Thoughts on specific sentence in SOP

[Quantitative_Psychology]

Here is the first paragraph of my SOP (with identifying info removed). I bolded the sentence I'm concerned about.

"When I emerged from my undergraduate studies at [Undergraduate University], I knew I wanted to pursue a career in research. However, at that time, I was far less certain about the area of research I wanted to focus in. For this reason, I found it beneficial to take an intermediary step prior to attending a Ph.D. program. That’s why I chose to pursue a terminal master’s degree in [degree] at [Graduate School]. While at [Graduate School], I participated in a wide variety of research experiences. It was a culmination of these experiences that made me realize I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology and focus my research on [redacted]."

I was describing my SOP to one of my professors, and she said not to make it sound like I wasn't sure what I wanted to research. Instead, she suggested that I say I was picking between areas. However, I honestly had never heard of Quantitative Psychology until I got to graduate school. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I over thinking it or is she right? 

[hats]

I'm not sure about your professor's exact advice, but this is all too long. Couldn't you shorten all the relevant information to something like: After graduating from University, I was interested in psychology research. While exploring the field during my master's at Other University, I started to focus on Current Topic. (Topic switch to more about your proposed research.)

If you don't mind a play-by-play on your paragraph, I have more thoughts below:

6 hours ago, Quant_Psych_2018 said:

"When I emerged from my undergraduate studies at [Undergraduate University], I knew I wanted to pursue a career in research. However, at that time, I was far less certain about the area of research I wanted to focus in. For this reason, I found it beneficial to take an intermediary step prior to attending a Ph.D. program. That’s why I chose to pursue a terminal master’s degree in [degree] at [Graduate School]. While at [Graduate School], I participated in a wide variety of research experiences. It was a culmination of these experiences that made me realize I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology and focus my research on [redacted]."

First, regarding the bolded sections: narrate your thought process less. There's no need! You don't have to make any kind of evaluative comment on whether the master's degree was a positive or negative for you: describe the skills you've gained and let the reader exercise their own judgment. I think this answers the actual question you asked: you don't need the sentence you asked about, and you don't need to write the professor's sentence if it feels dishonest to your experience, either. Just skip that part. You got a master's. You learned skills. You now have a research topic you're proposing to graduate schools. That's really all they need to know; the process that led to those steps isn't really relevant.

Second, about the underlined parts: in my first paragraph, I totally cut out any discussion of your research experiences prior to your current project. I don't think that's wise, actually; mentioning what you learned from each of them is a better way to go. But don't do it like this, not in the way I've underlined! What "variety" did you have? Technically, "variety" doesn't mean that much. Were you in charge of something very trivial and mindless for every lab on campus, like some paperwork thing? I assume not, but to make sure your readers know what you mean, be more specific. Rather than saying "a variety," if you really have a lot, pick a couple to emphasize. In this project (that you are no longer pursuing), you became familiar with this computer program that will help you in your current research. In your next project (which you have also left behind), you used some quantitative techniques that you plan to use in part of your PhD work.

I hope that helps.

[TakeruK]

I agree with the great suggestions by @hats. I see many draft SOPs that narrate too much or uses too many unnecessary words or uses vague descriptions. Being concise is important and being clear is even more important! 

As for your professor's advice, I agree with them. I think it is better to say that you were interested in areas X or Y (or X, Y, and Z) or something like that instead of saying that you didn't know what you wanted to do. Similarly, later on, it's a little weird (to me) to read that these experiences "made you realise" you wanted to do something. It sounds a little passive and has the connotation that you didn't really know what you wanted to do.

For these types of essays, you need to reframe the narrative. A good story is that after your undergraduate work, you were interested in a few areas (name them) so you enrolled in your Masters programs and did X, Y, and Z to explore these interests. Now, you know that you are most interested in X and want to pursue a PhD in that field. 

@hats makes a good point that you don't want to spend too much time dwelling on the past. I half-agree with them here. Since you say this is your first paragraph, I do think that it's better to leave this information until later. I would start the initial paragraph directly speaking about the PhD program you want to join, not your past experience. So, a good first paragraph might be directly saying what you want to do in their PhD program and why the research topic interests you. In my opinion, I find research topics motivated by the field/literature much more convincing than personal interest/passion for the topic. For example, if I was writing a proposal for exoplanets (my area of work), I would write about how the study of planets around other stars can lead to better understand of our own planet and the ones in our solar system. I wouldn't motivate my interest because I was introduced to astronomy by some aunt at age 4, or from watching Carl Sagan on TV, or from Star Trek or whatever. I'm not saying that these motivations are not valid, I would just personally advise against that in the opening paragraph.

I do think there is a place for your Masters research experiences in your SOP though. At some point later, you might want to describe your previous experiences in detail to paint a picture of yourself as a qualified researcher. Your current paragraph shown here reads as a justification on why you took a Masters path first. If you feel the need to do this, that's fine, I'd say to follow the narrative I wrote above. However, note that you don't have to explain yourself. You can just discuss your Masters degree by describing all the great things you did and learned. Especially if you don't have space, I'd prioritize discussion of your qualifications due to your Masters rather than the reason you enrolled in a masters program.

