Have you ever wondered why every graduate program, in every academic field, makes you write an application essay? Biology, Engineering, Medicine, Art—they all want to see how you write, even if you’ll NEVER write anything in your eventual career. Why? Because poor writing is a sign of poor thinking. It’s a litmus test. If you write poorly—if you make the same common SOP mistakes most applicants make—it makes it easier to reject you.
Listen, choosing a graduate school admissions class is hard. Hundreds of students have similar profiles, and admissions committees don’t have time to spend hours digging through sloppy essays to find a diamond in the rough. They only need one excuse to chuck your dreams into the wastebin.
Unfortunately, a HUGE percentage of applicants do the admissions committees’ jobs for them. They repeat the same common SOP mistakes, signaling to the reader that “I didn’t take this seriously!”
Luckily for you, these six mistakes aren’t difficult to avoid. Let’s look at these taboos and make sure your Dream School actually gets excited when they read your essay.
Contents
- Autobiography Essays
- Too Much “Story,” Not Enough “Thinking”
- Free Writing (No Structure)
- Not Tailoring Unique SOPs for Every School
- Sloppy Writing (that eats up your word count)
- Undeveloped Academic Goals
Common SOP Mistake #1: Autobiography Essays
It seems like every day I read a first draft, tear at my nonexistent hair, and scream at the heavens like Captain Ahab: “Arggg! Another autobiography essay!”
These SOPs are my arch nemeses.
The first paragraph always starts in childhood or undergrad. They describe how the author developed an interest in computers, or reading, or some other astoundingly general topic. They often say: “This is why I chose my major in ABC.”
In paragraph two, they describe undergrad classes. They list a few professors. They mention a few extracurricular activities like internships or hackathons where they “honed” their programming or “leadership” skills.
In paragraph three, we usually encounter a research project. And boy do we learn everything about this project. The author leaves no stone unturned. They tell us every menial detail. This project is always thematically related to their hopeful graduate degree, but the author never tells us how or why. They just give us the facts about what they did.
(Notice we’re over halfway through a story about the author’s education, but he still hasn’t mentioned anything about the university to which he’s applying.)
Around paragraph four, we may learn about more research projects, or move into career experiences. Each one gets their own paragraph, a factual account. Still, however, the author never tells us why we should care.
Only now, at the very end, does our autobiographer tack on a short paragraph saying:
“Now, at prestigious ABC University, I will benefit from world-famous resources and cutting-edge labs. I am fascinated by the work of Professor X and hope to study with him. Thank you for your consideration.”
This paragraph is usually a waste of time, because the reader has already fallen asleep.
What makes these SOPs so bad?
Remember, you’re writing a statement of purpose. The point isn’t what you did in college. It’s what you will do in graduate school. It’s not a prose CV, nor a description of your historical life’s journey—that’s what the Personal History/Diversity essays are for. Instead, the SOP is a bold declaration of your plans for the future.
So, if you choose to write an autobiography SOP, it signals a few things to the admissions reader:
- You aren’t really following instructions
- You haven’t researched the school at all
- You’re not thinking about the degree program’s goals for its students. You’re only thinking about yourself (and not very thoroughly).
- You don’t have any real goals. Your only goal is “to get into grad school.”
- You never took the time to look up successful SOPs or read the department’s recommendations.
How to avoid this common mistake?
Easy. Download my free SOP Starter Kits for Master’s and PhD applicants. Honestly, that’s all it takes.
Common SOP Mistake #2: Too Much Story, Not Enough Thinking
Hooks. Anecdotes. “Frame narratives” as I refer to them. The idea of starting your essay with a story seems to confuse a lot of people, especially PhDs who’d rather just get to the point.
And you know what? They’re not entirely wrong.
Though I advocate using timeless storytelling techniques in the structure of an SOP, I don’t at all advocate starting your essay with a 400-word tall tale that unveils the shimmering interior of your soul.
We have to remember that your graduate statement of purpose is a formal, intellectual, professional piece of writing. Its point is NOT to make the reader understand who you are as a person. (Again, that’s what the personal essays are for.) Instead, the point is to show them who you are AS A SCHOLAR.
That’s a big difference.
Yet, even as we show them who you are as a scholar, we still need to give them a reason to care. Including a few storytelling details in your SOP intro does exactly that. It gives the reader someone to see. Someone who’s more than a bland list of GPAs, test scores, and research credentials. This doesn’t mean you should write a half page about how a data science internship changed your life. But you should tell the reader who you are and why you’re so motivated to acquire this new education.
