Nuances and Ingratiation in Statements of Purpose

[busybee]

As I am finalizing and specializing my statements of purpose for my particular schools, I have a couple of concerns regarding how to show myself as a good fit for the department without completely ingratiating myself. I'd love to hear the opinions and advice of this community, if people don't mind.

How do you maintain a good balance between outright sycophancy and candid, direct clarity? Is a nuanced approach--inserting terms used by my POIs, for instance, through my SoP and citing them--better than directly discussing their theories and how I wish to use them within my own work? I have done my best to avoid all praise, "Dr. X's theory on Y is insightful and brilliant anthropology," when discussing professors with whom I'd like to work (my current advisor told me that I am in no position to say this kind of stuff anyway). Or is it enough to identify professors with overlapping interests, as well as departmental and college resources, when discussing your fit with the university in your SoP? 

[rising_star]

Why would you go for anything other than candid, direct clarity? It doesn't make sense to do that ever. People want to see that you can write and convey your ideas clearly, so there's no reason not to show them that you an in your SOP. 

You really don't need to be including citations in your SOP. Identifying overlapping interests and articulating how the available resources will help you with your intended project is really what you need to do.

[Ajtz'ihb]

Agree. Be absolutely direct, which is not the same thing as being a sycophant. Consider the difference between:

"Professor X wrote the most amazing book about Y and since I love Y I think it would be super cool to work with her." That's bad.

and

"Professor X's work on Y has exercised a major influence on my own thinking about Y, and I would be very interested to take her course on the subject." Much better.

Basically, what you want to do is make it super clear to multiple faculty at every institution that you're at least a little bit familiar with their work and that you think you would benefit from working with them directly given your own interest in the same topics/approaches/etc.

When I applied to my present institution, I basically wrote a paragraph about each professor whose work I knew (even if I didn't know about them before applying) and talked about why, specifically, I thought I could benefit from taking courses or doing research with them.