Intro for an SOP - Advice required

[lightsaberjedi]

Hey all,

I am planning to pursue my masters in Computer science. Applying for fall 2016. I'm in the process of writing my SOP. I am planning to have this as the intro to the SOP:

"It was three in the morning, and I could hear the frantic spinning of the exhaust fan inside my Macbook. It had been a few hours since I started working on the new authentication feature for my website and a tricky problem had been nagging me for a while. How hard could it be to restrict the Facebook oAuth authentication, to my list of friends alone? I did not want a stranger with a Facebook account accessing my private site. Thirty minutes and a few tweaks later, our wedding website was ready to be published. I was ecstatic. My elation about getting married was compounded by my accomplishment. It was then that I had an epiphany. It dawned upon me that my passion for software programming had proliferated tremendously. Thus, following a six-year stint in the software industry, I began my spadework on getting a higher degree in academia which would help me pursue my passion and embolden me to advance my career by gaining depth in the fields that interest me. "

I wanted to understand if this intro would be decent enough to keep the readers attention.

Some background : I have done my undergraduate in Electrical engineering. Have been working over 6 years in the software industry. Do not have any research paper submission till date. Although I did work on a few white papers in my company.

Thanks.

[brown_eyed_girl]

I can't speak to all fields so feel free to correct me if I'm off base here, but in the humanities this would not be an appropriate SOP because it's all about you and how much you like the field (as well as random personal info like your excitement about your wedding) that is basically irrelevant to whether or not you'll succeed in the program. It's assumed that everyone applying is excited about the field and has personal reasons for that, so you don't really need to go into them or the moment you realized grad school was right for you, etc. What you've written is not bad, but it's a personal, narrative essay intro that would be appropriate for a college admittance essay rather than a grad school research statement. In other words, your writing abilities are good, you're just misdirecting them.

Further, I've read a whole paragraph without getting any idea of what specifically you're interested in researching or why you are qualified. You have a short amount of space to convince an adcom that you are worth investing in, so make it count by keeping your SOP focused on need-to-know info. Keep it straightforward and professional. What do you hope to contribute to the field? Why are you qualified? Why is this school and this POI the right fit for you, and what do you bring to the table that others don't? Admissions committees are busy, so front-load the most relevant information and make it easy for them to see why you are a great applicant. 

And don't forget to have some of your former professors look over the SOP before you finalize your draft - they are the best resource since they know your field and can tell you what they look for when they review candidates. 

Good luck! 

[StyLeD]

If you are writing a personal anecdote, it needs to answer one of the questions every SOP prompt will ask (why this program? why not? what have i done to prepare? how will this degree help me in the future? what are your academic/intellectual interests?)

In my opinion, I don't think you necessarily have to change the entire essay - but you do need to narrow it and answer one of the questions from the prompt. This sentence, "It was then that I had an epiphany. It dawned upon me that my passion for software programming had proliferated tremendously," need to be at the forefront of your essay. Everything before that - working on your website, trying to create an authentication feature - is superfluous because it does not answer why or how you became interested in software programming.

Also, to be blunt, I find it hard to believe that completing an authentication feature for a website in 30 minutes is the right sort of "epiphany" that will floor the ad comm. In fact, some might argue that your passion for comp sci has been colored by the joy of your marriage.

[TakeruK]

I am in a different scientific field and I also do not think this is a good way to start a SOP. There is nothing wrong with the content of this paragraph---that is, you should not feel like you have to hide your personality, how much you like the field, or how excited you were about your wedding. However, as brown_eyed_girl points out, you want the main point of your SOP to be the "purpose" of you applying to this graduate program and you are not providing what the reader is looking for in this first paragraph!

In addition, the last part of the paragraph (being with "thus, following a six-year....") sounds very out of place. First you are writing a story about a personal moment then it abruptly jumps into standard "SOP-speak".

My suggestion would be to start with the point up front. Don't tell a story in the first paragraph. Instead, say exactly what you want to do. Answer the questions that brown_eyed_girl wrote in their second paragraph. What kind of research do you want to do? How do you want to do it? What are some big questions/themes that interest you? What are some methodologies that you want to try?

