Category: Graduate School

Every year, Gurufi editors help hundreds of applicants produce personal statements that get them into elite programs in STEM, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. All of our consultant-editors have PhDs from Ivy League / Oxford / Cambridge and we can link you with an editor whose background aligns with your intended field.

 

         Applying to graduate school is a ton of work. GRE, letters of recommendation, revising work samples, and personal statements… Moreover, people rarely apply to just one school; when I applied, I applied to a dozen. The fear people have is that this requires them to write a dozen Personal Statements. So, can you repurpose your essays, or do you need to create a unique essay for each application?

         The answer to both questions is “yes.”

         If you’re confused, let me explain. If you’re applying to a dozen graduate schools, the easiest process is to begin with a template essay that you can repurpose for all of your applications. You then take that template and customize it for each of the schools you’re applying to. The most straightforward method is the two-thirds / one-third method where you write the first two thirds of the essay in a way that can be used for all applications. And then, you write a custom final two paragraphs for each particular school.

         The one obvious caveat is that sometimes (though rarely) Master’s and Ph.D. programs will have their own questions / prompts and you will have to respond to them. In such instances, don’t try to shoehorn in your old text for questions that don’t quite fit. The bad news is that if you want to apply to those schools… it’s gonna take a bit of extra work.  In every other case, you can use the two-thirds / one-third method.

The Foundation: A Template Essay (The First Two-Thirds)

The initial step in crafting your personal statement is to develop a robust template. This template serves as a base for all your applications, ensuring consistency in presenting your background and motivations. The first two-thirds of this template should focus on two key areas:

 

1. Your Background

Your background forms the cornerstone of your personal statement. It’s essential to delve into your educational and professional experiences, highlighting how they have shaped your interest and prepared you for graduate studies. In other words, tell your story in a way that explains “why grad school? Why this subject?” This part of the essay should be a reflective narrative, weaving together your past experiences and achievements to showcase a coherent journey toward your chosen field.

2. Interest in the Field

The next segment should pivot to how you became interested in your specific area of study. Here, storytelling is paramount. Recount the moments, whether academic, professional, or personal, that sparked your passion for the subject. This section is not just about stating your interest but illustrating it through experiences and insights you’ve gained over time. It should resonate with a sense of genuine curiosity and commitment to the field.

Customization: Tailoring the Final Third

While the first two-thirds of your essay lay the foundational narrative, the final third is where customization comes into play. This tailored segment should address three critical aspects:

 

1. Your Academic Aspirations

Discuss the specific questions or ideas you wish to explore in graduate school. This section is your opportunity to demonstrate that your goals align with the advanced study and that you have a clear vision for your research or scholarly pursuits. It should reflect a deep understanding of the field and a forward-looking perspective on how you intend to contribute to it.

 

2. Fit with the School

This part of the essay requires thorough research about each institution you’re applying to. Explain why the school’s resources, areas of emphasis, and overall academic environment are a fit for your goals. Highlight specific aspects of the program, such as unique courses, methodologies, or specializations, that align with your academic interests and future plans.

 

3. Potential Mentors

Identifying potential professors you hope to work with is a vital aspect of demonstrating your fit with a program. Mention faculty members whose research interests align with yours and articulate how their mentorship could help you achieve your academic and professional objectives. This not only shows that you have done your homework but also that you are proactive about your graduate school journey.

 

A final note:

Don’t be too hung up on the 2/3 and 1/3 length breakdowns. That’s a rule of thumb. For every applicant, the ratio will be different. If your application really leans into your history and story, then maybe it’s more like a 3:1 ratio instead of a 2:1. On the other hand, if you want to go into the weeks about the academic questions you hope to explore, then a 1:1 or even a 1:2 ratio might be what you produce. My experience, though, is that most people can write the first 2/3 of the essay in a manner that enables them to cover all of the things that aren’t school, program, or future advisor-specific.

 

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top Masters and Ph.D. programs in STEM, humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email at service@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

         I recently wrote about how important it is to be specific about your plans for graduate school. Since founding Gurufi in 2006, we have helped several thousand clients get into their top-choice Ph.D. and Master’s programs, including hundreds of people seeking admission into hyper-competitive Ivy League and other top-tier programs. Nonetheless, some people quibble with our belief that your personal statement or statement of purpose need to be as specific as possible about your intellectual, academic, and professional mission. The concern -which I will address specifically in a bit- is that being too specific creates three problems: (1) it can make you seem inflexible or uncurious, (2) it might limit your ability to earn admission into a program if there’s not room for exactly what you study, and (3) if you’re admitted, you don’t want to be anchored to an overly restricted vision of what you hope to study. For reasons all cover, all three of these are misguided concerns.

