Admitted Students: How long was your Statement of Purpose?

[misterpat]

To those of you still hanging around from last years admissions cycle, and I suppose those with an opinion applying this year: how long was/is your statement of purpose?

It seems to me that different departments have different guidelines. The example Berkeley provides is a bit longer than mine was: http://ls.berkeley.edu/soc/forms/statem ... urpose.pdf.

Some made it sound like 2-3 pages was more than sufficient, while others seemed open to a substantially lengthier SOP. University of Arizona, for example, specifies that the statement should be 2-10 pages (http://history.arizona.edu/graduates/prospective.php).

The Arizona example should lay to rest any ideas about a direct relationship between relative prestige and length expectations (not a knock on Arizona, one of my favorite professors from college had his PhD from there). The opposite might even be true. Columbia and Michigan probably get 4 times as many applications as Arizona, so I could see them being irked by a presumptuous applicant submitting a 10 page statement of purpose (seriously, what if everyone did?).

Anyway, mine was a bit on the short side last year. I'm going to go with a longer approach this time around, but I'm curious how much detail I can go into, how many topics I have room to bring up, etc. I'm thinking 4 pages is probably a good length, but I'm interested to hear if anyone thinks that's too long.

[kahlan_amnell]

Mine was around two pages.

I don't think four pages is too long if that is what it takes to present the information you want to present well. It is only too long if it is over a page limit for a certain university, then you need a shorter version.

[TMP]

Be concise as you possibly can. It's all I hear from my professors here at Michigan when we do our weekly responses, papers, etc. I mean, my seminars don't even require anything more than 20 pages... some will take 12-15 for a final paper... and yes, a research paper. I do think that it's how they weed the best students/writers from average. You don't even get to talk for more than 10 minutes in a conference as opposed to being a guest lecturer for about 45 minutes. You CAN do it. It shows that you've thought about it over and over and over again and you are able to knock on specific points of research, weeding out stuff professors already know about.

In other words, imagine that you're on an elevator with them and are riding about 20 floors, what would you tell them in less than 90 seconds? I mean, you're not going to start off giving a few sentences that's already in a high school history book and waste your time there. Say one sentence, and then jump right into your research inquiries.

If you're looking at your 2-3 page statement and are looking for what to add, I'll guarantee that by the time you do figure it out, it's all fluff.

[misterpat]

Be concise as you possibly can. It's all I hear from my professors here at Michigan when we do our weekly responses, papers, etc. I mean, my seminars don't even require anything more than 20 pages... some will take 12-15 for a final paper... and yes, a research paper. I do think that it's how they weed the best students/writers from average. You don't even get to talk for more than 10 minutes in a conference as opposed to being a guest lecturer for about 45 minutes. You CAN do it. It shows that you've thought about it over and over and over again and you are able to knock on specific points of research, weeding out stuff professors already know about.

In other words, imagine that you're on an elevator with them and are riding about 20 floors, what would you tell them in less than 90 seconds? I mean, you're not going to start off giving a few sentences that's already in a high school history book and waste your time there. Say one sentence, and then jump right into your research inquiries.

If you're looking at your 2-3 page statement and are looking for what to add, I'll guarantee that by the time you do figure it out, it's all fluff.

Good stuff. Thanks for the responses, both of you.

I mean, I'm not just trying to add length to my statement from last year for the sake of making it longer. I'm practically starting anew. I think mine from last year needs to be a bit longer, but I wanted confirmation that people's statements are roughly as long as mine. If I was competing with others who were writing about every historiographical issue they're interested in, I didn't want to appear incapable of competing. But I'm convinced you're right about concision being the name of the game.

That's probably useful info for the sample, too. I was a bit worried about using a 12-15 pg. paper last year, but I think I'm going to go with it this time.