SOP & Academic Rock Stars

[ecritdansleau]

I crafted a strong Oxford SOP with one whole paragraph largely centered around his presence. At the last minute, I found out he is going to be on leave for the next two or three years and won't be taking on graduate students' projects. Alas! Had I missed that nugget of information, I would have severely damaged my SOP. It makes me wonder if I have messed up elsewhere.

So having been through this process once now, I would advise fellow applicants or future applicants to be very careful about mentioning specific professors. It just relies on too many things to fall together perfectly in order for a specific faculty mention to work well, and it seems entirely too probable that mentioning a professor could hurt you.

This is really interesting. I still feel really uneasy about the naming-names question (to name or not to name!), and who knows how it will turn out. But if you genuinely fit with that particular faculty member's interests, remember too, that many departments have their own culture, especially in the faculty members of overlapping fields, because those are the professors who hired the other professors, in many cases. When looking at departments, I've attempted to get a sense of what links their conversations together, and where I fit in in that conversation as well. But it's really all so arbitrary, especially when some departments end up admitting 0-1 person in a particular major field!

The funny thing is, as your example corroborates, is that the professors who have a reputation for research are precisely the professors who are thus given sabbaticals/time away from the department, which translates, often, into distance from the admissions committee.

It makes me wonder if, perhaps, I should have made a proactive effort to figure who is where/involved in the departments to which I'm applying. If a professor is on leave for the year, they probably won't be on the adcom....then again, because so much is online now, I know that some professors off campus are still asked to look over graduate applications.

[indalomena]

I felt in the end that it was just too dangerous to include names in the SOP, because there's no way of knowing who is doing the first cut/if your SOP will even get passed to the people in question. Any time I drafted one that had names in it, it came off too presumptuous. The negative of that, of course, is that I perhaps did not convince quite so much of fit -- my statements were all very similar to each other.

The fact that there are so many divergent opinions on this suggests to me that it is not one of those things that will make or break your application. It's those things we've been working on and doing for years and years -- becoming good writers, getting good grades, developing ideas and ambitions and scholarly directions -- that will get us into grad school, not whether we ill-advisedly named a prof in our SOP who in fact has just disappeared on a lengthy sabbatical. But it's very easy to obsess over these things (I am currently obsessing over the WORST EVER TYPO in my Columbia SOP ... so awkward )

[ecritdansleau]

It only came up in about 40% of my apps, but how did other people respond to the application questions to list faculty members who research interests you??

I mean, if you left it blank, it suggests you don't really know why you're applying there. At the same time, the faculty members might not be taking on new students/leaving/etc. This process is so opaque. I know one department (that I didn't apply to because it didn't fit) that actually posts the members of the admissions committee up on their website. Knowing who, in my projected field, would be looking at my application, would make me feel a lot more comfortable about the whole process.

[pinkrobot]

There seem to be about five thousand sides to this to-name-or-not-to-name coin. I respect the contribution of andsoitgoes161, but I have also seen a number of successful statements of purpose that do name faculty members, and one of my recommenders explicitly told me to do so.

Like bespeckled, I tried to hit a middle ground, in doing so aiming to remain true to my own voice. Like indalomena, I personally feel deeply uncomfortable about saying "I want to work with you": that feels, in the vein of andsoitgoes161's quote, egotistical. (I have no idea whether or not it actually is: this is just my gut, and very personal, feeling.) But at all of the schools I am applying to, there are faculty members whose work has inspired me, excited me, intrigued me, etc. So I did mention faculty members in that context.

To ecritdansleau's question, yes, when they asked, I listed.

[bdon19]

I mentioned 4-5 different faculty members at each school but phrased it as "these are an example of some of the people at X school whose scholarly interests appear to intersect with mine". I hope that by not saying something that sounds like I ONLY want to come to X program because of XYZ scholar I'll avoid pissing off adcomms like some of you are cautioning.

Sigh. This process is so freaking confusing and riddled with so many contradictions that it seems our hopes of being successful are doomed from the outset. There's a cheery thought for New Year's Day.

I did something like this in most of mine. In a few, it didn't feel right to name faculty, and so I didn't. In the rest, I did. I just kind of went with my intuition and what felt the best. This is always going to be one of those six of one/half dozen of the other types of questions, and I don't think we really will ever know what they're looking for. I don't think, ultimately, what matters is whether or not specific names are mentioned. Tone could potentially be a problem, but they're going to go with whoever sounds like the best fit for the program, no matter whether or not that applicant mentions specific names.

[Aubergine]

but they're going to go with whoever sounds like the best fit for the program, no matter whether or not that applicant mentions specific names.

This feels right to me too. When my partner applied three years ago, he mentioned specific names in every single SOP, and most of them were rockstars in his field of modern and contemporary poetics. He also contacted them all in advance by email, and most were extremely responsive. He ended up gaining admission to five top 10 programs. Strangely, the two schools that he didn't get into were the ones where the rockstar faculty didn't respond or were less responsive to his emails. One could read into this, but when it comes down to it, I imagine that the fit wasn't as strong at those two schools. I'm not sure to what extent email exchanges helped, but they certainly didn't hinder-- nor did the mentioning of specific faculty in a strong application.

In my own applications, I briefly mentioned faculty members whose research was extremely relevant to my own, but I didn't do this at every single school. If specific faculty were a major factor in choosing a certain school (this was often the case), then to me it seemed relevant to mention them.

[Swagato]

<p>

This feels right to me too. When my partner applied three years ago, he mentioned specific names in every single SOP,  and most of them were rockstars in his field of modern and contemporary poetics. He also contacted them all in advance by email, and most were extremely responsive. He ended up gaining admission to five top 10 programs. Strangely, the two schools that he didn't get into were the ones where the rockstar faculty didn't respond or were less responsive to his emails. One could read into this, but when it comes down to it, I imagine that the fit wasn't as strong at those two schools. I'm not sure to what extent email exchanges helped, but they certainly didn't hinder-- nor did the mentioning of specific faculty in a strong application.

In my own applications, I briefly mentioned faculty members whose research was extremely relevant to my own, but I didn't do this at every single school. If specific faculty were a major factor in choosing a certain school (this was often the case), then to me it seemed relevant to mention them.

This sounds very reasonable, and is what I've done as well. I chose my places based on faculty and research fit (doesn't everyone...), and each of my statements had a section providing examples of research interest overlap or people whose research is in dialogue with my own. In my top choices, I was able to make specific links between my Master's work and the scholarship of X, Y, etc. which, at the least, cannot be taken for empty name-dropping. We'll see. Aubergine: Are you a current applicant, or are you already a doctoral student?</p>

Edited January 4, 2012 by Swagato

[Aubergine]

Swagato, I'm a first time applicant this year. (In cinema studies as well... sort of!)