One of my all-time favorite PhD students started her SOP like this:
“When I ended my career with the California Ballet in 2016, I looked forward to an academic experience studying the metabolic and neurological systems which had silently governed my physical reality as a performer for so long.”
Boom! Immediately, we’re interested—a professional ballerina is about to start talking about neuroscience.
Another super-successful student started like this:
“During my 2019 internship at JL Design Partners, an architecture firm in Sacramento, I was tasked with developing an Augmented Reality (AR) application for visualizing building designs.”
Bingo. Right away, we know we’re about to read deep thoughts about designing skyscrapers in virtual reality.
In both SOPs, the author spent the whole introduction describing how they’ve struggled with very big academic questions and experiences.
“How do critical or sensitive periods of neuroendocrine development contribute to long-term functioning in animals and humans at the behavioral and cellular levels?” the first student asked.
“If Brain-Computer Interfaces most improve cognitive processing and decision-making abilities, what would be the best approach to combining AR and BCI?” wondered the second.
As you craft your own introduction, don’t tell a long drawn-out story. But do include enough real-life detail so that, when you start discussing your goals for the future, we know there’s a living, breathing person doing the thinking.
How to avoid this common mistake?
Think about mentioning a few of the “5 Ws” in your opening sentences: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. At the same time, limit your introduction to about 20% of the total word count. Your story is amazing, but it’s only the springboard that allows us to learn what’s really going on in that brilliant mind of yours.
Common SOP Mistake #3: Free Writing (No Structure)
Outlining essays is a pain in the butt, isn’t it? Believe me, I know. It’s WAY easier to just sit down and start pouring out our thoughts. In the end, they’ll make sense, right? We can always edit later, right?
Unfortunately not.
There’s this awful thing that happens in the brain of every writer: the more they read what they’ve written, the more they cherish it. The more it seems “correct” to them…even when it’s very much not correct.
This makes sense, because these thoughts are all coming from our own heads. We know this stuff already. Unfortunately, the reader doesn’t have this luxury, and when they encounter a free-written essay, it’s extremely difficult for them to follow and understand the point.
In the famous Graduate School Application Kisses of Death article, the authors quoted multiple admissions coordinators who cited “lack of structure” as a reason for automatic rejection.
“Overall structure is also important because a statement of purpose is a chance to demonstrate strong writing skills, a crucial characteristic of successful graduate students. One respondent succinctly stated that a KOD exists in applications that ‘lack structure. People who want to get their doctorate should already know how to write.’”
Free writing, simply put, is bad writing. (And yes, autobiography essays are a form of free writing.)
Is it possible to free write a well-structured SOP? Well, if you’re a professional who’s edited hundreds of SOPs, yeah, you could probably wing it. But if you’ve never written an SOP before…it’s not the best idea. Heck, I’ve edited thousands of them and I’d still use an outline myself.
How to avoid this common mistake?
There’s no shortage of SOP templates for you to follow. Personally, I think Structure is Magic is the most effective. A lot of universities even provide their own templates. Northeastern does so here. UC-Berkeley gives their take here. (The turbo-attentive among you might notice that both give the exact same advice I’m giving you here.)
Common SOP Mistake #4: Not Tailoring Unique SOPs for Every School
I can’t figure out the psychological reasons why this mistake persists. So many students shotgun-spray generalized essays to every school, and I can’t understand why. It almost always means rejection, as the famous article tells us:
“It’s a kiss of death when I read a personal essay that describes an applicant’s life-long goal of serving humankind and has a paragraph tacked on to the end that “personalizes” the essay for the particular school to which it was sent.”
“Another participant noted that students must ‘do homework on each program. Statements from applicants that state the program is just perfect for them, without evidence they know much about the program other than its specialty name’ are KODs.”
Make no mistake! If you do not write a thorough “Why This Program” section in your SOP, you will almost certainly be rejected.
If you don’t know the foci of the programs to which you’re applying, if you don’t know who the professors are nor what kind of classes they teach, how can you possibly believe this school will help you achieve your goals?
You can’t. If you don’t understand the program to which you’re applying, it means you haven’t really thought through your goals. It means your only real goal is to get into any grad school that will take you. It means you’re waiting for some beneficent professor to tell you what to do, while other, more compelling applicants are proactively formulating plans to change the world.
How to avoid this common mistake?
Spend at least 30 minutes researching each school. Maybe an hour. Craft a “study plan” for each one. Which classes will you take? Which professors will you work with? Which concentrations will you choose? Can you do a thesis or capstone? If so, what topic will you explore?
This section should constitute about 30% of the total word count in your SOP. It’s the longest and most important section. If anything in your SOP shows that you’re going to be a successful grad student, this section is it. Take it seriously!
