Statement of puprpose

[sir_count]

Hi

Who have a good Statement of Puropose for Appling to PhD Sociology ?

Regards

[jacib]

There's a subforum specifically for statements of purpose: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/73-statement-of-purpose-personal-history-diversity/. I don't know if people have found other examples they like online, but that's definitely the first place to look.

[gilbertrollins]

What about discussing tutoring and a teaching internship I did? They'll be mentioned in a line on my CV already. I don't want to waste space on the SOP talking about noob interests in Spreading the Good Word, and figure teaching aspirations are an implied, and merely necessary but not sufficient condition for admittance anyway. So I'm thinking of cutting it -- but if soc programs are particularly interested in teaching ability, I'll keep it.

Thoughts?

Edited November 4, 2012 by econosocio

[jacib]

A bunch of successful applicants to political science programs apparently last year. While not sociology, it should give you an idea of what a statement of purpose looks like. Political Science is probably more similar to sociology than most disciplines, but their subfields are more structured than ours, which means they have to locate themselves a little less (they are field x, whereas we're more likely to say "bringing field y into field x" more often; these fields often imply a standard set of methodological tools as well), and major theorist play a slightly different role in their discipline (you'll notice that some names come up several times--especially in the comparative politics and international relations SOP's). Because of these things, I think if we do anything differently, we have to described our projects in more depth rather than just saying "Hey I want to study this issue in the framework of these scholars." But still, a useful thing to take a look at.

I'd say the teaching stuff they'll see on your CV--I doubt it would help you get in, but it might be useful if people are deciding to give you an RA or TA funding. Overall, however, I think all teaching heavy programs would have no problem sticking an inexperienced PhD student in front of a classroom and I think teaching will only matter for how you are funded, but probably not for that you are accepted. Your statement of purpose, I think, should be convincing people that you will complete a high quality dissertation, and that's pretty much all. Quickly go through achievements, research skills, and most importantly ideas of what you'd research, followed briefly by "fit"/why that program specifically will be a good place for you to complete your high quality dissertation.

[gilbertrollins]

My adviser said, "Graduate programs hate to see students who like teaching. It's crazy, and socially disastrous because it's what most of their graduates will do for a lifetime. But there you go."

[Darth.Vegan]

absolutely true. I mention that I earned the opportunity to teach an intro seminar in my SOP because it is pretty unique, but made sure to emphasize research, research, research.

[AaronM]

what one of my professors said was to think of your statement of purpose as "why should this university take a chance on you?" With funding and everything, they take a pretty big chance on you and with high dropout rates, they want to make sure your not going to just drop out. Research often shows that your very committed, anyone who has done research knows that there is quite a bit of grunt work involved and requires a lot of commitment to see the project through. Teaching can very well show your commitment as well; xdarthveganx's teaching example likely shows that because that position seems like it took some sustained work to get. Bottom line, you work with what you have, whether it is teaching or research. The issue is really framing what you have. I doubt an adcom member would look at a statement of purpose with a lot of teaching mentioned and just throw it to the side. Research represents a lot of what adcoms look for, but I highly doubt that they count teaching as a negative or even a neutral factor.

[Darth.Vegan]

I think the issue is when potential applicants stress their desire to be teachers. The goal of most top programs is to produce scholars that will get jobs at research universities and publish in their field. I think a lot of us see the value in teaching, but the sad fact is, being a professor is largely not about teaching, even though that is a large part of what we will do. Of course the exception is teaching colleges (e.g. liberal arts schools), but top programs don't generally aim for placing their students in these types of schools.

Edited November 7, 2012 by xdarthveganx

[gilbertrollins]

absolutely true. I mention that I earned the opportunity to teach an intro seminar in my SOP because it is pretty unique, but made sure to emphasize research, research, research.

That's essentially fungible with a highest honors scholarship -- the signal is what your mentors thought of your abilities, not the substance of the teaching.

[gilbertrollins]

I doubt an adcom member would look at a statement of purpose with a lot of teaching mentioned and just throw it to the side. Research represents a lot of what adcoms look for, but I highly doubt that they count teaching as a negative or even a neutral factor.

The person I quoted is 65 years old, and has worked at three different universities, including a T10 where they sat the adcomm for several years. Many graduate students, especially older ones, end up teaching a lot of comm college courses and such trying to support themselves through graduate school. It gets in the way of their research, they decide making $50,000 a year and actually having a social life are worth being ABD for life, and the prestige of their graduate program drops.

Until tenure and other institutional incentives change, research will be 1st-5th priority of any graduate program. The best students in graduate programs will be afforded fellowships and other opportunities, either internally or externally, to allow them to not teach and focus on research.

Edited November 8, 2012 by econosocio

[gilbertrollins]

Maybe I should add, in case the above sounds like a pretentious justification of an unfortunate hierarchical arrangement, that I think the reality of tenure and publishing incentives mean we ought to pay adjuncts more, let them take up the first 60 hours of instruction, and leave Professors to research, and do so in a competitive environment. That way you get better instruction for younger kids, and eliminate tenured professors coasting on a pub every five years while he teaches introductory courses.

Let genius brains who love teaching teach. The current arrangement mixes the cohorts of teaching and research preferences up, and makes everyone worse off.

[myrrh]

i think the issue is whether you incorporate your teaching experience well into your research potential. teaching ability, by itself, is not very much what top programs are looking for. if teaching makes you rethink some aspects of a certain subfield, say something about that; if you worked with your students on some project and they ended up publishing it, do write about it. if you were awarded as the best tutor of the year, well, maybe it's worth mentioning, but i would say you can leave it for your CV. if the only thing you achieved is a perfect evaluation score from the students, no, you should have something more important to say.

if your teaching experience inspires you and you apply to sociology program simply because you want to be a teacher -- never say you are applying just because you wanna teach. first, they want to see applicants who want to do research; second, this kind of statement will even make them doubt whether you know what phd program is about.