My own Statement of Purpose for my MFA applications was groomed better than my own hair, and it was all structured around a conversation with one of my undergrad professors. “Gillian,” my professor told me, “The SOP does not solely determine if you’re accepted to a program or not—we put far more emphasis on the writing sample and the letters of rec. The SOP is used to determine if the candidate is a jerk.”
I thought about this for days. How could I write a strong SOP that told the world that I wasn’t a jerk? What did I want my SOP to stand for? (Also, what did I stand for?)
When I wrote my Statement of Purpose, I sat at my parents’ kitchen table (oh yeah, I’d just moved back in with my parents and was deeply ashamed of it), and I thought about my life. If I didn’t get into graduate school, there was no alternate plan. So I sat back, applied an enormous amount of pressure to myself, didn’t wash my hair for seventeen days, drank tons of coffee, and wrote. There was a franticness about my actions, a distinct overtone of craziness, probably due to the fact that I crammed my entire grad school application process into four short weeks, one of which was occupied by Christmas. (At one point, my mom told me she didn’t particularly care for a nonfiction essay I’d written—her exact words, I believe, were that she liked other essays of mine more—and despite the diplomatic way she said it, I was effectively shattered.) Since I’d just gotten back from Europe, I was jetlagged, and I embraced it; I was up at 6 AM every morning, when I’d spend 45 minutes looking at Facebook before slowly sliding into applications and more coffee.
Sometimes, my SOP would come out looking a little…harried. Occasionally, it was desperate (“accept me, please; I’ll be great!”) or frustrated (“ACCEPT ME DAMMIT I AM WORTH IT MAYBE”). I realized I had to cut that out immediately. I wanted my SOP to say several things about me:
- I was not a jerk.
- I was serious and earnest about poetry.
- I was serious about becoming a better poet.
- I was pretty great with sentence structure.
First, I decided to write some sort of hook (my reasoning: people like hooks, so this would increase my likeability). What was a snapshot of my life that was 1) somewhat unique/interesting and also 2) showed the reader how I took writing seriously? I wrote four possible hook/snapshots before choosing one.
After the hook, I decided I needed to add body. How could I weave that snapshot in my hook into the greater narrative of The Life of Gillian? And which narrative did I need to highlight? (I kept thinking about the various narratives of my life: smalltown Gillian, Europe Gillian, UVA Gillian, poetry class Gillian, religious Gillian, dreamer Gillian, writer Gillian, soup kitchen Gillian, nerd Gillian.) I chose two threads to follow in my first point; this way, I figured, I could touch on my writing philosophy. (One of my friends did this solely by tying her thoughts to a quote from an Ancient Greek poet. She’s pretty great. I couldn’t pull that off.)
After Point One, I decided to personalize my SOP to each school. (This was Point Two.) I wrote a paragraph about why I wanted to be accepted into each poetry program. This was the paragraph that changed the essay seven times; it also forced me to deeply consider why I wanted to go to each school. Of course, a lot of schools had auxiliary essays about teaching, funding, assistantships, etc, but some schools did not. With the schools that didn’t, I tried to squeeze that information into my regular SOP in Point Two.
After Point Two, I dove into the conclusion. (It took me awhile to figure out how to transition into this last paragraph; I didn’t want to just tack an ending on there.) In retrospect, I probably came off as sounding a little grand, but at least there was earnestness in there. I think programs are largely forgiving of SOPs as long as they think you’re earnest.
Which takes me back to the whole point of being a jerk: Don’t be a jerk in your SOP. Jerks aren’t earnest. My sister, who’s actually an engineer and not a writer at all, was pretty good about calling me out on anything she found suspect in the essay (“You really sat and wrote next to a river in Ireland? That’s pretty douchey”). But also, I kept coming face to face with this greater truth: You cannot advocate for yourself as a writer in an essay where the quality of your writing sucks. This is something that I firmly believe, and that’s what I struggled with the most when writing my approximately nine million SOPs drafts and their seven different versions. It would have been so much easier to write a sort-of-okay essay and move on.
Each variation of my essay was no more than one page, single-spaced. I did address each one to the Selection Committee, and I signed off on each one as well. At the end of the process, I felt like I did pour my soul into the SOP; a lot of people might tell you that that’s not necessary, and maybe it’s not. However, I don’t think an SOP that you’re proud of can be a detriment; I got accepted into five of my seven schools, and I liked knowing that my SOP wasn’t a liability.
Anyway, I hope that this SOP post is helpful to you hopefuls out there; this is just the tale of one applicant and her SOP. I know how much this entire process sucks—and I know how much it made me doubt myself and my own writing. Best of luck to you kids. I’m rooting for you and your magnificent Statements of Purpose.
great post! thank you.
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Its nearly 3 AM and this really helped! 🙂
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It’s nearly 3AM and this really helped! 🙂
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