Review my personal academic statement draft?

[pachel]

Hi everyone, I would really appreciate it if someone would be willing to review my first draft of my academic/personal statement. Please feel free to be brutal. I mainly need to know how to shorten it, though this particular application's essay can be 1-2 pages.

 

Here is the prompt (it is called a personal statement but obviously has aspects of academic)

 

Outline your research interest and goals and how the Neuroscience Program and our training faculty will help you to achieve your long term career goals. It is also important to describe in your statement how you might contribute to a diverse community here and any obstacles that you have overcome in gaining your present level of education. Describe in detail any prior research and/or laboratory experience (including a description of the research question, the methods used, your findings and conclusions). 

 

Just so you know, I haven't yet included the program-specific part about "how our training faculty will help me to achieve my long term career goals" because I am trying to keep this template generic for now and will alter it for each program after I get the outline complete, so I'm mainly looking for critique on that part.

 

Thank you very much! Sorry for the length.

 

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I first found the field of neuroscience because of experiences with my family. My sister has Asperger syndrome and dealt with other psychosocial and development disabilities throughout our childhood together. During my freshman year of undergrad, she suffered a mental breakdown and her illness persisted through the remainder of my undergraduate career. Because of this, her illness was a significant challenge to me during school and I struggled at times to balance being supportive at home and maintaining my grades and focus on academics. Despite this, it was her illness that initially brought me into the field I am pursuing now, out of a desire to understand neurodiversity and to expand the treatment possibilities for people with brain and nervous system disorders.

 

Though my sister’s illness is what first brought me to neuroscience, the coursework at Kalamazoo College kept me there. Courses in cell and molecular biology and the molecular basis of nervous system disorders solidified my interests in neuroscience at that level of analysis. In those classes, I was introduced to molecular techniques including cell culturing, PCR, western blotting, and gel electrophoresis. Another course in physiological psychology introduced me to the molecular and genetic underpinnings of human and animal behavior, such as the neurophysiology of gender, sexuality, and pair-bonding, or the ability of the brain to remap synaptic connections after CNS injury.

 

This cell and molecular, interdisciplinary approach is the one I took for my senior undergraduate thesis. I wrote a literature review of over 100 scientific articles to develop a comprehensive model for the neuropathology of depression at the social and cellular levels. This review integrated psychosocial stress, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity, proinflammatory immune responses, serotonin and other monoamine activity, and synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis, all into a narrative of depression. I used this model to address the issue of antidepressant over-prescription in society, and the problems with this method of treatment because it only target one variable of the overall model, neurotransmitter activity, while other central aspects of the pathology are overlooked. I continued my research with stress from the social perspective when I worked as a research assistant combining multiple sources about the epidemiology of psychiatric illness, racial and sexual discrimination, and other factors to investigate the psychological and social stress burdens on young adults of the Millenial Generation.

 

After graduation, I wanted a chance to supplement my academic experience with industry experience before deciding if graduate school was the right career path, so I took a position at a contract research organization as a laboratory animal technician. Soon after I was hired, however, the company took a downturn due to changes in the economy and work slowed. I was voluntarily rotated between understaffed departments to help during this time, and was eventually offered a transfer to a permanent position as a report writer. My journey through company departments gave me a unique opportunity to work on studies at various stages in the experimental process. However, throughout this I realized that this type of industry work was not the right fit for me. I wanted to be a part of research beginning with the initial designing of an experimental idea all the way through the data analysis and results interpretation, instead of the research being segregated between departments. I also wanted to be in an atmosphere where the people involved in research wanted to work because they had a passion for the subject and wanted to learn for the sake of learning, instead of just as part of a business plan. So, I decided to return to academia.