         But first, I want to explain why it’s vital to be specific and clear about what you hope to study in graduate school. When applying for a PhD program, the personal statement and statement of purpose are crucial elements (note not every school requires both), more so than in any other academic application. At this advanced level of study, specificity in outlining one’s intellectual interests is not just recommended; it’s imperative. This precision serves several key purposes, each vital to both the applicant and the program.

Ensuring the Right Fit

First and foremost, specificity helps ensure that you, as an applicant, are a good fit for the program. When you’re looking for the right undergraduate institution, the university’s overall rankings are often what people emphasize. But for graduate studies, the department, advisor, or lab are far more important than the overall university. A mid-level state university will often have several elite programs that are better than their equivalents at Harvard and Yale, for instance. But, every lab, advisor, and to a certain extend department, is usually more narrowly focused, so you need to demonstrate that what you want to study fits within what they do. If, for instance, you want to study social and feminist history, you want to find a department that has that strength AND explain in detail your thoughts on that discipline so that it’s clear you’d fit in.

PhD studies are not just about acquiring knowledge; they are about pushing the boundaries of what is known. This journey is profoundly personal and intensely specialized. By clearly articulating your specific interests, you demonstrate an understanding of the program’s scope and how your aspirations align with it. A well-defined area of interest indicates that you have thought deeply about your academic and research path, which is a strong indicator of your readiness for the rigors of a PhD program.

 

Demonstrating Mastery and Preparedness

A detailed exposition of your intellectual pursuits in your personal statement serves as a testament to your mastery of the field. It shows that you are not merely a passive recipient of information but an active, engaged thinker capable of contributing original ideas. You know the right questions to ask, have a sense of what the key debates are within a field, and maybe even have some ideas for important directions that the field can go. This depth of understanding is crucial for a PhD candidate. By showcasing your well-defined research interests, you illustrate your preparedness for the advanced study and your potential as a future scholar in your field.

 

Aligning with Program Resources and Opportunities

Specificity in your intellectual interests helps the program assess if they have the necessary resources and opportunities to support your research ambitions. PhD programs are often tailored to the strengths and expertise of their faculty and facilities. By being clear about your research focus, you enable the admissions committee to evaluate whether their program can provide the mentorship, resources, and intellectual environment you need. This alignment is beneficial for both parties: you gain access to tailored support and guidance, and the program invests in a candidate who can fully utilize what they offer.

 

So if these are the reasons to be specific, what’s the argument for avoiding being too specific… and why are they ultimately misguided?

 

• Concern: if I am too specific, it will limit my chances at admission because I will really only be applying to work with a few professors or in a few labs, as opposed to being eligible for all of them.

Why it’s wrong: a well-conducted graduate admissions cycle begins with research and outreach. Talk to professors (via email at first) within the program whose interests jive with yours. They will often give you a sense of whether they’re taking students or whether they, or somebody else, might be a good fit for you. If you do this you’ll maximize your chances.

By contrast, if your strategy is that you’re just a “generally good candidate,” that’s not really what most Ph.D. programs are looking for. Rather than being attractive to everyone… you’ll be seen more as an orphan without an intellectual home. After all, a key question that grad schools ask themselves during the admissions cycle is, “under whom will Jane study? Where does she fit in?” If that’s not clear, they won’t just bring you in and hope for the best… you’ll be rejected.

• Concern: if I am too specific in my Personal Statement / SOP, I’ll appear too rigid, dogmatic, or incurious.

Why it’s wrong: Specificity does not equate to inflexibility. In your personal statement, you can balance specificity with openness by exploring various angles and methodologies related to your interest. This approach shows a readiness to engage with different perspectives and adapt your research as it evolves.

