I want to put you on a plate and SOP you up with a biscuit.

[othersunknown]

This is a question about the tone and candor of your SOP. Please include your program in with your response

Comments

[drenilop]

More business-like and candid, more on my interests. I had a personal anectdote at the beginning and every one of my reviewers told me to take it off, that grad school apps are not undergrad admissions essays.

[rocza]

Which is actually the opposite of what I was told, just for fun and confusion. ;) I wove my personal story through-out my SOP, switching fluidly between it and my academic interests and goals. I focused very heavily on me - the story that got me here, my interests, my passions, why I do what I do and why I want to continue doing it

[melebeth]

When reading a statement of purpose I am looking for the following things:

1) Ability to clearly express yourself in writing.
2) Some sense of who you are, and whether you have an inquiring mind
3) Why you want to get this degree, so that I can determine whether it's actually the right choice for you to obtain your career goals.

Although the third is the most important, the first two usually leave more of an impression. And I'd say err on the side of buisiness like. A friendly tone is good, but it shouldn't read like e-mail

[mrfishes]

. . . i was wondering what SOP stood for. . .

[hkmercredi]

I just wrote about a dozen drafts and then edited each one for each school soooo, this is all still fairly fresh

[kayerosie]

what is a sop?

[relena_wolf]

Statement of Purpose, aka Personal Statement, aka Whatever the individual Graduate School wants to call the essay wherein they have people right about themselves and their goals.

[kayerosie]

I'm slow at picking up the cool lingo. thanks!

[melvillean]

Also it's Standard Operation Procdure, which is how I read it at first before realizing it was a Statment of Purpose.

[rabswom]

Your statement of purpose should be tailored to the schools that you're applying to -- why do you want to go to *that* particular school? Who do you want to work with? What kind of resources do they have that will help you in your research?

It would be helpful to know what kind of program *you're* applying to. My advice tends to be for PhDs in the Humanities and/or Social Sciences.

I would also say that your statement needs to express what kinds of research questions you're interested in and why. Nothing so specific and "I Want To Do My Dissertation on X." For me, in History, that translated into something more along the lines of the themes that I was interested in exploring and a generally specific time period and place.