<p>I’ve been told by several people that how you describe your previous research experience on your statement of purpose can really make or break your application. So that case, what exactly is the “right” way to go about doing it? Should an applicant:</p>
<li><p>Describe all the nitty gritty details and all the techniques he or she is familiar with</p></li>
<li><p>Give a general overview and focus on aspects of the research that were more interesting or novel</p></li>
</ol>
<p>or what? </p>
<p>What exactly are the admissions comms looking out for?</p>
<p>I only talked about 2 of my research experiences directly in my SOP, there is usually a place to upload a list of research experiences on the app. I talked about the basic findings and what I learned from doing the research and how it prepared me for graduate school. You don't have all that many words, so techniques aren't too important (ie I cloned x y and z and then did pcrs or whatever). I did give a general overview of the sorts of techniques I used (ie I used computational analysis). You will have plenty of time in interviews to get more into the detail about your specific research, the SOP is more about why you are ready to go to grad school, and to show that you have some idea of what you are getting yourself into.</p>
<p>I was under the impression that you shouldn't discuss your research beyond the fact the field, duration and impressions in the personal statement. The research experience part was where you discuss the aims, methods, results, implications etc of your research.</p>
<p>Personally, I think indicating WHY you did your research and the implications of your results are most important. And not in the "because I really like research" way, but more so in the "how does my research fit into the bigger picture/why would anyone care" way.</p>
<p>Showing that you understood what you were doing and why is more important then telling them what you know how to do.</p>
<p>I wouldn't focus on techniques in the SOP -- there's usually a space for a CV, or at least a space for supplemental materials, so you can put your technical abilities on your CV and send that.</p>
<p>I'd make the SOP focus more on the questions you were trying to answer with the research you did, as New_User suggests.</p>
<p>I don't know if this is helpful, but this is one of the research experience paragraphs from my SOP (all interesting details redacted, of course :)):
[quote]
Since completing my internship at xxxx, I have researched in xxxxx’s laboratory at MIT, working part-time during term and full-time during school vacations. The lab is primarily concerned with the protein composition of the postsynaptic density (PSD) of neurons; the research focus is identifying and characterizing the location, binding partners, and function of various PSD proteins. In my first project in the lab, I characterized the phenotype of a knockout mouse lacking xxxx, a scaffold protein which links many critical proteins in the PSD. I tested the mice using various behavior apparatuses, particularly the xxxxx, and found that the xxxxx knockouts learned faster than their wildtype littermates. I was also responsible for other aspects of this project, including xxxxx. The paper based on this project, on which I am a co-author, has been submitted to xxxxx; an abstract based on this work was presented at the xxxxx conference in November.
<p>Ok, so I have about 5 years of solid lab experience under my belt. But they were on 3 totally incongruous projects:</p>
<p>Undergrad years: Expression of heatshock proteins in zebrafish
Masters: discovering and charterizing a previously unknown protein in aphids
Work: National-defence related projects at a foreign national lab</p>
<p>Not at all...my undergrad and masters projects were completely different. The way I handled it was to start off the SOP stating that I started my research career at ___________ by working on _________. The undergrad experience was very brief and almost anecdotal. Since my masters was obviously more involved and relevant to my PhD program I spent more time on that, describing what I did and why (as I mentioned earlier and as Mollie said). If your work experience helped solidify your desire to start a PhD, explain that.</p>
<p>What I would do, since you have a good deal of experience, is to write the SOP in a way that shows your experience, shows you understood what you did, and most importantly shows how this breadth of knowledge helped you to narrow down what you wanted to devote the rest of your life to. Maybe that is because your work experience took you in a new direction that you fell in love with...maybe you enjoyed your masters, tried something new and realized it wasn't for you.</p>
<p>Say what you did, show you understood it, show that you are committed to your choice to start a PhD. In the last respect, I think 3 incongruous projects can be to your advantage if you put the right spin on it.</p>