Writing about non-academic activities in statement of purpose

[tree_fiddy]

Hi eeryone,

I am applying for PhD programs in chemical engineering for Fall 2017.  I haven't been able to find much info on this, and I'm hoping someone here might have some advice.  I think one of the more important aspects of my undergrad career was playing on the school lacrosse team while earning my degree.  I think it taught me about dedication and perseverance, and I think my ability to excel in academics while committing 25+ hours a week to the sport puts me a cut above others who solely focused on school work.  My question is: is this an appropriate thing to mention in my application, and what is the best way to convey the ways that I think my lacrosse experience will serve me in graduate school?

[Egnomic]

Almost no one will care and it will just take unnecessary space (based on what professors have told me). A personal statement is a research statement, talk research (and teaching if you have experience) and nothing else.

[TakeruK]

My advice also comes from professors and it's a little different than Egnomic's advice. Because every committee, every person will have slightly different expectations and criteria, I don't like giving advice that is in the extremes.

Depending on the program, a personal statement/SOP does not have to be 100% pure research & teaching. However, like any other piece of writing you do, there should be clear and well defined goal(s). For a graduate school application, the personal statement/SOP main goal is for you to convey why you personally would be a good fit for the department and why this specific department should accept you. This usually looks like a discussion of your goals in graduate school, your research plans/interests and what resource that the department has which will help you reach these goals. For the personal statement/SOP, the goals should be academic and career focussed. So, write about those primarily.

The personal statement/SOP is an important part of your application. Especially for programs without interviews, it's one of two parts of your application where the school can evaluate you for your traits/"intangibles". The only other part is your letters of reference, but you have little control of that content. So, your statements are the only way you can control the qualitative part of your application. I know that at least in my field, more and more graduate schools are following studies that show evaluations that are the best at determining future success are those that include character traits and intangibles, not just quantitative aspects (like GREs, GPAs, etc.).

So, I think there is space for non-academic things. If the school asks for both a persona statement/SOP and another type of statement (sometimes a "personal history statement") then I would write the non-academic things in the second type of statement. However, many places only ask for one statement, in which case I would still include a few personal non-academic details in the SOP where appropriate. But remember that your personal statement/SOP has a set of goals and everything you write should advance that goal. So, don't just include personal details for the sake of including them or because you want them to "get to know you better". The non-academic things i might put into a SOP are things like: why you chose this school (if there are non-academic reasons as well as academic ones), information about things in your application that might raise questions (e.g. a year off from school) etc. I did a weird thing where I started grad school in Canada under the different Canadian system and then applied to US schools and started all over again. But I had good non-academic reasons to do that, so I wrote a couple of sentences about that, demonstrating that I am deliberate and purposeful.

However, in your particular case, I think you should rethink how you want to include your lacrosse team career in your SOP.  I know what you wrote here is likely just a draft/first thoughts, but writing that you think your lacrosse team experience puts you "a cut above others who solely focused on school work" is not going to help your application. In fact, I think writing something like that will hurt your application. A sentence like that sounds to me like you think those who didn't do extracurriculars are literally beneath you. This is not a character trait that graduate schools look for in their cohorts. Your team experience is a great thing and my advice would be: when writing about your positive traits, aim to show your strengths without putting others down. You don't need to put down your peers and colleagues who didn't play a sport in order to highlight your own strengths. 

When you write about your lacrosse team experience, think about what the school may be looking for in their students (ask your profs if necessary) and write 1 or 2 sentences about your lacrosse career that demonstrates this. If I was evaluating students, here are some traits that a lacrosse player might demonstrate that I think would help make them a good graduate student: 1) being a team player, 2) leadership experience/ability, 3) commitment to practice/self-improvement, 4) determination/"grit"/ability to persevere in hard times. Just some thoughts on how you may want to structure your experience in the SOP. Of course, also consider what else you are writing in your SOP---if you are already demonstrating some of these traits in the other stuff you write about, pick the ones that your lacrosse experience can show that your other experiences cannot.