Statement of Purpose question

[ashny]

I am looking at a grad school which asks as one of the questions:

What are your plans for graduate study and your future career?

Now the second part  about plans for a future career is self explanatory,  but the first part 'what are your plans for graduate study' seems unclear. I mean if you I applying for a Masters program, what plan are you expected to have for your graduate study. I would think the university sets the plan for the Masters degree.

How should one interpret that?

[fuzzylogician]

What do you want to study during your degree? What questions interest you? Are there particular skills you'd like to pick up? Are there particular classes you'd like to take? Anything at a different department or school? If your studies may involve fieldwork or travel, do you have thoughts about that? This is a pretty standard question.

[ashny]

5 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

What do you want to study during your degree? What questions interest you? Are there particular skills you'd like to pick up? Are there particular classes you'd like to take? Anything at a different department or school? If your studies may involve fieldwork or travel, do you have thoughts about that? This is a pretty standard question.

Interesting, I did not know they have optional courses where you could choose what you want to study. As an immigrant here, I am not exactly familiar with the educational system here. I guess I need to check what options are offered at the university. Thanks for your help.

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[fuzzylogician]

A first step is to have some familiarity with each program you're applying to, and at the very least that requires knowing something about the structure of the program - what courses you have to take, what other requirements exist, what professors you might want to work with. You can't write a good SOP (and for that matter, choose schools that are a good fit for your needs) if you don't know at least that much. 

[ashny]

16 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

A first step is to have some familiarity with each program you're applying to, and at the very least that requires knowing something about the structure of the program - what courses you have to take, what other requirements exist, what professors you might want to work with. You can't write a good SOP (and for that matter, choose schools that are a good fit for your needs) if you don't know at least that much. 

Thanks. How would you know which professors you would want to work with? I'm assuming that would be based on the elective subjects you decide to choose?

[swil92]

Usually, you look at the professors' pages on the school website. You decide which professors you might be interested in working with, based off their research interests (for you, it might be something more applied - perhaps if they list a certain population that they specialize in working with?). Also, google search the professors you might be interested in working with and read recent articles they've published.