/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #12322786

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PhD Applications and Essays

Anonymous Mon 09 Nov 18:29:24 2020 No.12322786 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12322836 >>12325167 >>12325181 >>12328666

How do I write a winning Statement of Purpose essay for STEM grad school applications?

I stress out so much over this. I have a great GRE score and strong research background but everything I write feels cheesy and horrible.

Do any anons have recommendations for useful resources which they found helpful during their application essay writing process?

I want to study Materials Science, but any advice even relevant to other fields is welcome.

What are some major points of failure to keep an eye out for, in order to avoid tanking my chances of admission?

General PhD program and admissions discussion welcome as well.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 09 Nov 2020 18:33:22 No.12322801 Report

Quoted By:

Dear [Insert university name]

I am great at sucking cocks.

I can suck any of your Professors cocks if I am accepted into your PHD program for Materials Science

Sincerely,
OP <3

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 09 Nov 2020 18:44:59 No.12322836 Report

Quoted By: >>12323095

>>12322786
You should contact professors directly saying you're interested. If you establish a rapport they are more likely to select you as one of the successful applicants. GRE is a meme and they don't care that much about it if at all, as long as you don't have some utter retard-level result.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 09 Nov 2020 19:51:36 No.12323095 Report

Quoted By: >>12323382 >>12324432 >>12324538 >>12325181 >>12326679

>>12322836
Thank you for the input. I had heard of contacting professors as a good strategy, specifically right after the application itself is submitted. Sort of as a quick introduction establishing my background and why I would be an asset to their specific research.

Do you agree with this approach?
Or should I reach out before I submit the application to their program?
>Am I fucked if I haven't been contacting professors already?

Only one of the schools I'm applying to has been truly "pursuing" me in any regard (waived application fees, etc.) and I wonder if I'm making a mistake in applying, perhaps I overestimated my value as a student. I feel that my letters of recommendation will be incredibly strong but competing with hundreds of students for only a few positions means the odds aren't on my side.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 09 Nov 2020 21:02:56 No.12323382 Report

Quoted By: >>12323957 >>12324538

>>12323095
bump for OP's question, i haven't emailed any professors either. are we all fucked /sci/?????

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 09 Nov 2020 23:12:08 No.12323957 Report

Quoted By:

>>12323382
Thanks for the bump, I'll do one more before it dies

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 01:27:29 No.12324397 Report

Quoted By:

i wish threads like these got more attention. good luck with your applications anons

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 01:41:11 No.12324432 Report

Quoted By: >>12324538

>>12323095
No u should be contacting profs before u even apply. sending an application without having alreaady contacted profs at the school is unnecessarily shooting urself in the foot unless ur god tier. idk what ur deadlines look like but just email profs who u would do research with right now saying hi i want to do research with u and am interested in applying for phd start 2021 fall. give them a short paragraph saying why you want to work with them how ur past courses and research is related to what they do (Sell urself to THEM) and then say if possible youd like to schedule a video call to discuss the prospect of working with them. now u have to not be autistic and dont come in clueless about the phd proccess or their research, but if they like you after the interview (which they should, academics are impressed by good gpa, research experience, skills that can directly benefit THEM, i.e. its great to know whatever programming language or skills ur prof makes their grad students use, and NOT BEING AUTISTIC NERVOUS OR WEIRD. trust me most people profs have to deal with are socially autistic or chinese accent, they will enjoy talking to a non autistic student) so then u will hopefully finish a 30 minute chat with the prof at which point they will be thinking "oh wow that anon has some good skills, demonstrated to me he really is interested in this position, and i could imagine working with him for 5 years" if u get to that point ur basically set. u just have to meet the minimum grad requirements and u will be shoehorned through application process. of course u could do none of this and just blindly throw out an application but that same prof will be vouching for the shittier candidate who they talked to then the stacked candidate no one has heard a peep from. also a second benefit to the novel essay i typed here is if ur interview goes poorly or u realize ur not a fit with the certain prof, u can just go do the same thing with another prof at the school

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 02:08:26 No.12324538 Report

Quoted By: >>12325132 >>12327553 >>12327590

>>12324432
>>12323382
>>12323095
This is shitty advice. The vast majority of top programs have rotations. The profs you email will never even hear about you until you actually get there. Only email profs if the program explicitly tells you to. Otherwise there's a good chance they'll think you're a retard tryhard and blacklist you

Read this: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2016/04/should-you-email-a-professor-during-admissions-season.html

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 05:38:20 No.12325132 Report

