statement of purpose basics

[peppermint.beatnik]

Just another comment - I just had an e-mail today asking why I didn't justify my low verbal gre scores on my personal statement

so make sure you're looking at your relative weeknesses and addressing them where appropriate as well

I didn't initially include this information bc it's a fine line between justification & making excuses...but we'll see

I think this is a judgement call. If the rest of your app is stellar, and you only have one weakness, why draw attention to it in your sop? Unless, of course, it's something like you were debarred from a university, in the past.

[abluedude]

For the English PhD, mentioning profs by name, IMO, is advisable, but only if you're willing to put in the extra research to figure out what the profs' scholarly works are like. I mentioned profs in my MSU app and was immediately scheduled to meet with each one of them, face to face, on a paid visit to the college. I mentioned profs in my UMinn letter and was rejected.

In order to determine what you should do, it might be a good idea to email some PhD students and ask them for their SoPs. I did that and received several great SoP examples, from which I drafted my own. To be fair, each of the SoPs I got from current PhD students mentioned profs by name. Some even mentioned particular theorists (Sartre, Hegel, Beauvoir) they were interested in. One even went as far as to quote from a theorist to get to the heart of her intended focus.

There are as many ways to craft an SoP as there are people crafting them. Go with your instincts for the most part, but it never hurts to have solid examples from people who made it into the program. I emailed English PhD students from top-10 schools for examples. You can usually find a student email list on the website (near/with faculty/staff emails). I asked about 10 people and received 3 SoPs to go by.

Good luck!

[jasper.milvain]

I'm Canadian, so I won't say much because our research proposals sound fairly different from your SoPs. For example, nobody I know has anything autobiographical in their proposal, except for a brief blurb at the end detailing academic accomplishments.

The one piece of advice that I got told too late and have passed on to many people since is that you're not selling yourself as a person, you're selling yourself as a RESEARCHER. Sure, you may be super enthusiastic and really love studying X and want this really really bad. Who cares? So is/does everyone else. Professors want to see that you're professional and understand the work you're applying to do, not that you'd be a super person to have a beer with. If you can bring charm to your research goals, so much the better, but showcase your research potential first and foremost.

[glasses]

I'm Canadian, so I won't say much because our research proposals sound fairly different from your SoPs. For example, nobody I know has anything autobiographical in their proposal, except for a brief blurb at the end detailing academic accomplishments.

The one piece of advice that I got told too late and have passed on to many people since is that you're not selling yourself as a person, you're selling yourself as a RESEARCHER. Sure, you may be super enthusiastic and really love studying X and want this really really bad. Who cares? So is/does everyone else. Professors want to see that you're professional and understand the work you're applying to do, not that you'd be a super person to have a beer with. If you can bring charm to your research goals, so much the better, but showcase your research potential first and foremost.

From what I've been told by advisers, this is the same for the U.S. I've been told to think of the SOP as, basically, a research proposal--if you think about it, you're telling them what you want to do with their financial and intellectual investment in you, yes?

[thepoorstockinger]

I'm Canadian, so I won't say much because our research proposals sound fairly different from your SoPs. For example, nobody I know has anything autobiographical in their proposal, except for a brief blurb at the end detailing academic accomplishments.

The one piece of advice that I got told too late and have passed on to many people since is that you're not selling yourself as a person, you're selling yourself as a RESEARCHER. Sure, you may be super enthusiastic and really love studying X and want this really really bad. Who cares? So is/does everyone else. Professors want to see that you're professional and understand the work you're applying to do, not that you'd be a super person to have a beer with. If you can bring charm to your research goals, so much the better, but showcase your research potential first and foremost.

Similar advice to what I was given (and it sort of seemed to work).

This might be history-centric, but the main thing for academic SOPs is that the ad coms use it to try to judge how good you are at identifying a research problem: are you too broad? To precise? Do you recognize the limits of resources/sources? Do you seem to grasp the existing secondary literature? Is what you're proposing interesting? Can faculty/resources in the program support your research? Is it original? Is it significant?

As a history student I thought two things that I mentioned were crucial in retrospect:

1) I identified the larger importance of my research

2) Identify where my research fits into the broader historiography and why it fills a gap in that existing literature

These seem super obvious, but I've read a lot of SOPs that seem to miss this and get caught up in lots of small things that don't matter.

Mine tended to break down as:

Description of my research: 60%

Description of my research training: 15%

Fit paragraph: 25%

I didn't include any biographical information, and I certainly didn't open with a cliche.

This might be a strange way to look at it, but while I wrote all my SOPs I thought of it in these terms: I am not trying to explain why they should pick me, I am trying to explain to someone why I am considering picking them. I found it to be a useful way to try to think about it and helped me avoid the feeling of trying to sell myself.

[Stories]

OP: you need to figure out what the norm in your field is. twip25 is offering you anecdotal information about his not mentioning profs and getting in. I can tell you that I *did* mention profs by name at every place I applied to, and had very positive results with this approach.

Mentioning profs by name and showing familiarity with their research is NOT sucking up to them. It's part of demonstrating that you have done your research and can show why you are a good fit with the department. Sucking up would be "Prof X is awesome", as opposed to "Prof X's work matches my interest in Y"; "Prof P's approach to Q can enhance my ability to employ similar techniques in the study of R" and suchlike.

Really, each of us needs to find our own approach to writing the sop, and I wouldn't flat out advise anyone that their way is wrong just because I had success going a different way. All this teaches us is that there is more than one right way to do things.

Bingo. In a science field, particularly an applied health science field like mine, you must piggy back upon an existing professor's work to serve as an adviser. By mentioning your own research on what the faculty does at the particular school you're applying to, you're justifying why you're a good fit for the program and why the program is a good fit for you.

People need to realize that unlike undergrad, grad schools (especially PhD-level programs) look at proper fit with research interests much more than your grades and scores. This of course assumes that you meet the minimum requirements for entrance into the graduate program.

[jasper.milvain]

Mine tended to break down as:

Description of my research: 60%

Description of my research training: 15%

Fit paragraph: 25%

I didn't include any biographical information, and I certainly didn't open with a cliche.

Guess it's not so different after all!

The sections I was taught to include were:

1. Identify your primary material

2. Identify a research gap

3. Describe your methodology

4. Outline your project

5. Fit paragraph

I think that in the humanities, methodology is extremely important. It shows that you know *how* you want to read, not just *that* you want to read, and separates people who know what larger debates are happening in the discipline from people who just really really love reading.

[thepoorstockinger]

I guess I should have clarified: I am also a Canadian student who applied to Canadian grad schools. So maybe us Canucks just have less time for biography and the like...