 

In graduate school, I want to continue and expand the research I started with my undergraduate thesis depression neuropathology and further uncover the role of cortisol, glucocorticoids, and proinflammatory cytokines in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. I want to connect this research on stress, immunology, and plasticity to the neuroendocrinology of gonadal and stress hormones and their influence on sexual behavior. I am also interested in exploring the brain’s resilience: for example, the ability of the CNS to remap cortical connections after traumatic injury or degenerative illness, or synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis in response to biological stimuli or life experiences.

 

Neuroscience is the intersection of many interesting fields, including medicine, biology, psychology, ethology, sociology, and philosophy. I want to pursue a graduate degree because in my career, I do not want to stop learning about how aspects of these fields interact with one another and the various ways that they converge in neuroscience.

Edited October 17, 2013 by pachel

[TakeruK]

Here are some of my thoughts:

 

1. I think you should change your introduction. The prompt does not actually ask "how did you become interested in the field". Also, although I am sorry to hear about your sister, I think it is pretty cliche to have a story like that to motivate you into the field. Other similar things I would say to avoid are stories that have the theme of "I was interested in X when, as a child, my [family member] introduced me to X, etc." This is just my opinion though, please feel free to disregard

 

Instead, I would begin directly with your research goals, because I think that is the most important part about why you want to attend graduate school. Just briefly describe the topic and then later on, after you describe your undergraduate work, you can describe your future research goals in further detail if you'd like.

 

I think you should keep some elements of your first two paragraphs, particularly the challenge of balancing your commitments at home and at school (that's the only part that is relevant to the prompt). I would put this information in the middle of the SOP, probably right after describing your undergraduate training, instead of opening with this.

 

Basically, I think the opening should focus on the main reason for the SOP, which is to answer "what do you want to do in graduate school", not "why are you interested in neuroscience".

 

2. For your description of your past experience and research, you should include some information about the effect of your work on the scientific community (even if it is small). For example, what happened to your extensive literature review. Was it published anywhere? Did you present it anywhere? Is it being used by your supervisor for introducing their class or research students into the field/topic? Even if it ended up just sitting on a shelf somewhere, which is common for undergraduate work, you could still describe in more detail why your work was interesting. i.e. where does your work fit in the big picture of the knowledge in your field. I do get a slight sense of this in your paragraphs but I think you can develop it further and be more explicit.

 

Similarly, I think you can describe your work in industry further. It sounds like you might not have gotten the chance to work on interesting problems in depth (which is why you want to go to graduate school) but you were very vague in what you did. I think the skills you developed in industry might be really helpful and you should explicitly describe what studies you helped with, what were your actual duties and how these skills can transfer to graduate school.

 

3. I think you can also develop your connection from your past to the future more. I think part of the reason why I feel something is missing here is because as you said, you haven't described "why school X will help you reach your goals" paragraph(s) yet. But when you do write it, be sure to connect your past experience (and especially skills learned from both your undergrad research and your industry job) with your future goals and with the resources available to you at school X. I actually think this is the most important part of the SOP. But right now, your SOP only lists your future research goals, without any connection to how your experience gives you the foundation to achieve these goals (and without how school X is the right place to get you there).

 

4. Finally, it might help to beef up your long term career goals statement. I think it's hard for any of us to know for sure what we want to be when we "grow up" (i.e. graduate) but I feel like you have not given a strong enough statement that explains your motivations for going to graduate school. Right now, you say that you want to keep learning "in your career" but do not really say what your "career" is going to be. Lifelong learning is an admirable goal, but it should not be the sole reason for wanting to complete a PhD, which I feel is a specific set of qualifications for certain careers. I think many graduate schools will want to hear that you want to be a part of academia somehow, such as working towards a tenured position or maybe some other kind of non-tenured researcher (e.g. staff scientist etc). But maybe it's not necessary to have such specific goals! However, you can still be less vague about "your career" by making statements such as "During my PhD, I want to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out independent research", or "to lead a research team/lab" etc.

 

That is, I think you should move beyond simply "I want to learn in my PhD". You should somehow justify the need for the PhD training in order to achieve the career that you want. You may not have to identify a specific career but you should at least identify what you hope to get out of your PhD and these things should be connected to your research goals and the resources at School X. 

