SoP questions

[bdon19]

I know this has been addressed previously, but I haven't seen much discussion of it recently, and I was wondering what opinions others might have.

I feel like opinions regarding the SoP branch in two different directions:

1) You have to be super specific--as in, outlining a research project, complete with works to study, theorists to use, approaches to take, etc. combined with your "fit" paragraph.

Example: "I plan to study the ways in which [insert theorist here] influences [insert author here]'s work [insert canonical text here] by reading [author]'s letters to [insert other author here] and the ways in which [insert approach here] helps confirm this reading of the text. [insert professor here]'s scholarship on [author] and [insert professor #2 here]'s work with [theorist] in [insert period] will be a significant asset to helping me bring this project to fruition."

OR

2) You outline your interests as specifically as possible, giving some indication of what you're planning on studying and your area of interest (along with some specific texts/authors/theorists) but without the same level of specificity.

Example: "Throughout my undergraduate career I've found myself drawn towards novels from two seemingly disparate periods--the 18th-century and the early Modernist era. The novels and novelists I've chosen to study for the past few years may not seem like they have much in common, but I have found that my scholarship has led me to similar lines of inquiry in all of these texts. [Etc, etc, etc.]"

Now I could have gone on with that second example, but I didn't, because that is (in its very, very, very rough, off-the-top-of-my-head version) essentially what I plan to do in my SoP. However, I've seen a lot of #1 in postings on this forum. Now, I know we're not adcoms, but I wanted to get a feel for general opinion. Personally, I'd think adcoms would rather see someone who's focused but not too focused. Wouldn't it be more difficult to find a "fit" for someone who insists on studying Malory-cum-Derrida or something than someone who tailors their "fit" paragraph to a few professors spread out across their interests? That's my take, but I'd like to see what others have to say.

[Phil Sparrow]

Well, I know admissions are different for applicants who already hold an MA, but since I don't have any experience applying with an MA, I cannot give advice for all you Masters; this is for the BAs.

I'd go with something more like option #2 (or rather, I did go with that, and was rather successful). First of all (and this is not intended to sound mean or snobby), you are, as a pre-grad school student, an immature scholar. You will grow and change SO much in your scholarship in just the first year. And so I'd avoid getting really specific, because even if it sounds sophisticated and nuanced to you now, it won't in a year. More importantly, there's a good chance it will come off as immature and facile to an admissions committee. I think it's wiser to paint with somewhat broader strokes, while also making sure you sound focused and well-prepared, and will be coming with a good idea of what graduate study entails (as opposed to the, "Gosh, I just love reading so much, and I love reading EVERYTHING!" SOPs). Just saying, "I want to study the Renaissance!" isn't quite focused enough, but saying that you want to prove, using Derrida and Butler and Greenblatt, that representations of knee pain in the drama of 1610s Northern England reveal an acute anxiety about the rise of the mercantile class and the displacement of an agrarian economy in upper Yorkshire (or what have you) is probably too specific. Most programs want to mold you into a scholar, not just collect another fully-formed scholar for their grad student collection.

I also know that there is some debate about this notion, but I fall on the side of recommending you name-drop, elegantly and mindfully, professors at the program who will be assets for you. I'd caution against having a paragraph that reads like a laundry-list of profs, or mentioning professors without doing serious research (you'll probably pull a big black X against your app if you say you want to work with a prof who will be retiring in a year, for example, or if you say that you love deconstruction and then namedrop someone who hates Derrida). If you're not fully confident in your dropping of names, don't do it! But, this is one area where I believe getting very specific can be helpful.

If any of you disagree, please feel free to contradict me. I know others had very different experiences applying and may have very different advice.

[runonsentence]

I'd go with something more like option #2 (or rather, I did go with that, and was rather successful). First of all (and this is not intended to sound mean or snobby), you are, as a pre-grad school student, an immature scholar. You will grow and change SO much in your scholarship in just the first year. And so I'd avoid getting really specific, because even if it sounds sophisticated and nuanced to you now, it won't in a year. More importantly, there's a good chance it will come off as immature and facile to an admissions committee. I think it's wiser to paint with somewhat broader strokes, while also making sure you sound focused and well-prepared, and will be coming with a good idea of what graduate study entails (as opposed to the, "Gosh, I just love reading so much, and I love reading EVERYTHING!" SOPs). Just saying, "I want to study the Renaissance!" isn't quite focused enough, but saying that you want to prove, using Derrida and Butler and Greenblatt, that representations of knee pain in the drama of 1610s Northern England reveal an acute anxiety about the rise of the mercantile class and the displacement of an agrarian economy in upper Yorkshire (or what have you) is probably too specific. Most programs want to mold you into a scholar, not just collect another fully-formed scholar for their grad student collection.

I heartily agree with this, and it's a good articulation of the approach I took in my own SoP as an MA-holding applicant. In the sage words of my DGS: if you already knew exactly what you were going to write your dissertation on, you wouldn't be applying for PhD programs. IMO, your purpose isn't so much to present a specific project you plan to complete, but to identify questions, directions, and interests that will guide your thinking. (For example, in my SoP I talked about how I was interested in continuing to learn about public rhetorics and in applying it to the first-year composition classroom, and mentioned why I thought it would be valuable; I didn't get much more specific.)

However, there might be others out there who took approach #1 and found that it worked for them?

As to mentioning specific professors: it is definitely a debated practice, and you'll find proponents among grads and faculty alike for both sides. I'm on the side of hesitating to name drop. (This is the advice I received on this count: "Suppose you’ve found faculty you would like to work with: what if they’re not around anymore, or one of them got drunk and fell into my Christmas tree? It’s so easy to get the tone wrong. You are on safer ground, if you want, to indicate that you know what is the strength or focus of a program.")

I didn't mention specific professors except for the SoP I sent to my MA institution—because I knew the politics there and knew what was safe to say and what wasn't. I stuck with talking about the general ethos of the program, generalizing on some of the research being done among faculty there, and talking about why I would fit into it (e.g., "this program is invested in training teacher-scholars, and in my own research my pedagogy plays an important role in informing my theoretical thinking and vice versa...").