Tone for statement of purpose?

[VernonDudley]

What is an appropriate tone for a statement of purpose? I'm trying to be very formal but I think it's not like an academic paper, either! Casual is no good, I know, but sometimes I think revisions that my advisor suggestions are.... just too formal! Trying to be succinct and consice and all that, but this is hard!

Any thoughts?

[fuzzylogician]

I think it's useful to view the SOP as a research proposal of sorts. Academics write lots of these during their careers. These are usually somewhat formulaic and formal, but normally still allow you to present your ideas in a way that gets your creativity across. So, no anecdotes or jokes, no stories of how you got into linguistics and how you've always loved learning languages. Concentrate on the present and the goals you have set yourself for the future. I have the feeling that your advisor's suggestions are right on the money and are not too formal, but then I haven't seen your essay so who knows.

[thenerdypengwin]

I'm having trouble getting started. I want to write something inspired because the rest of my SOP is inspired. My SOP is on the evolution and focus of my research interests, shaped by my experiences. I know I should never say anything negative, but I wrote some little rants in my brainstorms for my SOP a few months ago and I am considering introducing the fairly rare fact that i know what I want by saying, I know what I don't like: things that bore me.

They bore me because I cannot see passed them… I can’t make it into a puzzle. This is why I love research. I love to think analytically about how to build evidence to support a correlation I’ve noticed. My life’s goal is to answer questions that I can’t yet answer. I can use my intrinsic, deep-seeded quest for knowledge to answer some research questions that I am intrigued by.

thoughts? It's also a nod to my bad grades in gen ed classes. My upper div GPA is .8 higher than my cum.

I also don't like starting out with I so much... the main body has a lot less of that.

Edited November 12, 2012 by thenerdypengwin

[fuzzylogician]

Are you sure you can make it work without offending anyone? That is, without getting across a message that whatever you aren't interested in is boring? I'd worry about that. Not to mention that people's interests change and shift in grad school and beyond, and making such a strong statement like you're making now might end up painting you as close minded and not ready for graduate school.

Additionally, it sounds like you're spending a lot of time describing your past and how you developed your current interests - you could do some of that, but really the statement should be about the present and future - what do you care about now? How will you develop these interests in the future? How and why is the school you're applying to the perfect place for you to achieve your goals?

Maybe it'd help you to finish the rest of the statement and then go back to the opening paragraph. You can write this paragraph up and get people's advice on it. My guess would be that it's be better not to use it, but I suppose it could work in some contexts.

[LinguisticMystic]

No, definitely don't do that. I could have done something similar and mentioned it to one of my letter-writers last year when I was writing my statements and she stared wide-eyed at me and said don't even think about it! It's not a virtue to be unable to do well in a class that bores you. Talk about positive things.

[snarky]

Agreed, you probably shouldn't state things that way. It could remind the professors of all of the undergrads THEY teach in gen ed classes who don't show up, sleep through lecture, or otherwise put in no effort at all. Plus, there are a lot of moments in grad school when you having to do some really boring stuff. I'm thinking of the weeks on end I've spent getting intimately familiar with various pivot tables of reading time data.

I find that in SOP-type things it's best to let your research interests speak for themselves. In the end, the way to get a professor excited to work with you is probably just to give them a SOP describing a really cool topic or idea that they might like to help you brainstorm about, and be affiliated with, since they have to put a lot of their own time and brain power into their students' research. Not to say they aren't interested in a student's intangible qualities (intelligence, ambition, intellectual curiosity, etc) but I think for that they'll tend to look for evidence in your grades, test scores, writing samples, whatever. If I were applying all over again, I'd skip that stuff almost entirely and try to let my personality come across in the way I framed my interests.

This sort of presupposes that you already know the field well enough to pitch an idea that fits a professor's interests. I definitely didn't when I applied, but do what you can. You don't really have to go into that many details, and if you don't know the field that well it might be better to be a little vague. Try to read papers by the professors in the department if you can understand them, that will help.

Edited November 16, 2012 by snarky