For those who are about to begin or are in the middle of the often daunting and mystifying task of writing your Statement of Purpose for your application to graduate school, have I got some great news for you. Here are some crucial pieces of advice, tips, and secrets to accomplishing the feat of creating a strong Statement of Purpose. [Note that while the following advice may be used with the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences in mind, the overarching points are useful for many more fields.]
1) Some key definitions: The Statement of Purpose is frequently and misleadingly called a Personal Statement. To clear up an all-too-common misconception here, the graduate committee does not care one tiny iota as to whether you grew up on a hilltop in the middle of the Rocky Mountains where you where raised by a fundamentalist Brach Davidian who killed your uncle in front of you, thus scarring you for life. Nor do they care about whether you are a disabled lesbian Latina refugee. By “Personal” Statement, they only care about what you, “personally,” plan to research in graduate school; they care far less about the why, unless it is very succinct and directly related to your interests.
2) By “interests,” the committee is NOT looking for what you’re kind of, sort of interested in. For instance, it would not be wise to go on and on about how you are interested in “the media.” You have got to narrow your interests to something with a bit of nuance to it. What about the media interests you? Then, what about that interests you? When you can finally come up with something much more complex, like, “my interests lie in examining ways in which the media exploit the plight of orphans in war-torn regions,” you might have something.
3) Go further. This is where the “nuance” comes into play. Sure, it’s easy to point out how something big plays on something small, and how that is bad… but is there any way in which that same situation can be seen as good? What if your “interests lie in examining ways in which the media exploit the plight of orphans in war-torn regions in order to increase both ratings and awareness?” Now we’re talking.
4) Do not ever conclude in your interests by declaring how you will “show” or “prove” how one thing does something else. It’s much better to state that you plan to “explore,” “examine,” or do something more open-ended. Otherwise, it seems as though you have preconceived notions about your interests and outcomes.
5) Though it’s good to tailor your Statements to each graduate program for which you are applying, I highly recommend that you use a general template to start. Then, with each program, you can tinker with inserting a thing or two about a specific program or university. This method is great because it lets the graduate committee know that you understand some fundamentals about their department while simultaneously saving you a bunch of time and hassle.
6) Include some kudos about yourself and why you should be considered a serious candidate without including your entire CV. If, for example, you were the recipient of a particular scholarship or award that you feel has helped you prepare for graduate school, it might be good to mention that, as long as you do so briefly. If, by the way, you have also experienced something in your personal life that deeply shaped your research interests, and if you can relay the connection in a concise manner, this could work in your favor.
7) About grammar… PAY ATTENTION TO IT! Do not use conjunctions like you would in less formal writing (such as those I have used in this article). Do not merely rely on spell-check and grammar-check. Do yourself an enormous favor, and read your personal statement out loud… preferably to someone else.
8) Ask one of your professors whether they would be willing to look over your Statement of Purpose with you, and give them some advance notice.
9) Do not forget to include your NAME and contact information at the top!
10) Have a goal or “aim” and get to the point of this goal right away. Hit them hard with what it is you want to research. Well-defined interests–not fluff–will grab the serious attention of a graduate committee.
If you’re still sketchy, consider the following sample statement of purpose:
My aim as a graduate student in the [masters/doctoral] program in [type of program, e.g. sociology] at the XYZ University is to explore the myriad connections intersecting gender, religion, power, cultural interpretation, social psychology, and sexuality. There are three pivotal aspects to my research that I wish to focus on more particularly. First, I am interested in exploring how religion manifests at the macro-level in structures of power, such as government, law, and media. Second, I wish to focus on ways in which notions of gender, sexuality, and the body are not only created but also maintained by these structures. Third, my goal is to integrate these analyses relative to female survivors of abuse. Such foci require both macro- and micro-level approaches, using mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative research. Since the XYZ University is the only university offering [list university-specific characteristic here], the opportunity to study in such a program would provide the support I need to further research I have already begun.
As a [name of scholarship or award recipient], I conducted research exploring connections between fundamentalist religious ideologies and the regulation of women’s bodies and sexuality in contemporary society. [Here, you might want to mention a little about whatever research you have conducted, or papers you have written that are relevant to your research interests as a future graduate student].
My interests intersecting gender, religion, power, sexuality, culture, and the body arise from personal experiences. [Remember… only go this route if your experiences are acutely relevant to your research!] I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household and expected to marry before becoming sexually active. At the age of twenty, I married a man who subscribed to similarly restrictive religious beliefs. In the midst of working eighty-hour weeks and suffering various forms of abuse protected by the fundamentalisms of my husband’s family and church, I longed to return to a life of education. I continued working as a waitress for eight years as a means of putting myself through school [if you worked at all during school, this is the perfect time to mention it]. My experiences of my former marriage led me to acknowledge ways in which fundamentalist ideologies have influenced rejection, fear, and abuse in my life. While conducting the literature review for my senior thesis, it became apparent that the aforementioned experiences were not unique to my life.
However [here’s where the nuance comes into action], some fundamentalist circles propagate explicitly anti-violence movements, focusing on women’s and children’s rights to be free from physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse. Therefore, my goals are to understand and measure how female survivors of abuse are both positively and negatively affected by fundamentalist ideologies. Furthermore, I would like to explore the differences in ideologies, and analyze how multiple understandings of gender, sexuality, and the body are filtered into our culture through law, government, and media, affecting women at the micro-level.
[One last plug for the program you’re targeting goes here, at the end.] The [masters/doctoral] program in [type of program, e.g. sociology] at the XYZ University presents an environment whereby my research interests intersecting gender, sexuality, and culture can be further developed. The works of Drs. [here, you need to mention the last names of two or three professors in the program for which you are applying] would aid my own interests, as they also focus on social structures, culture, bodies, power relations, religion, and law. I look forward to working with these experts, learning from their research, and advancing the literature in the field of [type of program, e.g. sociology].
