Would appreciate a SoP review, first draft

[jmg023]

Hello there!

 

I finished writing what is a very first draft of my statement of purpose. I am pursuing a EdS degree in School Psychology. I think my SoP is way too long (2.5 pages) but the program that this SoP is tailored to had very specific questions to answer and I wanted to make sure each one was answered clearly. I would like advice on what I could potentially cut out. I would also love advice on how to end it as well as I haven't done that yet which is why it ends pretty abruptly. I am really unsure about this as I have never written anything like this before so here it goes.

 

Here are the questions that the programs asks you to answer in the SoP for reference:

• Describe your career goals.

• Describe how you see your career goals relating to this degree program; that is, describe how you see this program preparing you to meet your career objectives.

• Describe past work or educational experiences related to this degree program.

• Describe what skills/competencies and experiences you hope to gain in this program.

• Describe any past research experiences and accomplishments.

• Describe one research topic/issue that you would like to pursue in this program.

• Please provide additional information concerning your background, experience, goals, or accomplishments/awards you believe are pertinent to your application. - I haven't answered this one as my SoP was already getting really long. 

 

Here's my statement:

 

Statement of Purpose
 

My career goals are to attend a graduate program in school psychology so that I may practice in public school settings. I want to be able to help children succeed in their school environments and I also want to be able to help teachers manage their classrooms so that they may become a positive and effective learning environment for children from all different kinds of backgrounds. I want to be able to reach out to children with behavioral issues, learning disorders, or children from impoverished backgrounds and help them to be successful in school. It is often the case that children in these situations end up dropping out of school, fail classes, or are held back because of lack of support or simply the lack of identifying the issues that they are facing and not receiving a proper intervention. If I can help just one child stay in school and be successful, then I will consider that a huge accomplishment.

 

Furthering my education by obtaining a graduate degree will help me achieve these goals. Specifically, obtaining an EdS degree will prepare me to help children be successful in school by assessing and counseling them as needed. Obtaining this degree will also enable me to help teachers manage their classrooms and create environments that are conducive to learning. The School Psychology program at [redacted] will help me achieve my goals due to their scientist-practitioner model.  I believe that a school psychologist should be well prepared to implement evidence based interventions to children. As such, they must be knowledgeable of the research in the field and be able to successfully implement, assess, and make changes to these interventions as needed on a case by case basis. Not only will I get to help children, but I can work with teachers and administrators as well to implement school wide and potentially district wide policies to help better the education children receive.  

 

I received my bachelor’s in Psychology at [redacted] and in addition to the required psychology courses I took a few elective psychology classes that I feel are relevant to this degree program. One class was Group Dynamics and in this class we learned about factors that influence positive learning environments and promoted participation in classrooms such as small group sizes and smaller schools in general. We also learned about different learning/teaching methods such as cooperative learning and peer mentoring. Another class I took which I feel is closely related to this program was Applied Developmental Psychology. In this class we learned about applying theories of development into real world situations and how they influence public policy. We also learned about writing program evaluations and did our own as our final paper. This class showed me the stark contrast between theory and application and how difficult it can be to apply these theories to real world scenarios due to numerous factors such as time, financial constraints, and public policy. It was very eye opening because in most psychology classes you only talk about theories but actually implementing new policies and the difficulty in doing so is rarely touched on.   This paragraph is supposed to describe educational experiences related to the program. I am not sure if describing relevant classes I took is what they want. If not, what should I talk about? Should I just talk about my work experiences?

 

Another experience I had was working first hand with children at a before and after school day care program. We worked at the schools and provided supervision for children K-6 before and after school. One of the great things about this program is that we were encouraged to provide structured, fun, and educational activities for the children. We were also trained to implement behavioral management techniques such as using the token system to encourage positive behavior. We had to use this system extensively with the special needs child in our group that suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Working with him and seeing him make progress was such a wonderful experience that I would like to be able to replicate with other children.

 

Fortunately, for the past two and half years I have been able to help influence and better the lives of children in [redacted] by working as a research assistant on a grant called the [redacted]. The goal of the project is to identify children in foster care who have high SED scores (seriously emotionally disturbed) and return them to their parents with the hopes of them staying there permanently. This is accomplished by using Parent Management Training – Oregon Model (PMTO) which teaches parents to use techniques like encouragement (token system), limit setting, good directions and other various methods that come up on a family by family basis. It has been a great experience working as a team to come together and solve issues that arise in the implementation of such a program. I have done a variety of tasks on this project like compiling data and making reports, tracking the training of therapists in the program, creating data collection tools, assessing, organizing, and analyzing data, writing the coding manual used for coding family therapy sessions and coding the videos, training colleagues in the coding procedures and a myriad of other tasks related to the project.

 

By attending the School Psychology program at [redacted], I would like to achieve the ability to assess and screen children to identify potential learning disorders, behavioral issues, and mood disorders and be able to successfully create and implement an intervention for them so that they will have the support they need to succeed in school. I would also love to learn about and gain competency in classroom management techniques such as doing classroom evaluations and creating interventions to make them a more positive learning environment if necessary. I want to be able to consult with parents and teachers and support them in helping their child succeed. I would also like to learn about counseling because being able to properly counsel children who are in need is a very important skill. I also hope to obtain firsthand experience working with children and conducting assessments in school as part of the program. I think it’s very valuable to be able to gain experience on the actual job while still being in school so that any questions that arise can be answered by advisors and professors. All in all, I would like to gain the skills necessary to become a competent school psychologist so that I will be successful in helping children succeed in school not only on an individual level, but also on a larger scale such as helping a school or an entire district improve the delivery of their education.

 

There are a few research topics I’m interested in such as ecological perspectives in child assessments and classroom management but one topic that really interests me and one that I think needs more attention is bullying in schools and how to identify, intervene, and prevent bullying. I am interested in looking into factors that contribute to bullying (Who bullies? Who gets bullied? How does the bullying manifest in the 21^st century?) and seeing if there are any particular risk factors involved in identifying bullies and the victims and identifying the effects of bullying on the victim. I would also be interested in assessing the effectiveness of school programs in place to prevent bullying.