Quoted By: >>12325169

>>12324538
i don't know if that blog post is representative of many universities or not, but the sheer childishness that person's writing exudes would make me reconsider applying to their institution alone.

i mean, seriously, turntables? some people work hard for graduate applications. what a joke.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 05:56:34 No.12325167 Report

Quoted By:

>>12322786
ngl dude its a 2 page essay at most you should be able to crank more than one of those out pretty easily. Just write one and then if you dont like it write another one.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 05:57:33 No.12325169 Report

Quoted By: >>12325240

>>12325132
Unfortunately this is how many professors think.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 06:05:51 No.12325181 Report

Quoted By:

>>12322786
I'm pretty sure I got accepted to my current grad school because the statement I wrote the statement for it while drunk, so there was some emotion in it unlike my other statements.
>>12323095
no. You should only contact profs either directly in-person (conferences etc.) or through indirect connections with other profs. Faculty regularly receive shitty emails from crackpots and inadvertently you fall into that category if you do that.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 06:33:11 No.12325240 Report

Quoted By: >>12325246

>>12325169
well, as an undergrad, that makes me want to think hard about the environment of academia and graduate school in general. i'll be researching my prospects in a masters or phd program soon.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 06:35:22 No.12325246 Report

Quoted By: >>12325254

>>12325240
Yeah I'm 4th year and just finishing up applications to a few top programs. Only one program recommends contacting profs directly, which I did and already got a short interview. The others are all rotations so I didn't bother emailing

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 06:38:35 No.12325254 Report

Quoted By: >>12325257

>>12325246
wow, that's nice! what are you hoping to study?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 06:40:16 No.12325257 Report

Quoted By:

>>12325254
Bioinformatics and comp bio. Hopefully I don't get rejected everywhere lol. Cuz my bachelor's is useless otherwise

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 16:45:07 No.12326679 Report

Quoted By:

>>12323095
>I had heard of contacting professors as a good strategy,
I keep a list of professors that encourage or discourage this. It's split pretty even. Apparently they never talk to each other about this.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 20:30:54 No.12327553 Report

Quoted By: >>12327557 >>12327590 >>12328400

>>12324538
>https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2016/04/should-you-email-a-professor-during-admissions-season.html
>Maybe it's because I am still young and haven't gotten anybody pregnant yet, but I actually try to respond to these types of emails if it looks like they really tried to target towards me.
>Maybe it's because I'm still young and haven't gotten anybody pregnant yet

What the fuck did he mean by this?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 20:33:06 No.12327557 Report

Quoted By: >>12327590

>>12327553
I think he was trying to be funny. He doesn't have a kid so he has extra time on his hands. Seems like an autist tho

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 20:35:50 No.12327562 Report

Quoted By: >>12327897

people in here seem to have never applied to grad school

you should absolutely email professors. try to email them the summer of the application year, or near the start of the academic year. I received responses to about 50% of my emails, and these were to top schools. profs at MIT, Harvard, Caltech will still respond to your inquiry emails.
your statement of purpose should have a paragraph that is tailored to every school you apply. you want them to know you've done the research on their program and you have people in mind that you want to work with. they can tell if you're applying to their school because of the prestige and not because you think it's a good fit.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 20:41:35 No.12327590 Report

Quoted By:

>>12327557
>>12327553
>>12324538
>I think he was trying to be funny.

Yeah it seems like it. It actually is kind of funny, but probably not for the reason he thinks. I'm sure he's a relatively cool guy compared to your average normie, but his sense of humor is a little autistic and immature.

He also describes himself as having "dank database skills", and he says that his Ph.D student who does "turntables" is "trill as fuck". This dude is using hipstery meme slang that my musician friends who were into witch house were using ca. 2012-2016.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 21:57:27 No.12327897 Report

Quoted By: >>12327959

>>12327562
>you should absolutely email professors
I guarantee that your emails had absolutely nothing to do with any of your acceptances, unless you were specifically required to email profs beforehand. There's no point in emailing profs at schools with rotations, unless you're genuinely curious about their work, and you can't get enough info from their papers/website.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:12:31 No.12327959 Report

Quoted By: >>12327979

>>12327897
you can guarantee that?
I set up phone conversations with four different profs as a result of my emails, visited two labs, and am currently working in one. without emailing them I would not have had the level of connection that I did and my personal statement would have been much weaker at all of these schools. it shows a degree of investment in the school you're applying to, which is important because they DON'T want to admit people who will turn them down.
>no point in emailing profs at schools with rotations
you know, except to see: 1) if they're taking students, 2) if your experience and knowledge would contribute to them, 3) if you can establish a line of communication with them that you can reference in your application, 4) if you can make a good impression on them that they can pass on to the admissions office

you seem to think that there's no point in connecting with rotations professors beforehand. you don't just get placed in a rotation, you still have to pick who you rotate with.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:16:20 No.12327979 Report

Quoted By: >>12327983

>>12327959
Did your program have rotations? If not, then emailing probably helped.

