Tips on how to structure a SoP??

[chem.eng]

Hi guys!

 

I'm quite stuck here as I don't know where to start writing!

I am applying for PhD in top chemical engineering schools, and I want to include the following:

 

- my interest in biochemical industry and pharmaceutical research

- my research experience in biomaterial and nanofibers

- talk about myself as a person (me being a woman from a relatively developing country, all rounder personality, high general knowledge and global awareness)---> not sure what to write in personal qualities? 

- a low gpa semester (I was sick)

- why I think their program is best for me

 

But i just don't know the order and structure of such an essay and how much should I write on each aspect? 

What does the committee look for in an engineering PhD SoP?? 

 

Any help will be much appreciated   

[PeakPerformance]

Hi guys!

 

I'm quite stuck here as I don't know where to start writing!

I am applying for PhD in top chemical engineering schools, and I want to include the following:

 

- my interest in biochemical industry and pharmaceutical research

- my research experience in biomaterial and nanofibers

- talk about myself as a person (me being a woman from a relatively developing country, all rounder personality, high general knowledge and global awareness)---> not sure what to write in personal qualities? 

- a low gpa semester (I was sick)

- why I think their program is best for me

 

But i just don't know the order and structure of such an essay and how much should I write on each aspect? 

What does the committee look for in an engineering PhD SoP?? 

 

Any help will be much appreciated   

 

I would suggest the following:

 

1.  Talk about your research experience and the path that led you to pursue a PhD

2.  Talk about the line of research you plan on pursuing as a PhD candidate -- your project

3.  Talk about why the school you are applying to is a good fit for you and vice versa

4.  Your plans after completing your PhD (very briefly)

5.  You should have the professors writing your letter explain/account for the 1 semester where you were sick -- don't waste time/space in your statement addressing this.

6.  Your personal qualities/characteristics should only be discussed when relevant to your discussion of items 1-4 above. 

 

Hope this helps.

[TakeruK]

I think the above comment has a lot of helpful tips. SOPs are pretty personal and subjective so each person will have their own favourite way. My way would be:

 

1. Start with your goal: "I want to pursue a PhD program in X at University Y to study Z." You can go on for a few more sentences to help the reader categorize you. For example, in my field, I would use words to indicate whether I am interested in building instruments, getting new observations, analyzing existing data, or doing theory. 

 

2. Then, I would discuss your research and academic experience that led you to where you are today. Focus/emphasize especially the events that support your claim that you will be good at whatever you said in the first paragraph. I would put any explanation of "weird stuff" in my history here. For a single low GPA semester, I might just write one single sentence (or let my letter writers address it if they know about it--most of my letter writers were research supervisors so they might not know about it). For me, my "weird stuff" was explaining why I chose to do a 2 year Canadian Masters program instead of doing a direct entry American PhD program.

 

For me, the above took up about 75% of my SOP and basically remained the same for all schools. In the remaining 25%, what I wrote depended on each school and I addressed:

 

3. In this section, I transition from my previous skills/experience to what I want to learn in a PhD program. Similar to paragraph (1) but here I would do more than just "classify" myself as a "type" of scientist and go ahead to discuss my research interests. I would not go into the level of detail of proposing or describing a particular research project. Instead, I would describe a phenomenon I want to study (e.g. atmospheres of exoplanets) and how I would go about doing it. I also discussed what I wanted to get out of a PhD program.

 

4. Why the chosen school/program is a good fit for your goals listed in (3). I would discuss expertise of the faculty, the nature of the program, and the experiments/equipment/facilities available to students in the program.

 

5. I usually end with the practical reasons for attaining a PhD--i.e. career/long term plans (most SOP prompts ask for this explicitly).

[StudyStar]

Structure/organization is often one of the areas where people need the most help. And of course, it's very important - a disorganized or disjointed SOP is a bad SOP, even if the ideas are there.

The other posters offered some good advice. I would add that ideally, the SOP starts with a "hook" that grabs attention and provides a theme beyond "this is what I want to study and why." This is important even when applying to programs in the hard sciences (like Chem E), where creative writing is not important in the field but where a creative, original introduction can help you stand out (remember that your SOP is one of thousands they will look at.) You could start with some specific aspect of your unique background and use that to transition into discussion of your current research interest and past experience. Here, the structure is often linear (in college I worked on X; after, I was employed with Y company researching Z; etc. - just be specific and don't simply restate your CV in prose form!) Future plans/goals and reasons why the school interests you can come last. And always mention what you can offer them - they want students who can contribute to the program too and enrich the student body, however large or small.

David
 

Edited December 24, 2014 by fuzzylogician
edited to remove advertisement