 

Hope that was helpful! Remember, this is just my opinion and may not necessarily be the best ideas! Please make sure you consult other people, especially those in your field, those who know you and those who know the programs you want to apply to Good luck!!

[pachel]

Thank you so much! This is probably the most helpful review I've gotten yet. I'm going to work on incorporating some of your suggestions. 

 

Regarding my family story, I didn't want to mention it because I know it's nothing special in this context, but I thought it was relevant because it was how I first got into the field. I was trying to convey that it's not why I stayed in the field; I found out it was interesting in and of itself regardless of how I got there. I agree that I don't want to start with that though. Got to think of a good intro...

 

Thanks!

[pachel]

Sorry for the double-post. I do have another question. The prompt says "It is also important to describe in your statement how you might contribute to a diverse community here." I'm not sure I really accomplish that. Does anybody have any recommendations for what would be appropriate here? There are random interesting things about me (I come from a theatre family; both my parents were stage actors and I grew up around theatre and my hobby is technical theatre, and I have had a lot of opportunities to travel the world at young ages - because of this I'm pretty naturally openminded to and interested in diversity and other cultures).

I feel like I could try to weave that in - I am interested in neurodiversity and the neuroscience of different behaviors and cultures, but it's not my primary interest and I'm worried it would be a stretch/too irrelevant to weave it in.
 

[TakeruK]

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I feel like prompts asking for how you "contribute to diversity" would want to know things that make you different from a "traditional graduate student" (i.e. middle class white male entering right out of undergrad, with potentially family members in academia). I personally think it's important for an incoming class to have diversity but I also am cynical and suspect that many schools include this in their prompt so they can point to it and say "affirmative action!" but not actually consider it in their admission decision. Of course, I don't know what school you are writing for so there's no way I can say this is actually true or not, but I have heard some professors say that they don't really care about it (I think it is important because some unrepresented groups have a big disadvantage getting into academia). However, I think it's worth it to include, but don't stress too much about it.

 

For your current SOP, I would say that having the extra responsibilities at home and your experience in industry would count towards this part of the prompt. I think you could try to also work in your theatre interests if you weave it in as demonstrating skills/attributes you picked up from your time in theatre as being helpful in your undergraduate or future graduate career, somehow. But you can also just include it in your CV under "other activities" and the committee might see it too. I think it's a good thing to add a bit of personal details to your application to help set you apart (and another purpose of the "contribute to diversity" is so that the incoming class can have an interesting and good mix of different people with different personalities).

 

Here are some ideas that you might want to include as well if they apply to you:

 

1. Are you part of an underrepresented minority in your field (based on gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, religion, etc.)?

2. Are you a first generation college student? A first generation graduate student?

3. Did you work part time / full time during college?

*Note: My undergrad school was a large public "state" school where most of the students did come from a large variety of ethic backgrounds, working class parents, etc. so I didn't really think that this made me a "minority". However, after some experience at the graduate level and seeing that the experts / established field leaders are actually pretty homogeneous, I then realised that things like having parents in academia or being of a certain gender/ethnicity gives one some inherent advantages. So, you don't have to actually feel like a minority to be one, and I soon realised that the diversity of my undergraduate graduating class is not actually duplicated when you, for example, look at a department's faculty list, or a conference's list of invited speakers (or even lists of contributed speakers).

 

4. Did you work with or volunteer with any groups in your school / community (e.g. student government, outreach groups, community service etc.)

 

Just some ideas. I wouldn't make this a big chunk of your SOP but a short paragraph that describes you as a person rather than as a set of academic skills and achievements would be useful for this prompt. I've found that most of the prompts I had to answer did not actually include this part in the SOP and actually wanted all of this information in a separate essay, sometimes called "Personal History Statement". 

[hmparikh1990]

I am also insearch of some one who can suggest me about my SOP.

Should i post it here?