Citing in a Statement of Purpose

[hifriends]

I have completed my Statement of Purpose for Oxford's MPhil in International Relations and was wondering whether it is advisable citing most of the points I have made. I did so through footnotes and I also have a bibliography. Do you think I shouldn't have done that?

 

Eagerly awaiting a reply!

[bsharpe269]

Im a different field but I will be citing. When I describe my research interests, I go into a fit of detail and I do cite. I stay pretty general so a lot of it is being studied by a lot of professors so when I possible I cite the professors at the university I am applying to.

[hifriends]

Most people here are applying for MPhil/PhD which requires a clearly outlined research proposal. I'm wondering whether I overdid it by having a bibliography and footnotes.

 

 

Im a different field but I will be citing. When I describe my research interests, I go into a fit of detail and I do cite. I stay pretty general so a lot of it is being studied by a lot of professors so when I possible I cite the professors at the university I am applying to.

 

Did you use footnotes?

[RSgirl]

Hmm, interesting topic. The SoP examples I have seen online never cited anything, but I do agree it would make sense to put in some references to important papers. It shows dedication and knowledge of your field(s) of interest. 

 

I'm just not sure I see the point of footnotes. If you already have a bibliography, why still add footnotes?

[TakeruK]

I'm in yet another field and I have never cited anything in my SOP. My SOP Is not a research proposal and in fact, I wrote very little about the details of what I wanted to do in my PhD program. This is because I knew that the programs I applied to did not want us to commit to a project prior to starting. Instead, we are just admitted into the program itself and then we decide our supervisors etc after we arrive and meet them.

 

In my SOP, if you have to cite something then your SOP is far too detailed. I only wrote about the surface level material when referring to my research interests and techniques I wanted to use. For example, I might have wrote about my interest in studying of exoplanets using the big telescope that my school owns and operates. If I was writing a paper on this topic, I would probably cite the paper of the discovery of the first exoplanet with this method (pretty much every paper on topic cites that paper). However, this is a SOP, not a paper, so I did not cite it. Everyone reading it would know about that paper anyways. 

 

So, in my opinion, I do not think you should write your SOP like a scientific paper. To me, the SOP is a personal narrative, aka a piece of informal writing. I wrote it as if I just ran into one of the profs while at a conference and I wanted to tell them about me over coffee or lunch or something like that. I wrote it the way I might speak to another person instead of a way I might write for a journal. If I wrote my SOP like I would a journal, it would have dozens of citations since I would be referring broadly to a lot of very general material. I think if I could pick out exactly 2 or 3 papers that encapsulated my entire research interest, then it would be far too narrow!

[hifriends]

Thanks for your responses guys, I appreciate it. I e-mailed Politics Graduate Admissions and the mentioned this:

 

 

 

Thanks for checking. Yes, properly referenced citations are fine. You do not need to include the bibliography in the word count – but footnotes should be included.

 

I was hoping I'd come across someone who applied for International Relations or at least Politics