Lesson 13: Purposeful Paragraphs
Event, Evidence, Significance
Each paragraph should focus on a specific quality or characteristic, something you’ve identified as key to explaining your background, experience, and suitability for graduate study. The structure of paragraphs should be the same: Describe an event or experience that illustrates a particular quality, then offer more details that serve as evidence, and conclude by explaining why the event or experience was significant not in terms of how you felt but what you learned. Basically, paragraphs in the body of your statement boil down to explaining what you did, what you learned, and why it matters in preparing you for graduate school.
Now, with that basic design in mind, there are bad and better ways to ensure that your experience stands out to your readers. Consider this example:
Bad: “Doing research for my departmental adviser also provided a great deal of useful experience.”
Better: “While my seminar in Behavioral Data Science sparked my interest in item response theory, I mastered the basics of IRT mathematical modeling while working as a research assistant for Professor BigName.”
Think about exactly what you did: not your title or your responsibility, but your actions themselves. Make yourself and your actions the subjects of your sentences and choose active verbs. Good writing depends on good verbs. (Avoid adverbs!) Thus “I learned to...” or “Learning about X led me to discover Y.” Here are some verbs to think about how best to describe your experiences:
Don’t just list items from your resume or CV. Instead, explain how an experience affected you with a focus on what you learned that is relevant to your success in the field. After an applicant to a MSW program described her volunteer work with underserved women, for example, she explains exactly what she learned.
Bad: “I served as a volunteer teaching women about the importance of breastfeeding.”
Better: “My experience helping women access breastfeeding information and empowering them to use that information has convinced me that information alone is not nearly as useful as information plus a skilled and compassionate guide.”
Here’s another example, adapted from Cornell University, in physics. Pay attention to how specific and detailed the description is--not of the project itself, but of what the applicant did.
“As part of a larger project, I updated the automated data acquisition system. I ported 400 lines of C++ into labview to produce a visual interface. One of the graduate students, Ayanna Smith, helped me find new drivers for the analog-digital converter, but I was solely responsible for the labview programming. The interface is working properly, and I was gratified that my efforts cut the time to run experiments in half. The science goals of the project was…”
Professor Mitch Prinstein has published a comprehensive guide to applying to graduate school in clinical psychology, but his advice about how to describe your research experiences applies to any field.
“Perhaps more important than a list of prior research experiences and responsibilities is a brief description of what you learned from each of these research experiences. This is the piece that separates a good research statement from a great one. Too often, the research statement reports prior research experience as if checking off a box, seemingly indicating that with this requirement satisfied, the applicant should be granted admission.
Thus, statements that go beyond simply confirming prior lab participation immediately stand out. What was the project about? What were the hypotheses that interested you the most? Are you familiar with any of the literature that is related to the research project? How did your experience in this research project help shape your interests?”
Detail your experience and what it means, always thinking about which qualities you want to illustrate plus how it all serves as evidence that you are a match to the program.
Shorter paragraphs are better than longer ones. (Double-spaced, paragraphs should never exceed 2/3 of a page.) The first sentence of each should clearly state the experience that will be described. You should, when finished, be able to read only the first sentence of each paragraph and have a concise summary of your entire statement.
More examples
This example of a (bad) first draft and (better) final version is adapted from Carnegie Mellon University.
“I am an ideal candidate due to the knowledge I have gained thus far in my Master’s program at Research University. I have completed courses in multiple fields of chemical engineering, as well as increased my knowledge in engineering techniques and lab research. I further honed these techniques from participating in a lab research project. My first lab experience started when I joined Professor Annette Jacobson’s team to determine the electrophoretic mobility of colloidal contaminants in water, which is useful in water treatment processing. Moreover, I have acquired scientific research skills, for instance, searching the literature, designing experiments, analyzing results, and writing papers.”
This paragraph does not show how these experiences are qualifications. How will what the applicant has done in the past benefit her in the future? How are these past experiences relevant to her future graduate work?
In addition, avoid ever stating so bluntly that you are an ideal candidate. Professors will immediately flinch. You can’t assert that. You need to show it, not say it.
Here’s the revised version (edited):
“In earning my Master’s from Research University in Chemical Engineering, I have cultivated expertise and skills specific to research in colloidal properties. I hope now to bring my knowledge and experience to bear in advancing the work of faculty members and graduate students exploring soft matter phenomena at New University’s department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. I’ve focused the majority of my studies on both supramolecular engineering of colloidal forces and aggregation dynamics as well as electrophoretic deposition of colloidal crystalline arrays for display technologies. I honed my interests under the guidance of Professor Anne Jacobs and, as a member of her team, examined the electrophoretic mobility of colloidal contaminants in water, which is useful in water treatment processing. I would like to extend my research pursuits to intrinsic and extrinsic microstructural relaxation rates in protein separation and crystallization processes, in concert with work being explored by Professor So-and-So at New University. I would welcome the opportunity to join his lab and find the work of Professor So-and-So in related area likewise compelling.”
Stronger, yes? Cultivated, bring, advancing, exploring, focused, honed, examined, extend, welcome... all are compelling verbs. The statement (as revised) also includes a nod to other faculty members. It’s clear this applicant has a specific lab in mind but remains open to other possibilities.