>you seem to think that there's no point in connecting with rotations professors beforehand. you don't just get placed in a rotation, you still have to pick who you rotate with.
You typically do this after you've been admitted, at least I did.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:18:42 No.12327983 Report

Quoted By: >>12327998

>>12327979
no, but I work directly with people who did. they all emailed prior to applying.
I know that you pick who you rotate with after admission. but they also have to pick you. if 50 people want to work in some nobel laureate's lab, they aren't taking all of them.
plus, you're not reading what I said right above that. having connection with a professor before application tells the school that you are interested in them more than just because you read them on a "top 10 bioinformatics programs" ranking

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:25:09 No.12327998 Report

Quoted By: >>12328002 >>12328007 >>12328227

>>12327983
>no, but I work directly with people who did. they all emailed prior to applying.
I'm sure they did, as it's common practice. But many of the profs I currently work with (I'm a grad student now) dislike getting all these cold emails. Because they do rotations.
>having connection with a professor before application tells the school that you are interested in them more than just because you read them on a "top 10 bioinformatics programs" ranking
This "personal connection" is only relevant for non-rotation programs, and only if you can actually get a face-to-face interview going, which profs in rotation programs almost *never* do. I only applied to a single non-rotation program, and I emailed the prof and set up a Skype interview. That's what the department recommends. This is a waste of everyone's time to cold email profs in rotation programs in the off-chance they're on the admissions committee and aren't put off by you're unnecessary cold emails.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:27:25 No.12328002 Report

Quoted By:

>>12327998
I see. I guess the "no cold-email" policy is something I'm definitely not used to. I would still advise for emailing, because I think that this is not how the majority of schools operate (at least in my experience).

How I see it, is that if the prof doesn't want a cold email then they will just delete it. If they don't mind it then it can potentially help you. It's only a negative thing when the professor is legitimately an asshole, and in that case you probably don't want to be working with them in the first place.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:28:45 No.12328007 Report

Quoted By:

>>12327998
That’s true. Better to do bold and painful thing you planned on than going back on your word.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:33:15 No.12328023 Report

Quoted By: >>12328037 >>12328164

Hey OP, I found this template for a statement of purpose created by a reddit user. I used the same basic structure for my apps and got largely positive reviews:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/30yrdx/i_got_into_stanford_berkeley_university_of/

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 22:35:35 No.12328037 Report

Quoted By: >>12328164

>>12328023
Oops, looks like the template is no longer there. Brb, will post my template somewhere after I edit out important info.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 23:18:56 No.12328164 Report

Quoted By:

>>12328023
>>12328037

Here you go OP:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xF_BHzcxxGQxZ46SJQ8i-9OdXu_EXsrv/view?usp=sharing

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 10 Nov 2020 23:40:36 No.12328227 Report

Quoted By:

>bust my ass to get a great GRE score
>half the schools I'm applying to aren't accepting GRE scores anymore
reeeeee

>>12327998
All the schools I'm applying to only have one or two professors I'm interested in, so I emailed all of them because I want to talk to them and try to see if I like them before I commit to being their bitch for 5 years. I don't care if it helps or hurts my chances of getting in, I'm doing it for my sake. Most of them have been willing to talk to me and send me copies of papers and presentations and stuff, and some of them have also put me in contact with their grad students so I can talk to them too.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 11 Nov 2020 00:25:41 No.12328400 Report

Quoted By:

>>12327553
He is young and doesnt have a family yet... Is everyone on here actually autistic? Are the implications of his original statement and the implications of being young and without a family not obvious... he wants yall to suck his dick for recs...

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 11 Nov 2020 01:54:39 No.12328666 Report

Quoted By: >>12328683

>>12322786
Jesus, this application process sounds like an anti-human nightmare. You basically just have to bullshit about your noble backstory so make sure you're a sufficiently eager cuckold

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 11 Nov 2020 02:00:18 No.12328683 Report

Quoted By: >>12328720

>>12328666
it's actually easier to write about yourself when you know it's all bullshit

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 11 Nov 2020 02:11:34 No.12328720 Report

Quoted By:

>>12328683
What sad world where just having a genuine interest and ability in the field you wish to pursue isn't enough.
Definitely agree with the guys saying to just talk to the proff.

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