Then, you can tell them a bit more about yourself and your past experiences. As others have written on these forums recently, there are two common ways to do this. The first is fairly common in the sciences and you would present your experiences in a chronological order. This has the advantage of making the story clear in the reader's head, especially if you did other things besides high school --> undergrad --> applying to grad school. Also, I chose this method because I wanted to show how my interest and skills developed, as one experience led to the next. The downside is that this style can be a little boring and it risks you just repeating your CV in long form, which means you wasted the SOP space to tell something useful. Sometimes when people write chronologically, they just list basic details instead of telling the reader the story of their "purpose".

The other common way is to group your experiences into various themes and/or other statements you want to make. For example, someone in my field might want to discuss all of their experiences and interests in one particular methodology in one paragraph and then another complementary methodology in another paragraph. This method is great if you have several strong common themes to write about and if you have experiences that you want to highlight different aspects of. This might also be good for someone like you, who is applying outside of their original field of study. It would allow you to pick out the things in these other fields that are really suited for computer science and highlight them. The potential disadvantage is that if you are not careful, you can confuse the reader with what event happened when. For example, when discussing experience X in topic paragraph Y, it might not be clear if X is an experience during undergrad research, during your industry years, or something else. A reader with your CV can probably figure it out, but since you have some industry experience, it might be helpful to include a few words when describing your experiences that help the reader know approximately when in your life they happened.

Finally, if you really want to tell the story of your wedding website, I think it's perfectly fine to do so. I would remove some of the extra-flowery language because it sounds a little like you are trying to place much more importance on it than it would sound to a third party. I think this experience is also relevant because as you say, your degree was in EE and this demonstrates your own personal interest and some work on computer science. It's also okay to reveal a little bit of personality and yourself in the SOP. After all, you are a person and you want the committee to also "meet you". Sometimes, people take it too far and spend way too many words doing this though, and as StyleD said, it makes more sense to do this while also answering the SOP prompts.

I just don't want you or another reader to think that the takeaway is "Don't write about personal experiences in a SOP", because that's not true (in my opinion). We are defined by our personal experiences and when they are relevant to the "purpose" then we should certainly write about them. In my SOP, I wrote about my own marriage too as the reason why I did a MSc in Canada but now want to go to the US for a PhD (because if I had applied for a US PhD right away, my partner would not have yet been married to me and thus they would not have been able to move to the US with me, so we stayed in Canada until we got married). Although this is another topic, you can also save these stories for an interview, if your program does that. (For me, another reason to apply to California schools was because we preferred the west coast and California is closer to our hometown than Eastern Canada, but that wasn't relevant enough to include in SOPs, but I did say it in interviews).

That said, these are just generic tips and people have certainly been successful not following them at all. One person I know submitted a SOP with a bunch of photos of their undergrad experience to a hard sciences program and they got admitted. It's certainly riskier to take a non-standard approach though, so it's your call :)

[lightsaberjedi]

Hi All, Thanks a lot for the input :-) Appreciate the quick replies and blunt feedback as well. Will work on the intro.

[brown_eyed_girl]

I agree with all that TakeruK said, and I want to clarify that I don't mean not to include your personality - just also stay focused on what they are asking for and try to imbue your personality while staying on message. Personally, I structured my SOP rather uncreatively, but I think it's an effective organization for clarity and concision:

Intro: My opening paragraph outlined the subfield I was applying for, described my research interests, and proposed a potential dissertation topic, while making it clear that this was just an example of the type of project I was interested in to allow room for flexibility. This is where I stated excitement for my research and discussed its potential impact. 

Body: I outlined my qualifications and experience chronologically. I mentioned relevant coursework, language prep, grants/scholarships, honors programs, research experience during undergrad (senior thesis); then I discussed my work after graduation; I named professors who were particularly influential and who I worked with closely; I explained how each of these unique experiences shaped my approach to things. This is also where you can put a positive spin on anything that might look odd on your CV. My argument here was "I'm prepared to succeed in a doctoral program." 

Close: I discussed why each school was a great fit for me and my research (I.e. Access to amazing university resources, methodological fit, location close to outside research material, etc), who I hoped to work with in the dept specifically, and why X was the best school for my needs. 

This is admittedly not the most exciting format, but it did get me into a top program in my field, and I think is quite flexible for various fields. Good luck! 

