<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm writing my Statement of Purpose for Grad School. Thing is, its going too long. It is close to 8000 characters in some cases to 6500 in others, around two to two and a half pages.</p>
<p>Also, I'm writing a lot about my family, about the hard work they've put into my studies with me! Is that kind of naive to put in an SOP??</p>
<p>It’s not an undergraduate essay, you know. Keep it simple.</p>
<p>Talk in terms of words, not characters. Makes it easier to figure out the length.</p>
<p>Ohh, its close to around 1300 words. 1100 words in terms of the smaller ones.</p>
<p>I always have problems understanding: SHould I talk about the course over the college or the college over the course.</p>
<p>Actually, where I’m from we don’t have anything like undergrad essays or SOP’s. I’d appreciate it if someone could help me out. </p>
<p>I’ve heard that longer SOP’s are often chucked away. Is there any verity to that?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wait…WHAT?!?</p>
<p>lol…</p>
<p>Actually, I always get into this problem… I expatiate too much about the college I’m going for such as the work going on there and talk less about the course…my area of study or vice versa. How should it perfectly be? Or is it ok?</p>
<p>Words from an actual grad school admissions officer in a top 10 university I had a meeting with:</p>
<p>Personal Statement should be NO LONGER than 1.5 pages. WE WANT 1 page or less. </p>
<p>Anything like 2 pages shows that the applicant cannot express his/her interests in a concise fashion, which is a novice problem that should have been fixed in high school.</p>
<p>so in the words of this straightforward adm officer, make it very concise and straight to the point. use words and sentences that are powerful. make sure each sentence in your statement has heavy power.</p>
<p>don’t ramble too long about your family, emotions, or personal matters. thats for undergraduate statements. grad schools couldn’t give half a f^#k about your emotions. they simply want competent intellects who can perform in grad school and become an asset to both society and the department you will be studying in at the school. they couldn’t care less about hardships, family, etc. harsh, but welcome to reality :D</p>
<p>hit these topics concisely in your statement:
1.) Who you are very briefly
2.) Why you want to pursue grad school
3.) What you plan on doing with a graduate degree</p>
<p>That’s it. No more and no less. Make it a page long for your own sake.</p>
<p>^ ymmv.</p>
<p>No, it’s not YMMV on this one. Period. Graduate statements of interest should not be longer than 2 pages; 1.5 pages is better; 1 page is even better. You should not be talking about your family. I can’t think of a single valid reason to discuss your family in a graduate statement of purpose for an application. Certainly not about the “hard work they’ve put into your studies.” Graduate schools want to hear about the hard work YOU’VE put in. In many cases you may have to move far away from your family; they don’t want to wonder whether you are going to struggle to work if they’re not around.</p>
<p>Those three topics Bassman listed are pretty much the only thing adcoms want to see in an SoP.</p>
<p>Think about it this way: an SoP is like an academic cover letter for a position in the grad school. If you were trying to get a job, would you talk about your family in the limited space you are allowed in a cover letter?</p>
<p>bassmaster says; </p>
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<p>You say;</p>
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<p>Oh so 2 pages is okay? Seems to me that you are contradicting yourself by trying to disagree with me. </p>
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<p>I can. In some applications there is a 2nd essay called a “Personal History Statement” that ask applicants to discuss personal, familial, etc reasons for graduate school. </p>
<p>Like I said, YMMV. :-P</p>
<p>I’m not saying Byrtis is doing it right (because he isn’t), but if the segue to your statement happens to be about your family, then so be it, as that may cover the “motivation” part of your statement. Other than covering everything listed in the instructions, there is no exact formula. </p>
<p>The key is to write what you are comfortable saying. I wouldn’t cut anything out you feel is important to explaining yourself just b/c a few tools told you so on college confidential.</p>
<p>There are directions on the online application form. Follow them.</p>
<p>
Each of my personal statements came out about 2 single-spaced pages in length, and I was accepted everywhere I applied. Several professors singled out my strong SOP as a primary reason they were interested in my application. While I would not go over 2 pages, I think anything up to that point is okay as long as it’s relevant.</p>
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You need to discuss both. To edit Bassmaster’s list a little, I would say your SOP should look something like this:</p>
<p>(1) Brief academic and research history to date (i.e. how your research interests developed)
(2) What your research interests are
(3) Why you want to attend graduate school and what you hope to get out of it
(4) Why you want to attend that particular university and program</p>
