Influences and Brief Life History in SOP (YALE)

[Artist1]

So Yale's Statement of Purpose is limited to one page - max 500 words. I'm at 300 words right now after discussing my work, materials and process. I still have to fit in my influences, brief life history and why grad school now? I'm having a hard time fitting all the information without it sounding like a list due to the limited word count.

Is it okay to just have a statement that says "My influences are ________, __________, and _________ or my interests including _________ __________. and __________. And then just include a sentence or two about 1-2 artists. Or just incorporate one sentence about an artist in the materials/process section?

Then with the brief life history? I'd like to state where I grew up, info about moving and going to undergrad, what I've been doing since and then why grad school now? I'm having a problem fiting it in without it sounded like it was cut and paste. The flow isn't working.

I'm having a hard time getting things to fit in one page. I feel that if I'm going to list influences they want me to elaborate on each, but there just isn't enough room on one page to do so?

Any suggestions?

[caraa]

dude, yale's prompt for the statement is ridiculous. "brief" and "life history" is basically an oxymoron along with the rest of the list, to be included in one page.

the way i handle it is, and this is just my take, not necessarily exactly what they want, is flow comes first. a coherent, no-nonsense explanation of your artwork and a quick explanation of your own "why grad school now" answer, is what i'm prioritizing as the stuff i need to fit on the page. all the other stuff--influences, life history, etc.--can be implied in your description of your work. it is in my case anyway. i'm not stating where i'm from in the statement because i want to use the statement as the place to stick the stuff that they wont find anywhere else in the application (your address, your resume, etc. are all places where they will learn about that other stuff).

not an informed answer, but one none the less. hope it helps!

[inscho]

took me two weeks of rewording and editing to trim it down to the requested 500. it was insanely difficult, but i'm happy with how it turned out.i kept only the most relevant information in the statement, and i'm using the artwork descriptions to further communicate the rest.

Edited January 5, 2011 by inscho

[Curious12345]

Funny I saw this post, I came here exactly to see what people were saying about it. It does seem a little odd, I tried calling them to see if it was a wordy trick and if they just really wanted my artist statement. No one picked up the phone though...