Can anyone review my SOP for sociology PhD Application please?

[Brian Jiang]

Hi all,
I am applying for a sociology PhD somewhere in North America, and have been revising my SoP for some time. My main interest is in social stratification especially in occupation and employment market; and gender inequality in employment. I read several posts suggesting that I need to write more about my research interest and future plans in the SoP, so I focus heavily on them in this version. I am not sure if they are clear enough, and if I should introduce more on my hard skills or research assistance work that I have done. I am posting the SoP for Princeton which I tailored for some professors there. I would appreciate it very much if you can give me any advice on it.

My background:

Undergraduate Institution: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - China Studies and Waseda University - Economics (double degree)

Two conference papers, one book chapter in Chinese but not so relevant to my proposed research area. Three research assistance work (two for sosc professors, one for an econ prof in Harvard). One short teaching assistance experience.

GRE: 163+170+4.5(expected)

Hard skills and prize: pretty proficient in econometrics and their implementation in R and Stata. Proficient in Python pandas and geopandas. Have an award in a machine-learning based data science competition. I did not mention them in my SoP at all, but my recommendation letter and CV will cover a lot of them. 

Thank you.

 

Statement of Purpose_Princeton.docx

Edited November 12, 2019 by Brian Jiang