For instance let’s say that you’re interested in studying 19^th century American politics, and you specifically want to study under Prof. Jones because you agree with his formulation of that period. You explain your ideas and how Jones could help you. You can mitigate the concerns over being too rigid by adding a few sentences that it clear just how expansive your thinking is. Like so: “Though I believe X to be true, I am keen to have this perspective challenged and complicated. For instance, Prof. Danforth’s work suggesting that foreign policy played a large role and Prof. Shah’s recent book exploring how tensions between feminism and racial discourge accelerated America’s path to war are ideas that I must contend with in my thesis. Thus, it would be a genuine pleasure and benefit to learn under these professors as well…”

         This approach allows you to use specificity to demonstrate proficiency, AND also use your broader understanding of the field to suggest ways that you are open to broader thinking. Indeed, acknowledging other faculty members whose expertise complements or broadens your proposed study area can add depth to your application. It demonstrates an understanding of the broader academic community and an eagerness to collaborate, enriching the complexity and scope of your research.

• Concern: If I am overly specific in my Personal Statement / SOP, once I get there I might be stuck studying something I am not terribly excited about.
• Why it’s not a problem: This one is easy. Nobody studies exactly what they say they intend to study. Okay… maybe some people do, but most don’t. As such, there is no great difficulty in making tweaks to your intellectual journey on the fly (assuming it’s still within the same field! You can’t switch from history to chemistry or something like that!).

As this shows, specificity in your writing is mostly an opportunity to show that you know enough about the subject to suggest courses of inquiry, ask interesting questions, and know a bit about what you don’t know. You’re not forever married to the ideas you express, and nobody expects you to be.

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top Masters and Ph.D. programs in STEM, humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email at service@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

         Most graduate programs require only a personal statement, but many (particularly, some of the BigTen schools) require both a personal statement AND a statement of purpose. Many applicants can find the distinction confusing, so we’re here to clear that up.

For the last 17 years, the consultants and editors at Gurufi have helped applicants earn admission into a variety of STEM, humanities, social sciences, and arts Master’s and Ph.D. programs. We are quite familiar with these kinds of finder distinctions and can help you build either (or both) a compelling personal statement or a strong statement of purpose. Although these two essays may seem similar at first glance, they serve distinct functions and require different approaches.

Statement of Purpose

Purpose and Focus

The Statement of Purpose is primarily focused on an applicant’s academic and professional aspirations. It is a forward-looking document that outlines the applicant’s research background, career goals, and how a specific graduate program aligns with these goals. A strong SOP should explain why the applicant is interested in a particular field of study and how they plan to use their graduate education to advance in that field.

Content

At the heart of an SOP is the applicant’s research, writing, or other relevant experience and a clear explanation of how this has laid the groundwork for further studies in a particular field. This includes any relevant projects, papers, presentations, or studies the applicant has undertaken. The SOP should provide evidence of the applicant’s ability to undertake graduate-level research and their potential to contribute to the academic community. It should also articulate the applicant’s understanding of the field and how they envision contributing to it.

When working with clients, I will sometimes say, “okay, imagine that it’s 6 years from now, you’ve earned admission and are writing your thesis or dissertation. In 75 words or less, what is your thesis?” The reason is that it helps if you have a highly specific, clear, and well-tailored (more on this in a second) sense of what you aspire to study. The closer you can get to describing your intended field of study, the better.

Note that some people disagree with this strategy and they worry that this kind of specificity will make them seem either dogmatic or uncurious or limit their opportunities for admission. For reasons I lay out in this video, and will write about tomorrow, these concerns are unfounded. But, the long-story-short version is that there are ways to demonstrate breadth of thinking and curiosity while still using a specific and well-developed vision of your intellectual mission to indicate that you’d arrive to graduate school well-versed and prepared enough in the field to do high-level work.

Tailoring to Specific Programs

A key feature of the SOP is its specificity to each application or school. Applicants must customize their SOP to reflect how their goals and interests align with the particular program’s strengths, faculty expertise, and resources. This customization demonstrates the applicant’s knowledge of and fit for the program. Again, this is a topic that I’ll cover in greater depth later this week, but for now I’ll just note that if you’re applying to multiple schools that require SOPs, you can repurpose MOST of it for multiple schools and you don’t have to write a completely original document for each application.

 

Personal Statement

 

Purpose and Focus

In contrast, the Personal Statement is more narrative, personal, reflective, and introspective. It focuses on the applicant’s background and life experiences, including cultural, geographical, financial, and educational aspects, and how these experiences have shaped their decision to pursue a graduate degree. The Personal Statement is a narrative that provides a more holistic view of the applicant as an individual. If the Statement of Purpose feels more like a hybrid between your CV and a research proposal, then a Personal Statement is more like a story of your intellectual journey.

