<p>This is my first time posting on this forum, and I hope someone here can help me.</p>
<p>I have been slaving over my admissions essays for months now. Part of my problem is that I know very few people that have attended Graduate school recently. For the most part I am lacking a well-informed editor.</p>
<p>I am applying to the UC Davis Hydrologic Sciences graduate group for a MS. I have been in contact with faculty, taken the GRE, and basically done everything I need to but get these essays DONE!!!!</p>
<p>For people not familiar with the UC grad applications they have 2 required essays: Statement of Purpose, and Personal History Statement. They also have sections for previous research experience to be listed, which is why I don't go into research in too much detail on the SoP.</p>
<p>My SoP is on draft 4, and I am looking to have it submission ready by the end of the week. My personal history statement has been drafted, and I need A LOT of help with this one.</p>
<p>Well, try not to rip me up too bad. The following is my Statement of Purpose.</p>
<p>PROMPT:
Please describe your motivation, academic prep, and aptitude for graduate study at UC Davis. You should describe your academic plans and research interests, your specialization within your academic field, your research experience and your career goals.</p>
<p>Thank you in advance for any advice you can provide.</p>
<p>Ok since no one has given any input yet i’ll throw out some specific questions.</p>
<p>On the personal history statement (not the essay in the seed post):
Is addressing the prompt directly and completely more important than giving a brief to the point response on one aspect of the prompt. My instinct is that with an utter lack of “diversity” in the context of this essay prompt I should probably keep it on the short side. </p>
<p>On the essay above:
If the information specific enough?</p>
<p>Does the wording seem whimsical or just too broad? I have a tendency to fluff when I cant figure out a good transition.</p>
<p>How is the structure of the essay? Is it clear how information is organized?</p>
<p>Okay, here are my two cents. Granted, I glanced over the essay. Sorry, but it’s long and has lots of words. haha.</p>
<p>For the personal history statement, you should answer the prompt directly and use most, if not all of the word count.</p>
<p>The information was specific to me. Only you can deem whether or not it’s specific enough.</p>
<p>The wording sounds fine to me.</p>
<p>I would recommend using the prompt as the method for which you organize your essay. I didn’t check if you did that because frankly, I don’t feel like it.</p>
<p>I would add a little more substance to your research at TERC at how it applies to what you want to study while in graduate school. From what I can glean, you emphasize that you want to work at Lake Tahoe. Does UC Davis do that? What if there’s no faculty that study the project you’re currently working on? I’d recommend a backup plan or something more related to a specific aspect of hydrologic science versus a specific location you want to study.</p>
<p>The last paragraph you can either cut entirely or trim the extrinsic parts/fluff.</p>
<p>UC Davis runs TERC (you might have missed it, but it’s UC Davis TERC). All the staff and researchers there are UC Davis employees, and 3 prominent faculty (I guess 2 now, one of them retired) at the graduate group I am applying to are the head researchers and director. So I already garner a lot of support among them.</p>
<p>As for your other suggestions, you make several good points. Definitely very helpful.</p>
<p>Thank you for taking the time to give me some helpful tips.</p>
<p>To be brutal but sincere, the first part of your response sounded generic. I would imagine that the vast majority of other applicants could say almost the exact same thing. </p>
<p>When you say, “My willingness to take on this challenge and my overall performance in that semester is evidence of my aptitude for graduate study,” you’re making a judgment for the reader. Present facts and allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusion.</p>
<p>It sounds like a resume without bullet points. If you have submitted your grades and CV already, then I would try to make it a little bit more narrative. To be fair, you have answered the prompt, which really does nothing to help guide you in terms of making this different to a CV. I think it’s very good, but also a very boring read. Sorry. I am not sure, however, that you could make it substantially more interesting. Perhaps just a little more narrative bringing it together? I think linking your experience to your motivation in each paragraph would help.</p>
<ol>
<li> The diversity thing.</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m the opposite. I have a lot of “diversity” but I don’t feel it’s relevant to who I am now. I don’t want to be a token or a statistic. I checked the answers for their anonymous census information questions, but my essay was about the opportunities I personally have had. I focused on one thing, my family, and the common thread laced through three generations (without mentioning race) that also highlighted diversity in the way people chose to use it, and then how that related to a decision I made that brought me to grad school. I don’t care if it didn’t answer the prompt. I had to write about something I was passionate about and that I felt honest sharing. I believe that diversity of thought is also valued so I hope they will appreciate it.</p>
