ridgey

I agree that stronger language is better. But the examples you give aren't passive voice. "I hope to study chocolate's effect on my mood in Cool PhD Program" is still active voice. "The effect of chocolate on my mood will be studied in my time at Cool PhD program" is stronger, in that it's not wishy-washy, but is the passive voice.

Oh, I'm certainly not advocating underselling oneself in the SOP. I think often rather than convincing the readers that you're awesome, the (undoubtedly wrong) impression can be of someone who is full of themself.

Caveat: I'm not in your field. I think your content is fine but your tone is off. It reads a lot like a cover letter for a job a the moment. You don't want to explicitly say how great you are or your strengths (paragraphs 1 and 6) nor to talk about the program as if you worked in marketing (paragraph 2). I think your third and fifth paragraphs are far better in terms of tone. Parapgraph 4 is close except for the opening. Not trying to by harsh - I'm too much of a wuss to even put mine up here. Hope this was helpful.

Just wodnering how others applying at UTexas have approached the program of study proposal. Specifically, in talking about the area of reserach, have you gone so far as a lit review? Mentioned other scholarship? Or been more narrative and what's going on inside your head? At the moment I have both, but the page limit means I need to go one way or the other.

I'm applying to the University of Texas at Austin, for a PhD in Public Policy. As well as the SoP, they want a study plan, identifying classes and faculty throughout the uni. The department itself only offers 3 or so PhD courses, so they definitely expect this statement to mention other departments on campus. If I get in, I would like to take classes and work with some people at the Austin branch of the UT Houston Health Science Center. Just wondering if it's ok to mention this? On the one hand, it's still UT and a "resource" I could have access to by bein gin this department. On the other, it is a different insitution. Should I limit this statement to talking about UT Austin? Incorporate a proper paragraph on the Austin branch of UTHSC? What about adding a token sentence, "I also note the UTHSC has a branch at Austin which would also be invaluable..."?

I don't think the passive is something to be avoided on principle. The problem is that its use often paints the writer into a corner and makes for awkward writing. If this is a problem for you, then try to un-awkwardise your writing, and the passive may disappear. If your writing, even in the passive, is clear, then why bother? Some disciplines favour the passive. Read the methods section of a scientific paper "X, Y and Z were placed in a beaker. After 22 minutes kryptonite was added. Extract D underwent electrophoresis." (Yes, I realise that would be a truly bizzarre experiment!)

Your already applied and definitely applying look pretty good (but I'm not in your field). Of your maybes, were any of them programmes you found "early" when you were first starting to research schools? Or really late? I know that I added ridiculous schools to my list early, to keep my options open, and late, because I'd become obsessed. At this point, I would probably include 1 dream school from the maybe list. Your list is different than what's listed in your signature line. You've been at this for a while?

Just thought we might like a general thread as we apply and wait...and wait and wait. Introductions, rumors about various programs, etc. I'm only applying to two poli sci programs; the remainder are public health/public policy. UPenn and Indiana, on the basis of particular faculty who do incredibly interesting stuff. Not the uber-competitive tier, thankfully. But then, political science is pretty popular and I have an unconventional background. Where are other people applying? How confident are you?

ApplyTexas is killing me. Maybe it's just a special torture for international students, but I had to enter my entire schooling history, from when I started school age 5. Name of the grade, age, name of each year's certificate. For a PhD application. Seriously. I'm in awe of the riduclousness. Yet through the hoop I jump...

I forgot my biggest gripe when I started this topic: the schools search under educational history. I figured out the random three letters to enter in the "country" field, and got a list of high schools. To be fair, in my country "college" doesn't mean university and is in the name of many high schools. The entries on the list that aren't high schools don't actually have names, just seemingly random numbers. I've sent two emails with no reply. Guess I have to figure out the time difference and call.

I think some of my applications would win a "most extreme change of field" award. My undergrad major was neuroscience. I'm applying to some Poli Sci PhD programmes. The missing link is public health, in which I have just finished a masters degree. Most of my PhD apps are in fact public health, in the policy end of things. My research questions lend themselves to a poli sci approach, and I did take a handful of polisci papers in undergrad just for fun. I am struggling with how to approach this in my poli sci SoPs though.

Does anyone else really not like Indiana's application? I'm not a fan of having to enter work history and publications rather than just uploading a CV. The fields are pretty basic - job title, employer, dates, phone number. I don't see how they can use that information to distinguish between applicants. The publications field seems to elminate the possibility of listing submitted or in press publications. It's a bad idea to send a CV when they don't ask for one, yes?

