thinking about SOP

[readeatsleep]

generally, the advice on this board has been to personalize SOP to each school as much as possible. this is alot of work, but since those of us reading this board are already working or (or even finalizing) their SOP, it is certainly possible.

however, a professor recently advised me not to stress out on the personalization aspect of the SOP. she said that admission committees will know who you will be working with, given your interests, and that it is best to spend time and energy on other parts of the SOP or application. that is, she reccomended that i basically send out generic SOPs.

does anyone have any further thoughts on this? her advice is attractive, not only because it involves less work, but because it reduces the awkwardness of the SOP, since inserting references to the work of professors is never easy or smooth. on the other hand, i want the schools to know that i have done my research, and thought about who i want to work with.

thx!

[BrunoPuntzJones]

I think a couple of sentences or a paragraph at the end of the statement personalized towards that department makes sense. "I'd like to work with Professors X, Y and Z to study [insert broad field]." Then a couple lines about your interest in the field or the work the professors are doing in it. In retrospect I don't imagine it bought me much, but it really wasn't much work. Anything more I think is overkill.

Best of luck.

[StudentForever]

Not going to lie -- I used the same SoP for every school to which I applied. I didn't even add a few sentences to personalize for the school. Never occurred to me and my advisors never mentioned it. Worked out for me. However, I don't know how much it would fly given today's more competitive market. I certainly don't think you need to write a different SoP for each to which you apply; however, I think your professor is right in saying adding a few sentences to personalize the statement wouldn't hurt.

Good luck!

[joro]

I made some of mine a bit more personalized by adding a paragraph honed towards the school before my conclusion. Everything else is relatively the same for all my SOP unless I had to cut it down due to length.

[Ziz]

ALso related to SOPs, but not about personalization. I'd like to know how you can give an explanation of certain low grades or GRE scores without sounding like you're making excuses. My situation: I had an A average each year of undergrad except 2nd, where my average was just shy of that (so high B+). Reason being that my grandmother (who raised me) was dying of cancer and clearly that was distracting and upsetting. It's not a horrible blip, but a blip it is, and detracts from an otherwise very good record so I'd like to explain it. That on its own would be fine. However, I also was hit by a car just before the GRE and suffered a concussion. For a bunch of reasons that aren't worth explaining here, I wrote it anyway, got decent scores, but not as high as I know I probably could have gotten. But because everyone is always saying if you're over a certain threshold htey aren't going to make or break an application I decided not to write it again and spedn another $250 to do it. Is this all going to sound like excuses?? If so, I'll just leave it all out.

[readeatsleep]

ALso related to SOPs, but not about personalization. I'd like to know how you can give an explanation of certain low grades or GRE scores without sounding like you're making excuses. My situation: I had an A average each year of undergrad except 2nd, where my average was just shy of that (so high B+). Reason being that my grandmother (who raised me) was dying of cancer and clearly that was distracting and upsetting. It's not a horrible blip, but a blip it is, and detracts from an otherwise very good record so I'd like to explain it. That on its own would be fine. However, I also was hit by a car just before the GRE and suffered a concussion. For a bunch of reasons that aren't worth explaining here, I wrote it anyway, got decent scores, but not as high as I know I probably could have gotten. But because everyone is always saying if you're over a certain threshold htey aren't going to make or break an application I decided not to write it again and spedn another $250 to do it. Is this all going to sound like excuses?? If so, I'll just leave it all out.

thats tough. while i understand your desire to explain these two events, it definitely could end up sounding like excuses.

i would say, choose one of the two items to excuse, and i would choose the GRE scores. sophomore year really isnt the most important year, and the GRE excuse would be able to quickly elaborate upon. im thinking something like "i know my GRE scores are not up to snuff, im not satisfied with them either, i took them under unsualy circumstances, etc."

good luck!

[Ziz]

thats tough. while i understand your desire to explain these two events, it definitely could end up sounding like excuses.

i would say, choose one of the two items to excuse, and i would choose the GRE scores. sophomore year really isnt the most important year, and the GRE excuse would be able to quickly elaborate upon. im thinking something like "i know my GRE scores are not up to snuff, im not satisfied with them either, i took them under unsualy circumstances, etc."

good luck!

Thanks for your advice . That was kind of my intuition about it too. The GRE scores are still pretty good - I was just being a perfectionist about them and was annoyed that I didn't do as well as my practice tests (before the accident) said I should!