<p>If I were you, I’d focus on an original interest or experience you have had which you can bring to the school. I don’t know about them but I personally would much rather be in school with a white guy who had a lot of original ideas and unique experiences, than a brown girl (which I am, LOL) who had a generic outlook and stereotypical background.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. It may be boring, but I’m sure you have read academic literature like journals and such - so in my opinion its pretty much par for the course. On a side note, I look back at my writing from high school and the only conclusion that I can make is that 4 years of college beat the creative writing style right out of me.</p>
<p>I have since submitted my application, but I really appreciate the input. I made a number of edits to the essay before i submitted it, just for the record.</p>
<p>On the personal history statement (the poster above gave some input I want to respond to):</p>
<p>What I ended up doing was drawing from some experiences in my life and linking them to my goals (with graduate school and beyond). I suppose that is more or less what the personal history statement prompt asks for. The prompt wants you to talk about experiences, opportunities, and challenges relating to your academic journey. I didn’t address the challenges so much as the opportunities and experiences. In most cases I think talking about social challenges, for example, would really weaken an essay like this - Think you made that point as well.</p>
<p>tmhyd, you are not writing for a science journal. This is a different type of writing. When I read science articles, they are inherently interesting because they are providing novel information. Your essay is about someone who is, no offense, remarkably similar to many other applicants. Still, the grammar and structure were fine so I’m sure it will go over well. They should realize that their prompt does not leave much room for anything of interest outside the CV!</p>
<p>I also focused on opportunities and not the challenges. They just sound like so much whining unless the writer really overcame something amazingly unique.</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to imply that it was scientific in any way. Just that doing that style of writing for a period of time tends to have a detrimental effect on ones creative writing abilities. Didn’t make that very clear I suppose.</p>
<p>Statement of Purpose: the prompt is in the OP</p>
<p>Personal History Statement: not really relevant to my point</p>
<p>Future Goals and Interests: fairly self explanatory</p>
<p>It seems like the statement of purpose combines aspects of both prior experience and future interests and goals, among other things. So unless you have a pretty large resume, it seems like these questions ask for information that is redundant or at least is contained in another part of the app.</p>
<p>I have already submitted applications, but I am curious what people think of this. Obviously it is not very desirable to be redundant, but being inconsistent with the rest of your application cant be much better.</p>
<p>Okay, mine was the same. I had to submit a CV as well as a Statement of Purpose. I felt that because my CV was quite detailed, I could focus on the parts of my CV that were most relevant to what I wanted to study in grad school, and go into more detail, linking them to my goal. (That’s what I meant by narrative, NOT creativity, per se.) I certainly hope the omission of this or that work or degree will be considered inconsistent. I think they will get the point that these were the salient parts of my studies and career that led me to choose my field of study.</p>
<p>However, your prompt is slightly more specific than the prompt I had in its requirement for you to describe your work history. So it would have been a lot more difficult to turn it into a more narrative, less detail-focused essay. I would have been irritated by that prompt.</p>
<p>I definitely felt that I did the same thing as you. My pervious experience section (analogous to a CV) covered experiences and projects in my UG (which frankly are related to my current field but don’t reflect my current interests) as well as other more relevant experiences.</p>
<p>In my statement of purpose I mention a project from my UG, but only in relation to the methodology I used, and my internship experience which is relevant to my field.</p>
<p>What really mixed me up is that the SoP asks you to describe “research interests” and “career goals” and there is a completely separate section for you to describe “interests” and “goals”. I don’t really understand that distinction.</p>
<p>I really just felt like writing, “See Statement of Purpose” in that section, because all of the info was there already and I didn’t see a need to articulate those more.</p>
<p>Or another strong response would have been, “nice house in the suburbs, 2 car garage, 2 perfect kids, a house in Hawaii” or something cliche like that.</p>
<p>Yeah, I do wonder how much time they have put into reviewing some of their questions. Mine was more distinct although there was considerable overlap. I just had to use my own discretion. As a non-traditional student I really felt it was worthwhile to take that risk and put a lot more into making the narrative of why I was going back to school seem logical and compelling.</p>
<p>For me, I think that my career goal is kind of supporting my overall goal. I have a mid-term goal to develop a key methodology in my field, but that supports my overall goal to provide a certain good for society in a certain way. However, the overall goal is kind of pedestrian. Luckily my family goal is more specific–since I have small kids I have decided that I need to have more flexibility in my career which means working at a different level. So that was further inspiration to get an additional qualification.</p>
<p>I think it’s unfair to ask younger students to talk in terms of life goals since you’d expect most students to have that part of their future kind of unplanned. There’s only so much planning you can do without a specific partner in mind, you know?!? On the other hand, I saw a winner for a scholarship:</p>