concise research statement vs sop

[loffire]

So for one school, the prompt was : " a concise statement of previous research experience and of research interests".

Another school's prompt was: " Faculty select students who are highly qualified on all admission criteria and who have expressed an interest in research that is congruent with their research programs. Your personal statement should emphasize your research interests and research experience."  My POI from this schools mentions "To make your application stand out, please consider spending most of the space in the research statement about the types of questions and experiments you would like to pursue in your graduate training" in her lab website.

This makes me think I should just give an expounded CV minus all the backstory on why and how I wanna do what I wanna do?

Thanks in advance for any input guys!

[yash13177]

Hi! I'm from Neuroscience/Biology but let's see if I can help...

To me, the difference between research on your CV versus in a SOP/PS/other prompts is that in the latter you can talk about your motivations, your challenges, what you learned and how your research experience fits together. For NS/Biology, the CV usually tells admissions/professors your technical skills, who you've worked with, your research output and your projects. 

One of the best SOP I read (that was required to be very research centric) talked about why the individual decided to get into their first lab position, what they learned, what they felt like the project didn't answer and how that led them to their next lab position. All in all, not only did it weave all of their research experiences together, but it told a story about what they were 1) interested in 2) the research question they want to pursue at the institution they were applying to and 3) how their accomplishments have prepared them for a PhD.

Hope this helps!