Content

A PS often includes personal stories or anecdotes that reflect the applicant’s resilience, determination, and motivation. It might describe significant challenges or obstacles the applicant has overcome, such as financial hardships, cultural barriers, or personal adversities. The aim is to provide insight into the applicant’s character, values, and the unique perspective they will bring to the graduate program.

Importantly, these stories should explain or contextualize the reasons for your intellectual interests. The old joke is that “all research is ‘ME search’” so explain why this path resonates with you.

Overcoming Challenges

A significant aspect of the Personal Statement is highlighting how the applicant has navigated and overcome major challenges to achieve their goals. This narrative not only demonstrates resilience but also shows the applicant’s ability to thrive in challenging environments, an important quality in graduate studies.

 

Combination Statements

An important note: most graduate programs require only a personal statement. In that case, most of this advice doesn’t apply. Instead, if you’re sending only a single document, it needs to be a mashup of the two essay types described above. In other words, the applicant needs to weave together their personal narrative with their academic and professional aspirations. This hybrid statement should reflect both the applicant’s personal journey and their specific vision for their future in the context of the graduate program.

 

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top Masters and Ph.D. programs in STEM, humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email at service@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Hello to everybody! So, hopefully, I can say this: CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve followed Gurufi’s advice on the grad school admissions process, and now you’ve got a wonderful problem… choosing from among multiple offers at great schools.

In this video, I talk about how to pick a graduate program when you have multiple offers. Many of you have received numerous graduate school offers, and I realize that you may be feeling a little overwhelmed right now. Be at ease; I’m here to help! Here are a list of what I see as the most important considerations:

@gurufi_admissions

Hey there, decision-makers! 🎉CONGRATS🎉! You’re crushin’ it with multiple grad school offers, thanks to Gurufi’s advice! Now, how do you pick the one? Chill, I’m here to help! 💆‍♂️💆‍♀️Let’s break it down: 📝 1️⃣💰: Funding first! Grad school ain’t cheap. How are you paying for it? Loans? Scholarships? Fellowships? Investigate! And remember, schools’ offers reflect how they see you: priority or cash cow? 🐄 #showmethemoney gradschoolfunding2️⃣👩‍🏫: Mentorship matters! Is the school’s program solid? Chat with students: do they feel supported, get pro advice, and have profs on speed dial? 📞 You’ll need a mentor, so check! #mentorshipgoals gradschoolbuddies3️⃣🎓: Student-centric vibes? See if the school involves students in recruiting/admissions. It’s a fab way to learn about the REAL school life! 🕵️‍♂️ #studentlife gradschoolvibesNow, weigh your options and remember, there’s no “wrong” choice! 🚫 It’s about the right fit for YOU! So, ditch the name-chasing and find YOUR happy place! 🥳🏫#personalstatement #gradschool #graduateschool #personalstatementhelp #howtowriteapersonalstatement #personalstatementtips #personalstatementadvice #personalstatementguide #personalstatementsamples #personalstatementmadness #majordecisions #findingtherightfit

♬ original sound – Gurufi

• Funding is the first item you should think about. This may seem counterintuitive for people who view graduate school as being about passion, but money isn’t just money. What financing plan do you have for graduate school? Graduate school tuition can be paid for in a number different ways, such as with loans, fellowships, and scholarships. You’ll need to conduct some study to learn about your possibilities. AND, the options that the respective schools offer says something about how they view you as a candidate. Are you a priority, or just someone whose checks they’re willing to cash?

• The school’s mentoring program is the next item you need to take into account. Is there a robust mentorship program there? Talk to students and ask if they feel supported, if they get useful professional guidance, and if they find it easy to schedule time with professors. This is significant since you’ll need someone to assist you during your graduate studies.

• Is it a student-centric place? Last but not least, you should think about if the institution uses current students in the recruitment or admissions processes. This is a fantastic method to learn more about the school and what it’s like to attend.

After giving these things some thought, you’ll be ready to begin limiting your options. Keep in mind that there is no right or wrong decision when selecting a graduate program. Finding a school that fits you, your aspirations and your needs is vital, so take everything into account and don’t just chase a fancy name!

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top Masters and Ph.D. programs in STEM, humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email at service@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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