Common SOP Mistake #5: Sloppy Writing
This may be surprising, but bad writing has very little to do with grammar. You can use ChatGPT all day long and still churn out crappy sentences that are long, vague, and hard to understand. In fact, academia is famous for this!
Reading wordy prose is like lugging a heavy suitcase through the airport. It’s awkward, tiring, you get lost and turned around, and more than anything it makes you just want to stop and rest.
Reading crisp prose, however, is like standing on a conveyor belt sidewalk. Without any effort, you zip through the terminal and arrive happily at your departure gate.
Bad writing in SOPs most often appears as excessive use of 1) passive voice, 2) relative clauses, 3) “to be” verbs, and 4) words you simply don’t need. These faux pas are bad in any kind of writing, but they’re even worse in SOPs. Why?
Because they eat up your word count.
Typically when I see an SOP full of passive voice and excessive grammatical alchemy, I can cut the word total by 20-30% without removing any real information. 20-30%! That’s 1-2 whole paragraphs!
Let me give you an example.
WORDY
My interest in molecular biology and regenerative medicine arose while listening to a lecture about somatic cell reprogramming in my master’s program at the University of Alaska. This field was limited in Alaska, however, with no potential to experience how to translate research into clinical practice, so I applied for a Fulbright Research Award and joined Prof. James Howlett’s research group at the University of Toronto. (66 words)
Sounds fine, doesn’t it? It’s certainly grammatically correct and informative. But let’s see what happens when we sharpen things up.
CRISP
My interest in molecular biology and regenerative medicine arose while listening to a lecture about during an M.S. course in somatic cell reprogramming in my master’s program at the University of Alaska. This field was limited in Alaska, however Yet, with no potential to experience how few opportunities to translate research into clinical practice, so I applied for a Fulbright Research Award and joined Prof. James Howlett’s research group at the University of Toronto. (48 words)
Boom. Just like that, we cut 27% of the words, and 18 from our total word count. Repeat that for every sentence in your SOP, and all of a sudden you have room for an entirely new paragraph in your “Why This Program” section.
How to avoid this common mistake?
Grammarly is “okay”…a nice place to start. Quillbot.com‘s “fluency” mode is also kind of helpful. Then, focus on deleting to-be verbs. This is how you get rid of passive voice, and the act is mentally transformative. Once you do it, you’ll start seeing a dozen other ways to tighten your sentences and cut out unnecessary words. But to be completely honest, the best method is just to visit your campus writing center. Set your essay down and say, “I’d like to cut 10% off the word count,” and then marvel as the editor’s eyes light up.
Common SOP Mistake #6: Undeveloped Academic Goals
In the “Why This Program” section of the SOP, many students are fond of explaining what their coursework or advisors will teach them:
“The course work will help me broaden my understanding of reinforcement learning.”
“In Dr. Wolverine’s research group, I can learn more about wound repair, the stem cell niche, and simultaneously gain a holistic view of skin biology.”
These sentences always make me want to say: “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
The university already knows what you’re going to learn. It’s their course. They teach it. They created it. They wrote the syllabi. When you state what you’re going to learn in the curriculum (what every student will learn), you sound as if you’re just copy-pasting sentences from the department website.
How to avoid this common mistake?
Adcoms aren’t interested in what the school can do for you. They’re interested in hearing what you bring to the school. How are you going to take this education and achieve something special with it?
In every sentence of your “Why This Program” section, be sure to emphasize what you want to accomplish AFTER you graduate. That’s why you’re going to grad school, right? Because you want to achieve something greater in the future? Because there are problems you want to work on, and maybe solve?
Every course you mention, every professor, they should all reflect this ultimate goal. If Dr. Wolverine’s research group is going to give you expertise in wound repair…well, so what? What are you doing to do with that?
If Dream University will give you machine-learning tools to develop investment strategies, so what? Maybe you want to use these tools to address environmental issues through impact investing in an asset management career. THAT is what matters.
It’s not what the school will give you. It’s what you’ll give the world after you earn this education.
Conclusion on Common SOP Mistakes
Autobiography essays. Long, meandering stories. Lack of structure. Not tailoring your SOP for each school. Sloppy writing. And not fully expressing what you intend to achieve with your graduate education. These are the most common SOP mistakes, and they can all be kisses of death.
Fixing these problems can be a huge pain, but avoiding them before you start is easy. Do this, and you’ll drastically increase your chances of admission, I promise.
Perhaps I should take my own advice, because this is the longest article I’ve ever written. But if this is what it takes to fight the scourge of autobiography essays, it’s a battle I’ll keep on fighting.
Fight on, friend.
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