I've just been registering my letter-writers for the online applications. I've done a few (not to mention last year's application season) and it occurs to me I may have been doing it wrong. Not a good look. The "title" field - does this mean title they get called, as in Dr/Lord/Sultan etc, or their position title, as in Professor/Dean/Ruler of the Universe? The field is usually not near the name, but near the institutional details, if that makes a difference.

Right you are! Clearly I was not operating on all brain cells earlier.

Don't worry, I'm sure that any moment someone will come along with a link to just what you're looking for...

No-one? Really? Shall I infer then that I'm guaranteed admission (especially at Columbia, swoon) because I'll be the only applicant?

Your profile is fine. You have everything you need to get into a good programme. Of course, none of the "profile" is really what will matter. It's about selling yourself, and we at the grad cafe unfortunately can't tell you how well you will do/have done that.

The real question is: how close is everyone cutting it? For the schools with the early deadlines, I'll be submitting in the last hours. The Feb deadline, though, will be a couple of months early.

Maybe I'm blind, but there doesn't seem to be a way to go to a specific post that comes up from a search. The link goes to the first page of the relevant thread. Which is fine for a 2 or 3 page thread, but the post I was looking for was somewhere in teh 154 page Poli-sci 08-09 thread.

Hey, just thought I'd start a general thread to see who is around. Where's everyone applying? In what fields? I'm definitely applying to Yale in Health Policy, Columbia's Sociomedical Sciences, and York U (in Canada) in Health Policy and Equity, as well as a couple each of political science and public policy. I'm toying with the idea of adding some combination of Minnesotta, Emory, Illinois-Chicago and Iowa and a couple of obscure programmes at CU Denver and Arizona State. If I weren't an international student, I would also apply to UToronto, Berkely and UT Houston. Et tu?

I have seen some department websites say that for non-native speaker internationals a good TOEFL can compensate for a very low GRE verbal. I think, though, that they only do this was very poor GRE verbals. A middling verbal suggests that it's not your grasp of English that's the problem. I've never heard of anywhere making similar allowances for the quant, though different disciplines obviously place different degrees of emphasis on each section. The GRE is ridiculous in my opinion, but I'll spare you my rant! Anyway, you're above the common 1000 minimum. Only the very top schools will bin your application on the basis of that GRE alone. Your problem is that you don't have a score that might make up for deficiencies elsewhere in your application, such as GPA. If you think you could improve your score significantly (~100 in each section) and you have the time, then you could retake it. I generally think though that unless a GRE score is REALLY bad it is almost always a better use of time to work on the SoP or writing sample than study to retake the GRE.

During last application season, I contacted a grand total of one professor in advance of my application. We had a pleasant enough phone conversation, but in hindsight it wasn't great. We talked quite generally and she offered some thoughts on the US application system in general (I'm international), but we only touched on her research. Anyway, now it's a year later and I'm not sure about contacting her again. I think she'd probably remember that she talked to me last year - we had a hard time setting up the conversation, and I have the weird accent thing going on too! I assume that if I email her, she will ask me to call rather than have an email conversation, since that's what happened last year. I guess I could come up with some good questions to ask her. My other thought is that there is another prof. at that school whose work is also really interesting, though not as much as the first prof. I'm considering maybe just contacting her instead. My SoP would mention them both but focus on this second prof in this case. If I did contact the first prof, I feel like saying "I got rejected last year but am a way stronger applicant this year" (formally, of course) might make it easier? I dunno, it just seems the awkwardness factor is really high contacting her. Last year, this school's application had a space to enter the names of faculty contacted pre-application. So I guess I really have to contact someone, yeah? What would you do?

I'm in awe of your bravery - are you taking students AND can I visit you!

My emails have been along the lines of: Dear Dr Coolness My name is Ridgey, I'm a student at [place] and am interested in the PhD at Cooltown U. My interests are <two sentence summary. One sentence broad and general"I like chocolate and caramel", the second somewhat more specific to show I'm serious "how chocolate and caramel interact differently in different baked goods and whether the type of chocolate used affects caramel">. Your work in <specific project/publication/theme> is neat-o, and relevant to my interests because <describe overlap>. Do you think Cooltown U a good place to do this type of research? (Because I'm way too much of a chicken to actually say "Are you taking students? Will you be my advisor?") Peace-out, Ridgey

This probably depends on where you are in your career. If you have few or no publications, then putting the ones that are under review indicates that you have been productive in your research, to the point of having things ready for publication. Obviously, journals could reject your work and the act of submission itself doesn't prove that you're doing publishable research. But for many applicants, and especially those still in school, having submitted papers for publication is the most that can reasonably be expected given a certain background/work experience. It's also a way to quantify research experience, maybe? For example, if someone has been a "research assistant", being an author on a paper from that job indicates that they did more than clean test tubes.