throwawayanthro

Also a long time lurker, but your situation reminded of my situation right now. Now mind you I'm in the process of applying, so my experiment of trying to enter anthropology from an unrelated discipline may end up utterly failing. That remains to be seen, so as disclaimer take what I say with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, I thought I'd might throw some information your way (and publicly for that matter) on what I found in my application journey thus far without revealing too much information about myself. Like you, I did my undergraduate and masters in a very unrelated major. However, unlike you, my discipline was not practical for everyday life, which I regret for the most part, but so be it. Also like you, I'm constantly digging and dwelling deeply into heavy anthropological (broadly speaking) theory. Although my particular interests lie somewhere in an intersection between phenomenology, linguistic anthropology, and semiotics. Thinkers like Bakhtin, Geertz, Goffman, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Peirce are my jam. Yet with this, I don't have the formal and proven background via a transcript that I am competent in such literature. From what I've gathered, the Statement of Purpose is bar none the most important aspect of your application. This is truly the one part of your application that you have complete and utter control over—although one could potentially argue this point regarding the GRE, but its scale of importance is debatable. For my SoP, I followed closely the collection of successful past statements available at Duke University's graduate page. I personally didn't apply to Duke as I didn't feel my project was a fit with any of the faculty members, but I appreciated the formatting of the SoP. Primarily, this is because it demonstrated that placing your project within the scope of other work and anthropological models through referencing is not only good practice, but almost seems expected. With this model in mind, I referenced the !@#$ out of my SoP. I believe that not only does this make your project seem relevant, but it shows how your work fits in with others whom are in your specific field and shows your knowledge and level of maturity in working with anthropological theory. One professor whom I contacted stressed this point quite strongly. And I am hard pressed to know how to demonstrate this without referencing. Obviously from your source of materials you read, you're already mature enough in this respect, so be sure to demonstrate the aptly in your SoP, especially since this is one of the major cruxes onto which you will be basing your project. Speaking of projects, you also need to demonstrate that your project is original, feasible, and prepared to be conducted upon starting research. While projects obviously don't have to be finalized upon applying to graduate school, having a narrow scope, but demonstrating the ability to take on original ideas, is highly beneficial. Numerous professors I've contacted also stressed this point, and I can see their vantage point. Graduate schools are ultimately making an investment in your—at first, but ideally you'll be supporting yourself through NSF or Wenner-Gren and the like—and its bad on them if they hire someone who can't maintain a relatively steady scope. I doubt professors want to work with someone who flip-flops, as that can ultimately be hazardous to your advisor if your interests flip too much. As having your project fit within the research scope of enough people in the department to form a dissertation is kind of an implied necessity of applying to any program, the more narrow and feasible you make your project to align with their interests, the better. With this point, I must put in a crevice that your said you wanted to apply to top-ranked PhD programs. I'm under the impression that fit is a bit more important. For instance, I wanted to apply to Michigan badly, but I just couldn't see what I wanted to do fit there outside of one faculty. Perhaps this is my downfall on stressing departmental fit. Nonetheless, you definitely have to strike a balance with ranking and fit. I guess I've found these two the more important factors in drafting my application, but there are a few more minor points I've found that I could write up at a later date. Again, I'm applying this cycle and I could end up being an utter failure and not getting into any program. That remains to be seen! Hopefully these few cents of perspective were somewhat helpful.