Statement of Purpose - Oddball Questions

[Matthew3957]

I am starting this thread so any of us who have random SoP questions can ask them here. 

Mine at the moment is what are everyone's thoughts on footnotes in the SoP? I've seen it. I have quotes. I guess I should use them. However, it feels odd. Is this one of those "of course if you have quotes use footnotes" situations. I just reference what a few of my theoretical influences say at certain points so I don't even know if it is necessary to have a full citation for that.

[lyonel_]

2 hours ago, Matthew3957 said:

I am starting this thread so any of us who have random SoP questions can ask them here. 

Mine at the moment is what are everyone's thoughts on footnotes in the SoP? I've seen it. I have quotes. I guess I should use them. However, it feels odd. Is this one of those "of course if you have quotes use footnotes" situations. I just reference what a few of my theoretical influences say at certain points so I don't even know if it is necessary to have a full citation for that.

I'm actually curious about your question, too. As I have paraphrased a couple general arguments from theorists, so should I footnote these? But then this leaves me concerned with page count expanding slightly, as I am just on the line for page count with nearly every SoP. 

Edited October 26, 2018 by lyonel_

[Deleted Because Useless]

Wondering what others have to say about the ops question. From looking at the samples, it seems none provided citation. But their quotations were either clearly paraphrased or quoted, while providing the name of the critic or the work it is from if it is from a popular work, ie “traditions and the individual talent.” No page numbers though. It seems the ability to clearly paraphrase and synthesize ideas into one’s own work is part of showing your skills. But it would be nice to hear from anyone who cited their SoP and how they did it. 

[punctilious]

Husband used a couple quotes in his SOP from Pynchon and Latour but he only put in a footnote for Latour. Coming from a person who works in marketing and development, I'd imagine if POIs are skimming your work and see one footnote and it's citing someone they're into, it might help. My department at my job sends out lots of letters to donors, and they generally will look at the "P.S." stuff after looking at their name and first sentence. That's what hooks them. I would think that might work here, too.

Our POI at Harvard is super into Pynchon and Latour. If he skimmed, our first sentence is a Pynchon quote and our only footnote is Latour. I might be reading into this too much, and it's not something we actively thought about when he was writing the piece, but looking back on it I imagine it grabbed our main POIs attention at Harvard, and he was the one who made the first acceptance follow-up call to husband.

All that being said, I really don't think it matters much. None of our letter writers made any comments on footnotes/citations when they were looking at his SOP.

[FiguresIII]

One of my statements has pretty extensive lit-review style footnotes besides general citations, and my undergrad advisor said to keep them. I use them to show how my project targets a blind spot in a scholarly conversation both within and beyond the specific field I'm working on.

Edited October 30, 2018 by FiguresIII

[CatBowl]

Hi all,

I am driving myself crazy with my shortest SOP (500 word requirement). I'm at 530 words. I am telling myself there's no way an ad comm would see the extra 30 words and throw my app in the trash. Does anyone disagree with this and think 30 words is detrimental? Never thought I'd ask this question lol YIKES. 

Thanks!

CatBowl

[Warelin]

On 11/11/2018 at 5:35 PM, CatBowl said:

Hi all,

I am driving myself crazy with my shortest SOP (500 word requirement). I'm at 530 words. I am telling myself there's no way an ad comm would see the extra 30 words and throw my app in the trash. Does anyone disagree with this and think 30 words is detrimental? Never thought I'd ask this question lol YIKES. 

Thanks!

CatBowl

Editing is a very important skill to have. However, I don't think I would worry about this. 500 words is about 2 pages double-spaced. I don't think anyone is going to sit there and count the number of words you used as long as its within about 5ish percent of their request. I would be more concerned if they requested 500 words and you gave them 600-700 words. I think you'd be best served by focusing on other aspects of your application.

[CatBowl]

Thank you, @Warelin! That's what I was thinking too. This SOP is less than 2 pages double-spaced, so I was hoping that'd be alright. 

[placeinspace]

I have an oddball SOP question perhaps you guys can help me with! I'm struggling with the merits of mentioning specific papers I've written as I describe my research interests. I was advised to do this by my MA advisor, but I've since received feedback that I shouldn't include the names of papers. I'm a little conflicted and don't know what the best course of action is. Do you guys mention your papers by name in your SOPs?

[dangermouse]

@kgras13 i don't mention my papers by name, but i give a brief overview of the main argument - so i wouldn't say 'In the winter term, I wrote a paper entitled XYZ' but i WOULD say 'In the winter term, I wrote a paper on X and Y, arguing that....' which i think gives you more content than the paper name and fits more naturally into a sentence.

[placeinspace]

@dangermouse Thank you so much for your help! That echoes what I've been told, so I think I'll go with that instead of my MA advisor's advice, since it seems to be an outlier.

I have a slight follow-up as well- I've been told mentioning the names of individual scholars and how I used their research comes across as name-dropping, but I feel it's important to use their names so I can be specific as to the scholarly conversations I'm familiar with. These aren't scholars I'd be studying with at the program, but just scholars in the field who have contributed and whose work has influenced me. Is it "name-dropping" to mention these names?

Thanks so much to everyone for this forum by the way. It has really kept me sane throughout this process haha.

[Indecisive Poet]

17 hours ago, kgras13 said:

@dangermouse Thank you so much for your help! That echoes what I've been told, so I think I'll go with that instead of my MA advisor's advice, since it seems to be an outlier.

I have a slight follow-up as well- I've been told mentioning the names of individual scholars and how I used their research comes across as name-dropping, but I feel it's important to use their names so I can be specific as to the scholarly conversations I'm familiar with. These aren't scholars I'd be studying with at the program, but just scholars in the field who have contributed and whose work has influenced me. Is it "name-dropping" to mention these names?

Thanks so much to everyone for this forum by the way. It has really kept me sane throughout this process haha.

I've read very successful statements that have done this. I think the trick is to do this in a way that comes across as necessary rather than as name-dropping, i.e. explaining how your work fits within a conversation that XYZ scholars are a part of or explaining how your work complicates Scholar Z's argument -- if those conversations really are central to your work. Certainly I think it is important to address how your work fits into your field, but you may find you don't need to mention particular scholars to do that.

One way to do this organically is by mentioning them in the same place where you're discussing papers you've written, i.e. "In Professor X's class, I wrote a paper that drew on Scholar Z's [argument/idea], complicating it by arguing Y." Personally, this is what I would choose to do since it shows how critics have influenced your thinking rather than merely saying that they have.

I've also read a successful statement that simply wrote "My work has been most influenced by X, Y, and Z" at the end of a paragraph without explaining it further. So my impression is that, like most things in the statement, there isn't a right or wrong way to do it.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Indecisive Poet

[Bopie5]

Random question--what's everyone's thoughts on beginning the SoP with my guiding research question? I have one broad research question that has guided most of my past work and also informs the work I hope to do in grad school, so I've begun my SoP with that. However, my friends who looked over said it was cliche to start with a question...generally, I'd agree with them, but is it different if it coalesces my research?