SOP critique (Education/Psychology)

[caprice]

 

Hi guys, I am applying to PhD programs in psychometrics/educational measurement and below is the draft of my SOP. Any comment on its content/structure would be greatly appreciated. Since I am not an English native speaker, I also hope someone could fix my grammar. Thank you so much!

 

I am applying to XXX University for admission to M.S/Ph.D. in Educational Research Methodology (ERM) program. I am interested in studying the development and applications of psychometric methods such as item response theory and diagnostic classification models. I hope to learn and research the statistical methods used to analyze educational assessment data. By improving them, I aspire to improve the efficiency, validity and informativeness of assessments. My long-term career goal is to be a psychometrician in the testing industry. Obtaining a Ph.D. degree is the first step toward realizing my ambition.

 

My undergraduate education in ABC University has given me exposure to various facets of psychology. Within this field, I find the topics in item analysis, such as correction for guessing and the calculation of item discriminability, which I learned in my Psychology Testing course most appealing to me. As part of a course project, my groupmates and I used SPSS to perform reliability and validity analysis as well as exploratory factor analysis on a personality test we created. I was so fascinated when I learned factor analysis could uncover the underlying relationships between the test items without knowing their content. My keen interest in quantitative techniques led to an A- grade in this course. However, the undergraduate curriculum only dabbles in the most basic concepts of classical test theory. I wish to acquire more in-depth knowledge in psychometrics such as item response theory in a graduate setting.

 

To better prepare for the rigorous graduate study, I undertook substantial amount of quantitative and programming coursework. I strengthened my mathematics and statistics knowledge by obtaining a minor in statistics along with choosing linear algebra and calculus as my electives. I familiarized myself with R programming as well from an online course by Johns Hopkins University on coursera.org. I also gained practical programming experiences with general-purpose languages including C++ and Python by taking courses from the engineering department. In a big data analysis course, I wrote an algorithm in Python to cluster handwritten digits. I believe my solid quantitative and programming background will be very helpful in understanding the content covered in a graduate program and getting ready to conduct my own research as soon as possible.

In addition to academic preparation, I actively pursued research experience that allows me to utilize my statistics knowledge. After completing my undergraduate study, I started working under the supervision of Dr. XXX from the School of Public Health at the YYY University on projects evaluating medical students’ learning experience. In one of the ongoing projects, we are assessing the effectiveness of using an online learning platform for consolidating students’ knowledge on basic epidemiology and medical statistics. I am in charge of developing the teaching materials in the platform, which helps me brush up my knowledge with basic statistics and research methodology. I also assist in writing the Institutional Review Board proposal, and preparing questionnaires about students’ demographics and study habits. Our next step will be to analyze students’ usage activities of the website, which would be a valuable data analysis experience for me. In another project, we evaluated the use of online assessments as an in-class activity based on course evaluation data, students’ assessment scores, and tutors’ feedback. We presented a poster in ZZZ Conference.

 

I have carefully researched graduate programs available to me and I have found XXX University’s ERM program has exactly what I am looking for in a graduate program. To begin with, it has the most comprehensive course selection in educational measurement. Few other programs offer courses in language testing and computer-based testing, for example. Besides, XXX University has a relatively large number of faculties working in educational measurement. I am interested in Dr. XXX’s and Dr XXX’s work on diagnostic classification models, and Dr. XXX’s work on computerized adaptive testing. Being a graduate student at XXX University will provide me with extensive research experience by participating in their research projects. Lastly, the field projects provided by XXX University’s Office of Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Services will offer me practical experience in designing and analyzing assessments, which is also crucial to the attainment of my career goal as a psychometrician.

 

In short, the ERM program at XXX University is an ideal fit for me. I believe my academic background and experiences to date have prepared me to pursue a demanding graduate program. I look forward to the opportunity to pursue my passion and continue to learn at XXX University.

[Accumulated_Bambi]

By no means am I an authority on SOPs, but fwiw here are my thoughts...

Overall, I think this is fairly good. I come away with a clear understanding of how you've prepared for continuing your study and why XXX university is a good fit. The writing feels efficient and flows smoothly between points with a few exceptions:

6 hours ago, caprice said:

I hope to learn and research the statistical methods used to analyze educational assessment data. By improving them, I aspire to improve the efficiency, validity and informativeness of assessments.

Maybe replace "them" with a more direct reference to what you want to improve. I know you just mentioned it in the previous sentence, but "them" just seems a little too informal and vague. Perhaps it's because I am completely unfamiliar with your field/methodology, but is "informativeness" a term one finds in the literature on educational assessment methodology?

6 hours ago, caprice said:

My keen interest in quantitative techniques led to an A- grade in this course.

I don't think this sentence is necessary. If they are curious about your grade they can see your transcript.

Lastly, the the fourth paragraph ends rather abruptly. Consider adding a sentence which concludes the paragraph and ties it back to its raison d'etre, so to speak. Or make a more smooth connection to the following paragraph.

Thanks for sharing! Good luck!

[caprice]

On 11/16/2016 at 9:32 PM, printerdrop said:

By no means am I an authority on SOPs, but fwiw here are my thoughts...

Overall, I think this is fairly good. I come away with a clear understanding of how you've prepared for continuing your study and why XXX university is a good fit. The writing feels efficient and flows smoothly between points with a few exceptions:

Maybe replace "them" with a more direct reference to what you want to improve. I know you just mentioned it in the previous sentence, but "them" just seems a little too informal and vague. Perhaps it's because I am completely unfamiliar with your field/methodology, but is "informativeness" a term one finds in the literature on educational assessment methodology?

I don't think this sentence is necessary. If they are curious about your grade they can see your transcript.

Lastly, the the fourth paragraph ends rather abruptly. Consider adding a sentence which concludes the paragraph and ties it back to its raison d'etre, so to speak. Or make a more smooth connection to the following paragraph.

Thanks for sharing! Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback! I will continue to work on it.