<p>For example, say you want to apply to the marine biology program at U Rhode Island. You would first briefly discuss your coursework and research background in marine biology, including how your research interests developed over time (e.g. you spent a summer at Cornell’s Shoals marine lab, where you collected beach samples and became interested in the intertidal zone). Then you’d discuss what you want to research now (e.g. intertidal ecology and the impact of sexual selection on feeding strategies in hermit crabs). You could then talk about why you want to go to graduate school in marine biology (e.g. you want to become a marine scientist and teach college, which requires a PhD) and why you want to do it at URI (e.g. they have an expert on hermit crabs, they have research projects relating to your interests, etc.).</p>
<p>@denizen Come on now. No need to call people tools, even if it was meant as a light-hearted remark. While you often make important points, your defenses seem to go up when admission factors are described as preferable and they don’t match your own. Let’s take a breath. Everyone in the middle of this process right now has their own share of insecurities, let’s try to be productive.</p>
<p>My main SoP is roughly 1.5-2 pages at the moment. While your paper might not be thrown in the trash and set alight for being 1.65 pages instead of 1.5, the point that you should be as concise as possible is a valid one. Setting goals for a specific length may help. If you’re at 1300 words, that is almost certainly spilling on to a third page and probably not ideal.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t believe my statement would be as strong if cut down to one page. I’ve got one version of it in the works with a 3000 <em>character</em> limit, which works out to a bit less than a page. Perhaps it’s the way I’ve chosen to format it. I feel that covering the research I did in college and post-college as well as future intentions doesn’t condense down well into a page. But the process has certainly shown me ways to cut out some of the unnecessary bulk. The result, hopefully, will be a more concise SoP for schools with 1000 word limits, even if they aren’t cut down to 1 page.</p>
<p>My current SOP is clocking in at less than 600 words and just about 1 page. I basically talked about how I want to get into my field of choice, what I’ve done so far, what I want to do, and how the particular university will help me.</p>
<p>Hey…Man I have to say you guys here give some of the best damn advice around! Thank you… Ok I’m going out on a limb here. This is my current status of the SOP…the 1300 word one. Its for Stanford and they have an 8000 character limit which it is within. I’m basically talking about the following things in paragraphs:</p>
<ol>
<li>How much getting here means to me. Im talking about a few of the events mostly familial that happened in my life n how CS and Stanford still kept on being paramount for me. (231 words)
2.School/ High School work. (121 words)</li>
<li>How I worked concurrently with college on my startup (148 words)</li>
<li>Internship and Research Work (242 words)</li>
<li>Academic and Extra Curricular Experiences (178 words)</li>
<li>An social service event that led to me choosing my spec and what have I obtained from the various professors at the college n my research goal(250 words)</li>
<li>What I mean to get from the university. Theres a paragraph about “The probability of existence” :P…(165 words)</li>
</ol>
<p>Well, any clue where I should be cutting down. That’s pretty much the gist. I have apretty full profile with internships…jobs…independent website work…social service, competitions and my academics. What all should really come inside my SOP.</p>
<p>I understand I’m going out on a limb asking such a question. But please do comment. I really have very few good reviewers of my SOP here and your words mean a lot…!</p>
<p>Why would university ad comms care about what you did in school?</p>
<p>Ahh…it’s just one line on how I got my first computer… How well i did in school. Thats it. I had Computer Science as an elective subject in my junior college (thats high school)…u think i should remove that paragraph altogether?</p>
<p>I had CS in high school as well (ICSE, god bless it). I haven’t mentioned that because it’s extraneous. Your choice though.</p>
<p>ahh thanks ill try n take that into account! Wish someone could help edit my SOP thoh. Is that allowed here?</p>
<p>Hmm…since I’m here, maybe someone can evaluate my profile. I’ve asked this before, but my profile has changed a bit.</p>
<p>1490 gre 690v 800q 5.5awa
115 toefl
65.14% acads
2.5 years work ex as a software in my friends startup
3-odd years affiliation with a local social service group
1 internship in a big company here
website credits on 11 sites
6 publications…1 published…3 submitted all in peer reviewed journals. N 2 in IEEE conferences
College quizzing captain…lots of extra currics…magazine writer etc.</p>
<p>Im applying to…Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC LA, UC San Diego, UT Austin, UPenn, GATech, UWiscMadison, UNC Chapel Hill, Virginia Tech, Stony Brook and one more…yet undecided.</p>
<p>I have like a week till I finalize my work and about 2 days to complete my SOP’s… Anyone can assay my chances here? And tell me how on earth do I put all this into a 2 page essay?</p>