STEM SOP Problem - Too much research

[Victorious Secret]

I am a chemical engineering, biology, and math major applying to chemical engineering programs. I have completed 13 projects in 9 different labs/venues over the past 4 years, and delivered 11 poster and 6 oral presentations in that time, with 5 different papers now in preparation by myself and others. Half of this experience was at my home institution, and half was from a pair of summer research programs and a pair of six-month research co-ops. The problem is that most SOP prompts seem to want the SOP to be around 1000 words (2 pp single spaced) maximum and, even when I start omitting very important details of some of my projects (methods, computational tools, etc) I still am winding up at about 3 pages by the time I talk about my motivations, what I want to study, and who I want to study with. How can I pare this down? Should I simply say how many projects, labs etc and then focus on 3-4 projects that were most impactful? I am presenting a draft of my SOP this week to a professor at a top-5 program who is working with me to see what I can improve upon in my SOP. I would hate to omit that much information, but I don't want to just have a lot of superficial information without going into some depth about what I have done. Has anyone else encountered a similar problem? How would you suggest I address this.

Thanks for your time and attention.

[ExponentialDecay]

give your SOP to someone to edit. this is hard to talk about in generalities.

[rising_star]

There's absolutely no reason you should be describing all the research you've done in your SOP. All of that is in the past. The SOP is a future document--it's about what you want to do and why you want to do it. As part of that, you should spend some time on your qualifications/past experience but, this really shouldn't be more than 1/3 of the document. Hope this helps. Good luck!

[TakeruK]

I agree that you should definitely not include every single detail in your SOP. Your application does consist of your CV and letters of reference too, by the way! I also think your instinct to avoid only superficially describing each of your many projects is correct!

Your field's expectations on SOPs may vary from mine, so it would be good for you to mostly focus on what your prof contact tells you. However, here's what I would say based on my experience in my field.

If I had to put a fraction on what part of the SOP to spend directly discussing your past experience vs your future plans, my answer would be 2/3 past, 1/3 future. I find that in many STEM fields, you are not really proposing your own research directions at the application stage as ultimately, you will be working on whatever your advisors have grants to fund.  So most departments are just looking for most qualified candidates that span the range of interests that the department wants to encourage (or in many cases, interests that match positions funded by faculty grants). So the part that directly discusses your future would be about your future career goals (i.e. why grad school is the path for you) and how this particular program would help you achieve these goals (i.e. why this particular program). You should certainly demonstrate what areas of your field are your interests and you want to do this mostly to show that 1) you know how to discuss science and make a science case for a topic, 2) to help the committee categorize what area of the department you'd fit in and 3) to show that you've thought about your future deeply. But you should probably not actually propose a research topic because it's often far too early in most programs to even know this at this stage.

So, the majority of your SOP should be writing about your past, but I still think it should mostly be a future facing document. Everything about your past should be a point in support of the future facing stuff I mentioned above. So maybe this will help you decide what parts of your past should go into the SOP. For each program, think about what you are saying about your future in that program and then write a story about your last 4 years that best demonstrates your capability to achieve your future plans. There's no point discussing your past just for the sake of discussing them or just to have a complete record of your experience (that's what the CV is for, not the SOP). Only bring up what's relevant and be sure you connect all of it to the future stuff.

In this sense, I would agree that an SOP would be 1/3 past and 2/3 future, it's just that much of the "future" is showing how your past will make you a great scientist in the future. The actual past-past stuff should be limited to things that really do need to be explained/mentioned for the sake of doing so, such as explaining leaves of absences if necessary.

Finally, one last important note. There's no one right way to do a SOP or apply to grad school. I really think grad committees are looking for ways for a candidate to show how they excel and there are many many ways to excel. Each applicant should structure their application in a way that best showcases their own excellence and merit. So even this advice on SOP writing can depend on a lot on each applicant. For you, due to your extensive research experience, it might be worth spending a little more time in your SOP than usual to have you stand out in this way, while keeping in mind that the SOP is not a CV and you still should not include every last thing. But for another student with less experience, perhaps the SOP is a good place to demonstrate that they have thought more deeply about their future and the big questions in the field so they might want to spend more time in the SOP discussing that. Maybe they excel in having very good insights and ideas for future project. Since the SOP is the only way a student can demonstrate these abilities themselves, students in this circumstance might be better off spending less time discussing their more limited project history. So, you should write your SOP in the way that best showcases you.