fit it in if you trim some fat. Hope this wasn't too harsh. It wasn't meant to be.

I read a great book on teaching undergraduate writing that said that while school does a good job teaching students how to write and edit papers, it never deals with the final step: release. It's so hard to hand something in and let it go. I once handed in a key application to my grad chair and then found I couldn't bring myself to leave campus. I sat in a stairwell for ten minutes just getting up the nerve to get on the bus and leave it behind. Here's my advice. Get a good friend or boy/girlfriend to come over. Buy your favorite alcohol, and ice cream. Open all of the application windows, and load everything up. Have a mock "Clicking Submit!" ceremony. Then crack open the alcohol and ice cream and watch a crappy movie. Sure, you could kill yourself getting your application from 97% perfect to 97.5% perfect. But that time would probably be better spent on friends, current work, etc. Remember that the work of putting the application together is just the tip of the iceberg. You've been DOING the prep work for years and years. You've already done so much! At this point, moving a few commas around won't make or break you. Do due dilligence, take a deep breath, and let it go.

I'm firmly in Camp Anti-Anecdote, and "My interest in xxx is influenced by xxx and deeply rooted in xxx" sounds fine to me. If you want to get across the sense that your ideas have evolved over time, you could try something like, "My current research plans are influenced by..." or "A number of factors lead me to my current specialization..."

Since you're going straight from one degree to the next, your acceptances will all be 'conditional'. Usually the condition is just that you finish your current degree, but they may put on a condition about grades. For example, I had a friend who needed to maintain an A- average over his senior year in order to fulfill a conditional admission. Going from a 4.0 to a 3.7 isn't going to get you turfed from any program, but a serious drop in courses in your field *might*. Just might. You won't know until you see your admits.

The stats really won't tell you much. As I understand it, most schools use certain thresholds to cut the really statistically weak apps, and then make their decisions based on SOPs and LORs. Adcoms are made up of intelligent people. They know as well (probably better) than we do that oftentimes scores don't tell the whole story. I had a 4.0 GPA in my major in an undergraduate English honours program from one of the "big five" Canadian schools, and a 3.96 from a smaller MA program (no GREs required). I think my GPA helped, but I absolutely don't think it was what got me into any of the programs that accepted me. I had a focused, feasible SOP that showed I was up on current criticism, and very, very strong LORs. I won some external funding in my MA, as well as a few small awards, and worked a lot as a TA and a college marker. I think those things helped as much as the GPA, since they showed that I was engaged and ambitious. I had a few minor presentations at grad conferences. Wish I had more, but at least it shows I'm working towards bigger things. There's a whole package that they look at. Stressing about scores will only drive you crazy. Along with my good English grades, I have some seriously embarrassing Cs in third and fourth year in history and philosophy. I had 100% admits. If you have a good research program and strong supporters, committees will overlook some flaws. They're human, and they know that we are, too.

I think it's too wordy, and the phrasing is unclear. Why not cut the phrase before the comma and begin with "My interest in..."? Straight to the point.

I don't think it sounds all that presumptuous. It's true, right? Here are some milder ways of phrasing it, though: "I have been in contact with Drs. Who and What, whose expertise would make them ideal committee members for this project." "My work connects to that of Drs. Who and What, who support my application to this program." "Drs. Who and What have expressed interest in my project." Any of those work? Or still too forward?

Awesome. I currently find myself planning a dissertation on Jabberwocky ressurection, and wonder if it's worthwhile having a Jabberwocky slayer (aka, a 'beamish boy') on my committee, the better to learn how to defend the creatures.

And if you don't apply this year, don't worry. There's always next year, and the next, and the next... signed, Mudlark, who feels like she's going to be doing grant apps for the rest of her life if she's lucky.

Lemme tell you a little story about my friend. She's the most successful grad student in her program. Tons of funding, expected to do great things. In the grant application that won her the aforementioned tons of funding, she misspelled the first name of the key theorist that she works with. Badly. And more than once. Still won the prize. The typo will not hurt your chances.

I would put the important phrase first, take out some extra words, and split it in two: "I believe Bleep University can offer excellent academic support for my work. The research of Professors Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as well as other notable scholars engaged with jabberwockian thought, has strong links to my own." I took out "greatly complement" because it sounds like the professors' work is a kind of secondary supplement to yours in that phrasing. Are you applying to the Dept. of Jabberwocky studies? Cause then you could drop the section about other Jabberwockians and just go with: "The research of Professors Tweedledee and Tweedledum has strong links to my own. As a result, I believe Bleep University can offer excellent academic support for my work."

Yes, 12 pt font is standard.

Sorry about the break up. I know a handful of people who channeled their angst after the end of a relationship into being really insanely productive in their programs. Hope that happens for you. I'm not in the dating pool any more, but I am newly married to a non-academic. In fact, my husband only took one term of university before dropping out. Needless to say, I think dating people outside the ivory tower is a great idea. My husband isn't caught up in the same funding, performance, and job worries that I am, so he's great at calming me down when I get academic tunnel vision and lose perspective. He's also a film geek, so we can talk about narrative, genre, and a lot of the things I'm interested in as an English student. He's a great person for me to test out my ideas on, because he has an open mind but no formal training. If I can explain it to him, I know I have it clear in my own head. Workload and relationship balance isn't that hard. In fact, I find that having him around makes me work more efficiently. Instead of spending all evening tracking down tangents that might be useful, and fussing over a draft for the billionth time, I get the required work done, stop, and go watch a cheesy horror film with him. A PhD program doesn't HAVE to take over your entire life. I know that people talk like if you're not killing yourself, you're not working hard enough. I know that it's difficult to find enough confidence to unplug from the gossip about who's working more. But really and truly, you can be very successful and still take time for dinner and conversation every night. There's a lot in your post about how HE didn't understand YOUR circumstances and your priorities. I wonder if you really tried to understand his, or if you shut him down because he's not an academic. That sounds harsh, and I don't mean it to be. I really feel for you. First terms are really hard. I just know how all-consuming the stress can be, and how hard it is to listen to someone close to you telling you to calm down and smell the roses when you spend all day on campus around people who are big flashing red panic lights in human form. If he was an asshole who tried to keep you from necessary work, ignore my advice. But if he, or the next non-academic guy you date, are decent folk who were trying to be supportive in their own way, it's definitely worth giving what they have to say a shot.

If it wasn't ok to date former students, I wouldn't be here. My dad was my mom's TA in music college!

I would not 1.5 space it. That's likely to annoy readers who are used to properly formatted, double spaced work. Not to sound like a broken record here, but you should find the style guide that's appropriate for your discipline and follow all rules in it. Most (if not all) require double spacing. I know that a little thing like spacing isn't likely to make or break your entire application, but as a general rule, adhering to the professional standards of your discipline can only help. You wouldn't send in a sample with badly formatted citations, would you? So why would you mess with the spacing?

Or if you're ok with a slightly more casual tone, you can say "your program" or "this program".

What citation style do you use in anthropology? You should follow the style guide instructions for title pages. I'm in English, and the MLA now calls for no title page unless specifically requested by the instructor.

Congrats! I think that your letters and ability to frame a dissertation project will be more helpful than your GRE, though.

When I applied, I used my grant application for my SOP, and kept the bibliography. I didn't count the bibliography towards the allowable word limit. I figured that they might not read it, but it couldn't hurt. So all of the quotes in my SOP had proper MLA citations.