 

 

[svent]

They read tons of SOPs. It's not supposed to be creative storywriting. It's a cover letter. No one wants to waste their time reading another silly story about computers in your life. It's also a pretty big waste of limited space on your end.

[TakeruK]

12 hours ago, brown_eyed_girl said:

I agree with all that TakeruK said, and I want to clarify that I don't mean not to include your personality - just also stay focused on what they are asking for and try to imbue your personality while staying on message. Personally, I structured my SOP rather uncreatively, but I think it's an effective organization for clarity and concision:

Intro: My opening paragraph outlined the subfield I was applying for, described my research interests, and proposed a potential dissertation topic, while making it clear that this was just an example of the type of project I was interested in to allow room for flexibility. This is where I stated excitement for my research and discussed its potential impact. 

Body: I outlined my qualifications and experience chronologically. I mentioned relevant coursework, language prep, grants/scholarships, honors programs, research experience during undergrad (senior thesis); then I discussed my work after graduation; I named professors who were particularly influential and who I worked with closely; I explained how each of these unique experiences shaped my approach to things. This is also where you can put a positive spin on anything that might look odd on your CV. My argument here was "I'm prepared to succeed in a doctoral program." 

Close: I discussed why each school was a great fit for me and my research (I.e. Access to amazing university resources, methodological fit, location close to outside research material, etc), who I hoped to work with in the dept specifically, and why X was the best school for my needs. 

This is admittedly not the most exciting format, but it did get me into a top program in my field, and I think is quite flexible for various fields. Good luck! 

This was also my approach. I even started with something that was a little bit cliche (but it was just 2-3 sentences). I kind of hate my own SOP but I also take solace in the fact that my own writing has improved a lot since 4 years ago! Definitely agree that you don't have to be interesting, but you also don't have to be boring  

1 hour ago, svent said:

They read tons of SOPs. It's not supposed to be creative storywriting. It's a cover letter. 

This is how my field views SOPs. It's just a cover letter to add a little bit of "flavour" to your application. For most applicants, this will just be the standard stuff and your SOP will have little impact on the admission decision. However, just like real jobs with cover letters, some applicants have some special cases where the rest of their "on paper" application does not really show how great they are. For these cases, then the SOP is worth a bit more time. 

Of course, this doesn't mean that one should slack off on their SOP. If you write poorly or otherwise stand out negatively, this is bad too! But unless you are in a case where the rest of the application materials doesn't allow you to show your true ability and experiences, the SOP is something that you just want to do okay on because the extra time to make it great won't help. (Well, on the other hand, if crafting fun and expressive SOPs bring you joy, then the extra time will have little cost so go for it!)

[MaytheSchwartzBeWithYou]

19 hours ago, brown_eyed_girl said:

I agree with all that TakeruK said, and I want to clarify that I don't mean not to include your personality - just also stay focused on what they are asking for and try to imbue your personality while staying on message. Personally, I structured my SOP rather uncreatively, but I think it's an effective organization for clarity and concision:

Intro: My opening paragraph outlined the subfield I was applying for, described my research interests, and proposed a potential dissertation topic, while making it clear that this was just an example of the type of project I was interested in to allow room for flexibility. This is where I stated excitement for my research and discussed its potential impact. 

Body: I outlined my qualifications and experience chronologically. I mentioned relevant coursework, language prep, grants/scholarships, honors programs, research experience during undergrad (senior thesis); then I discussed my work after graduation; I named professors who were particularly influential and who I worked with closely; I explained how each of these unique experiences shaped my approach to things. This is also where you can put a positive spin on anything that might look odd on your CV. My argument here was "I'm prepared to succeed in a doctoral program." 

Close: I discussed why each school was a great fit for me and my research (I.e. Access to amazing university resources, methodological fit, location close to outside research material, etc), who I hoped to work with in the dept specifically, and why X was the best school for my needs. 

This is admittedly not the most exciting format, but it did get me into a top program in my field, and I think is quite flexible for various fields. Good luck! 

 

 

Hey Brown_eyed,

As a fellow humanities scholar struggling with writing the opening paragraphs of my SoP, I'm getting very confused about the best way to do so, as I have read conflicting advice (all of which claims to be successful). Any advice on how to make an opening paragraph like yours stand out? 

Thanks!