Wacky SOP Questions

[Sunshine5535]

Hey guys,

So I was curious if anyone applying for next fall has encountered any strange SOP questions to answer. I'm applying to one school that is asking to address this question within my statement: if I had traveled back in history, at what point would I stop and why. Talk about bizarre. I have no idea how to even address this; do I tie this into my personal statement somehow, relate it to Speech? Or answer genuinely in a seperate paper? Or just devote a paragraph to it?

Thoughts?

[GandalfTheGrey]

My two cents:

That does seem like a wacky question... my guess is that they want to see that you have interests and a personality outside of wanting to be an SLP. If they are asking you to address it in your statement, then I would do just that rather than attaching a separate paper. My instinct says to answer genuinely, and since communication happened at all points in human history, it seems like you would at least have a partial link back to the rest of your SOP. On the other hand, they could be looking for students whose interest in SLP spills over to other aspects of their life, in which case you would want to choose a historical period that relates to speech but is also one you are genuinely interested in. A good starting point might be to make a list of five or ten time periods you would most like to visit and why. Then look at your list to see which of those points could be best related to your interest in SLP, which would provide a transition in your essay between your time travel bit and the rest of your SOP.

Good luck! I'm interested to see what others might say about this.

[midnight]

If that's the prompt, that's the prompt. I think it's a bad idea to write it on a separate piece of paper or make it a mere paragraph in a standard SOP unless the school explicitly tells you to do that.

I think this prompt allows for you to show your personality, originality, and creativity, and you should feel free to do that.