How specific should I get?

[Kitkat]

One of the things that they ask for in the SOP is what you want to do in the future with this degree. I am assuming that for the most part that they want to see that you know what the purpose of getting a grad degree is good for in your chosen field. But how specific do I need to get with what my current goals are in the SoP. I know I want to do research, work in a museum/curate, and teach some. I am going to be in the sciences, so any advice pertaining to that would be great. I have currently have a fairly focused idea of what I want to research in grad school, but do not currently have a specific thing that I have all planned out that I want to research when/if I get into grad school for the fall of 2012, just a good idea of who I would like to work with. I am wondering how important this is and if I should focus more in the SoP.

[runonsentence]

I'm not in the sciences, but here's my take:

In the words of my DGS, adcoms don't expect you to have a thesis in hand—after all, then you wouldn't be applying for this degree. But a strong SOP will be very clear about the future work you'd like to undergo. (Adcoms expect that this will change over time as you do your work/research, and it's not as though someone will hold you to it once you get in. But articulating a clear vision of what you want to do if you are admitted to school X is critical to a strong statement.)

In my statement I spent about the first page talking about my research interests, the kinds of project(s) I envisioned doing if admitted, and my career goals. I'd say it's also important to be as specific as possible about the kinds of career goals you have (so what you said in your OP is a good starting point); perhaps you can tie these into the research interests/proposed projects you'd also talk about?

[Kitkat]

That is what I plan on doing. I'm currently trying to tie together what my career interests are with what I am definite about as far as research is concerned. I am also going to try to tie in what I am doing now and what I have done in the past that brought me here as well. But trying to do this all at once, I feel like one to two pages is going to be interesting to do. Not necessarily hard,and I have heard that if you can write well concisely, it shows how good of a writer you are.

One of the things mentioned by some of the schools is they want to know who you would want to work with and why. And I am sure that they would like to know why I would want to work in their labs as well. And I don't want to just say that I think that what they are doing is awesome, please take me, but at this point I am "I know that I am interested in this specific field, and within these two sub fields, but don't have specific questions that I am interested in." I feel like right now I have to read up more on the literature in the field to know what the questions are, before I can say what types of things I would want to work in. I'm currently not working on research that I want to go into, but am not that far away from it. So maybe I should work around this point for now, do more reading up on the labs I am interested in, and add more specifics when I feel more confident about it?

[runonsentence]

That is what I plan on doing. I'm currently trying to tie together what my career interests are with what I am definite about as far as research is concerned. I am also going to try to tie in what I am doing now and what I have done in the past that brought me here as well. But trying to do this all at once, I feel like one to two pages is going to be interesting to do. Not necessarily hard,and I have heard that if you can write well concisely, it shows how good of a writer you are.

One of the things mentioned by some of the schools is they want to know who you would want to work with and why. And I am sure that they would like to know why I would want to work in their labs as well. And I don't want to just say that I think that what they are doing is awesome, please take me, but at this point I am "I know that I am interested in this specific field, and within these two sub fields, but don't have specific questions that I am interested in." I feel like right now I have to read up more on the literature in the field to know what the questions are, before I can say what types of things I would want to work in. I'm currently not working on research that I want to go into, but am not that far away from it. So maybe I should work around this point for now, do more reading up on the labs I am interested in, and add more specifics when I feel more confident about it?

Yes, it would be daunting to try to do all of this at once—take it one step at a time, and have plenty of people read over it. (I had two grad student friends and two professors give me feedback on mine.) You can buy them beer or pizza in return.

More reading over the summer is definitely a good idea. Maybe draft a bit, read, draft/revise some more....

[newms]

Hey Kitkat,

Ideally you want to be more specific than broadly describing a field or even a sub-field, but you don't want to be as specific as a thesis topic (that may be so specific that it might appeal to only one professor at the department, plus you don't want to tie yourself to a thesis topic before you even start). Keep in mind that admission committees don't expect you stick exactly to what you write about in your SoP. What they will expect (at least for STEM fields) is that you can conceptualize and describe generally an interesting problem to work on. They won't expect that you will work on that exact problem, but want to see that you have the capability and interest to be able to adequately describe what you want to work on.

Doing more reading is an excellent suggestion. That will help you to find out more about where your interests lie. Good luck!