You’re plugging away at your grad school applications, fixing up your CV, filling out the forms on the clunky af online portal. Close to the end of the application form, you click that “Next” button that shows up in a slightly different place on the page every time for some reason, and see the description of the Statement of Purpose section.

“This is the most important part of your application”

“The statement of purpose is the deciding factor in your acceptance”

“Prove to us why you deserve to grace the hallowed halls of our fine institution”

“Anything over 500 words will be printed out and burned as a sacrifice to our school mascot”

To think you were juuuuust starting to believe grad school applications weren’t that scary. If you’re anything like me, you dealt with the anxiety by starting a knitting project instead of getting into it immediately.

One bi-flag beanie later, though, I worked through the process of writing my statements of purpose—and learned a lot along the way. In this and the next two posts I lay out everything I learned through the process, including the feedback I got, the drafts, and most importantly: what succeeded and what failed.

Ask for Advice

Every university expects something slightly different from a statement of purpose – which makes the writing process that much harder. The best way to find out what’s expected is to ask someone about it directly. These are good people to reach out to:

• Professors you already know: Professors you worked with in undergrad can probably give you some tailored advice. When I asked three professors to be my recommenders, I asked them for advice on my application materials at the same time. I got helpful feedback on different drafts of my SOPs.
  
• Professors at the school you’re applying to: in general, faculty are happy to talk with prospective students. Reach out to people you specifically want to work with and whoever’s in charge of graduate admissions in the department. They have advice on what the department is actually looking for specifically in an SOP.
  
• Grad students at the school you’re applying to: sometimes the best person to ask is the person who had to write their own SOP in the last couple years. The department website usually has a page with bios on all of the current grad students and their emails. Don’t feel weird about messaging one of them and asking what their application materials were like! I reached out to someone who even let me read their SOP to see what a successful one looks like.
  

Are Personal Statements Personal?

This is one of those questions that every program has a slightly different answer to. That’s where asking people directly comes in handy. In general, though, this is what I got from everyone I talked to:

The statement of purpose should be less personal than the personal statement you wrote in your undergrad applications. One of the application forms I did said something like “we don’t want to hear about the time you discovered science in your backyard when you were 5.” At the same time, the statement is supposed to say impressive things about you as an individual.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that your grad school SOP talks about your professional experiences. If you need a personal sort of hook at the beginning, make it about an experience during undergrad or an internship. Of course, the best advice on how personal to make it will come from people in the specific department.

Structure of a Statement of Purpose

The structure of an SOP is nothing fancy. Just a basic intro, body, and conclusion, usually with a 1- or 2-page limit. One of my SOPs was limited to 500 words exactly. The statement will be specific to you, but this is the basic structure to follow.

1. Intro: interesting hook about your (professional) self. I personally think this is the hardest part, because you have to be interesting without being dramatic.
   
2. Body: elaborating on the intro. One of my SOPs I’m sharing had 4 body paragraphs, and one had 1. It depends on the space you have available and what you have to communicate! These things are good to include though, no matter how you chop it up.
   
   Research interests/undergrad experience. Go into some accomplishment, project, or experience from your undergrad that directly applies to the kind of stuff you want to do in grad school. Play up your importance in that one group project no one wanted to do.
   
   Professional experience. If you have experience between degrees that’s relevant to the program, make sure to add it. Internships, work, volunteering, etc. It’s okay if it’s a stretch, as long as you can make it connect! I even talked about working at a grocery store in one of mine. Maybe not the best choice. We don’t know.
   
   Intentions for grad school. The department will want to see that you’re really determined to get the degree and put it to use. Especially since grad programs often pay students with fellowships or TAships, they want to be sure that you’ll stick with it. This is also the chance to mention specific people you want to work with in the department. We’ll get to that more in the next posts.
   
3. Conclusion: Restate your reasons and motivation for getting a degree. Make it really clear why you think you and the program would be a good fit. The school doesn’t just want to know how it can benefit you; it wants to know how you’ll help it progress and make it look good. Just project all the confidence you don’t have (at least that’s what I had to do).

Where to go from here

These are the basics of a statement of purpose, from what I’ve gathered. If you want some specifics and details, check out the next two posts. In this one I share the 3 full drafts of my SOP for my application to UNC (spoiler alert: the one that got accepted!), including the feedback I got from a professor on each draft. In this one I share the one (and only) draft of my SOP for my application to UW, including the kind of advice I got from a grad student in the program. Hopefully you can learn from my embarrassing mistakes!