Finally, an overall point. A story/narrative format is a popular (and pretty safe) choice for a SOP format. But just like history is written by the victors, you should write/tell your story from the perspective of your successes. Your SOP (and in the future, all other writing you do for academic competitions) is not a tell-all biography. It is a marketing tool. I think it is important to determine what you want your audience to take away from your essay and then cherry pick the parts of your life story that support these points. 

I think this is a tough thing to learn how to do. It's a fine line between giving yourself credit for your earned successes and not sounding like you are full of yourself. It's a fine line between dishonesty in your portrayal of your past and ensuring that your accomplishments are noticed. It gets easier with practice and experience and with advice from mentors like your professor that you showed the essay to. (I think their advice is a perfect example of framing your narrative in this manner).

[Sigaba]

7 hours ago, Quant_Psych_2018 said:

I was describing my SOP to one of my professors, and she said not to make it sound like I wasn't sure what I wanted to research. Instead, she suggested that I say I was picking between areas. However, I honestly had never heard of Quantitative Psychology until I got to graduate school. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I over thinking it or is she right? 

Asking strangers to help second guess a professor's guidance is an odd choice.

[TakeruK]

13 hours ago, Sigaba said:

Asking strangers to help second guess a professor's guidance is an odd choice.

Although I think the professor's guidance is spot on in this case, there are plenty of bad advice coming from professors out there. Some professors are just entirely out of touch with the current reality or assumes everyone has the same goals as they did. For example, I know some profs at R1 schools telling undergrad students in their first year that grades are useless and research is the only thing that matters. And while it might be true that your research experience matters a lot more than your GPA for grad school applications, it's extremely poor advice to give to a new college student who might not want to go into academia, for example.

When a professor knows your situation well and when you know the professor is looking out for you, then it makes sense to trust the professor's advice over other sources. But this is not always the case, and I think students should seek guidance from many sources, especially if they are second-guessing the professor's advice. I've heard of many cases where the student goes along with a bad situation because the professor did something unethical and they never thought to second-guess the prof. That it's just part of normal academia. But if they had spoken to their peers, they might have known that what was happening was actually abnormal!

I know that in this specific case, it does sound like the OP has a prof that is giving good advice. But I've seen you write this to several posts and I think it's important to point out that professors make mistakes and can give bad advice!

[Sigaba]

47 minutes ago, TakeruK said:

But I've seen you write this to several posts and I think it's important to point out that professors make mistakes and can give bad advice!

Your point regarding professors dispensing bad advice is fair enough.

However, I don't think that asking strangers who are unfamiliar with most of the particulars for second thoughts/guidance is a good way to vet for quality.

[Quantitative_Psychology]

Hmm I can certainly see your points @TakeruK. It hadn't occurred to me previously to start off talking about the school applying to first instead of concluding on that note. Perhaps some restructuring is in order and that would clear up the weirdness of my first paragraph. 

I would like to note, and perhaps I should have been clear in my initial post, that I received wildly conflicting advice from both my advisors on whether to address my initial interests prior to wanting to do quantitative. This was, in part, because I had been interested in doing clinical psychology, and I don't want to come off as a rejected clinical applicant. That's why I decided to ask some strangers. @Sigaba I can certainly appreciate your point about asking strangers being odd and to a large extent, I agree with you. It's just I've received so much conflicting advice on SOP from my two main advisors that I'm having trouble making any choices regarding it. 

Thanks for the advice on restructuring and making it more concise @hats. Although I do thoroughly describe my research experiences later on in the statement, I can see how this might not be a very good setup to do this. 

[hats]

@Quant_Psych_2018 I think it's generally fine to mention a previous research interest, specifically. "I just didn't know what I wanted to do" is a bad way to frame it, though. My usual advice would be to say, "I was interested (or perhaps say, tentatively interested) in pursuing clinical psychology, during which period I explored x, y, and z. Now I have come to be more interested in quantitative psychology, where I want to pursue topics a and b." The whole decision-making process is still omitted, but with more specificity on the 'before' and 'after' halves of the timeline. However, it often sounds like clinical psychology is this whole thing, to which general advice does not always apply, so I think it would be better to go back to your professors and rephrase a few things and ask again how they think you should play it. Can you ask them more specific questions about this problem? I see now why you wrote the paragraph in the first post the way you did, but I think you split the baby. You were trying to address it, following one professor's advice, but vaguely enough not to offend the other professor. Even though it's a controversial topic, it might be better to follow one professor's advice a bit more than the other—whichever you find more compelling, based on the content of their advice and their position to be giving it (e.g. track record of placing students in PhD programs)—rather than trying to split your approach exactly down the middle.