I’m literally using your website as a general guideline to re-write my SOP. It’s kinda weird that after finishing I noticed that there’s barely any mention of co/extra-curriculars? Is mentioning them in the Resume sufficient? People tend to lean towards including them into the SOP; is that not advised?
A very good question, and something I attempted to touch on toward the end of the article, but perhaps didn’t explain fully.
Extracurriculars should only be mentioned insofar as they’re 100% relevant to the narrative, the journey, the forward thrust of your ambitions. If you’re writing an SOP about education policy, then it wouldn’t make much sense to discuss a coding camp you completed last summer, unless, for example, your personal goal is to found a startup that teaches programming to at-risk youth.
What’s important about these activities is HOW THEY HELPED YOU EVOLVE. If an activity didn’t change your opinion about something, didn’t somehow slightly alter the course of your journey, then it’s irrelevant TO THE ESSAY. It’s not irrelevant TO YOU, but it is irrelevant TO THE ESSAY. That’s why these activities are stuffed into the CV, a document expressly intended to chronicle your achievements without context.
Remember, an SOP is NOT an info dump. It’s your STORY.
The real issue with extracurriculars and all the other achievements listed in your CV is that MOST applicants (STEM applicants especially) feel compelled to explain in painstaking detail all the minutia of their accomplishments. They feel that if they don’t spend a whole page explaining the details of their research, for example, the reader might not believe that they were doing real work. But that’s not true. If you’re applying for a machine learning program, for example, and you mention that it was electrifying conducting research on pseudo-random number generators with Professor So and So, you don’t need to then explain what a pseudo-random number generator is. Because the important detail is that IT WAS ELECTRIFYING FOR YOU. If two CompSci professors were discussing this among themselves, then they wouldn’t explain to each other what pseudo-random number generators are, because they already know. If one of them got twitchy and started explaining all the details, then the other professor would think: “What’s wrong with this guy? He thinks I don’t know? He sounds like an amateur. Has he ever actually met a researcher before?” But if the guy just said “It was so electrifying working on pseudo-random number generators!” Then the other professor will say: “Dude! I know, right?! That stuff blew my mind!” Skimping on the details makes the reader subconsciously assume that you’re already part of the same clique.
For example. I’m a writing guy with an MFA. If a student told me she spent a summer at the Iowa Writers Workshop, she also needs to tell me WHY I SHOULD CARE. Did it prompt her to change her focus from poetry to fiction? Did it solidify her desire to become a full-time science fiction author, when before she wasn’t quite certain? Dozens of students enroll in the workshop each year, so I don’t need to her to tell me why students pursue this activity in general. I need to know why it’s relevant to her, today, in her ambition to become an author. I know need to know what she did with that opportunity, how she took it and used it and became something greater. Graduate departments aren’t looking for every person who’s ever taken an internship or done volunteer work. Because everyone does that. They’re looking for people who’ve pursued opportunities and become a better, smarter, more motivated person because of it. That’s what convinces them to allow unique students into their very private clique.
TLDR; An essay/SOP is a story. It’s not an info dump. CVs and resumes ARE info dumps. Use them accordingly. Confusing the two only shows the reader that you’re NOT actually ready to be in the graduate school clique where everyone has the same accomplishments.
Amazing advice as usual! Thanks a lot for painstakingly writing this down. I have literally cut down my SOP from about 1700 words to ~810 now. It’s just that my previous bad choices are so ingrained in me that I feel like I’m leaving something out.
The real issue with extracurriculars and all the other achievements listed in your CV is that MOST applicants (STEM applicants especially) feel compelled to explain in painstaking detail all the minutia of their accomplishments.
That was exactly my issue. I am a STEM student and I literally paraphrased a lot of technical stuff from my CV.
Thanks a lot for your advice and that great article! My SOP reads much better now (at least better than before). I’d be glad to send it over if you’d like!
Another question, how much of the advice do you generally change for Master’s applicants, especially when there’s slightly less research involved compared to PHd?
It’s my pleasure! I’m thrilled you’re finding this all helpful. Please do feel free to send me your draft in a PM.
Another question, how much of the advice do you generally change for Master’s applicants, especially when there’s slightly less research involved compared to PHd?
Difficult to say, because it depends almost entirely on the academic field and the unique aspects of individual graduate programs, but the answer is probably as simple as “not much.” The structure is still exactly the same. It’s more an issue of Masters’ SOPs often having lower word limits, and thus the narrative has to be as tight as possible.
The one key point to remember, the master cue, if you will, is that in all SOPs, whether for grad school or PhD, every single detail in the essay will point directly, like a giant blazing neon arrow, toward the belief that YOU ARE 100% QUALIFIED TO OVERWHELMINGLY SUCCEED IN THIS UNIQUE PROGRAM. Nothing should be mentioned if it doesn’t provide a clear point of evidence that this claim is true.
If a point feels vague, then it’s either not helping you prove your claim (and thus should be deleted), or you haven’t yet figured out for yourself why it’s relevant.
One thing to remember is that the nature of the graduate program dictates which aspects of your past are relevant to your candidacy. If it’s an interdisciplinary data science program which admits students from all kinds of majors, is mostly classroom-based for the first year, and then consists of a giant group capstone project in the second year, then “research” might be completely irrelevant. If, however, your past “research” involved a team of 8 researchers, then it’s probably a great point of evidence that you’re capable of succeeding in high-pressure group work (like a capstone project). Being a manager in a data analytics ecommerce marketing firm would provide the same point of evidence. So would working in a Wall Street boiler room while taking Coursera courses in data science.
So, really, the method is always the same. It’s just making sure that all points of evidence are clear and tight, and that we’re choosing the most high-impact evidence to include within the narrative arc and fit the word limit.
Make sense?