Graduate applications invariably ask students to do three general things. First, they ask that you explain your interest in the subject area (e.g. why you are interested in biology). The second question is typically about interest in program (e.g. why pick State School A over SLAC School B). The third question is often about the future (e.g. what plans do you have after graduating). Many students (through no fault of their own) tend to prioritize these questions in the order I have listed here. That is, they think they should spend the most time writing a long story about why they are interested in biology and the least time explaining what they want to do with their degree after graduation. In my experience, graduate programs tend to value these questions in the inverse order. That is, programs are ultimately most interested in what you want to do, how you intend to do it, and, in a distant last place, why you are interested in your field of study.

The first question students ask me about this structure is why? Why don’t graduate schools come out and say they are least interested in my general interests? Why on Earth is that question first? Why wouldn’t someone just tell me these things in a clear way? There are plenty of answers to these questions, though most of them aren’t good. The first place your application for graduate school will land is admissions. If you had to apply to a school with selective admissions, you probably had to answer these questions in some way. These are the standard admissions questions, so it makes some sense from an efficiency angle that schools ask mostly the same questions for undergraduate and graduate study. Undergraduate admissions are vast, complex, and rife with problems. A bullshit answer to those three questions coupled with a donation from a family member will probably result in an acceptance. Admissions people may be looking for all manner of things, like extracurricular activities, volunteer work, sports experience, etc.

Graduate schools are not interested in this broad, “getting to know you” perspective. People go to graduate school to learn how to research and to gain a functional understanding of discourse in a field. As such, your criteria for selecting a school should be whether they do the kind of research you are interested in. Graduate schools select students based on whether or not they are interested in and capable of doing research in their program. That’s remarkably narrow compared to why people make decisions about their undergraduate study. This works to make the process of writing a letter of application simultaneously easier and harder. On one hand, you can toss out any nonsense that isn’t related to what you want to study. On the other hand, you have to draw a compelling blueprint for your graduate research and career ambitions in the space of a page or so. Welcome to writing for graduate school.

The Drafting Process

First, a note on drafting. Writing compelling materials takes time and energy. Your letter of application should be the hardest, most dense piece of prose you have ever put together. I recommend giving as much time as possible to drafting this letter. Its importance cannot be understated. Admissions will check your application to ensure you meet the minimum requirements for selection, and then the applications go to a group of professors in the graduate department. This group is often called the admissions committee. They read over each app and make lists of who makes the cut and who doesn’t. Some programs routinely get hundreds of applicants, all highly qualified. The selection process is quick and efficient. Most professors tend to scan letters of application and then stop when they hit an obvious red flag. The most obvious of the obvious red flags is a fluffy, overly emotional opening paragraph, so we will begin at that first question in a moment.

Many students have never written anything like this before, so be prepared for frustration, confusion, and difficulty. You will be writing in the academic mode quite a bit if you are accepted, so consider this building a foundation of solid academic writing. Do not, under any circumstances, write your letter in a single draft. Highly qualified applicants for programs will not be doing this. Further (and this point gets overlooked a lot), your letter of application will be the first, formal introduction between you and your program. Start out on the right foot. One professor in my PhD program referenced my letter of application during my second year! Two years later, they still remembered my letter. That’s not incredibly common, but the letter of application is the most substantive thing that potential faculty will see about you, so it needs to be amazing.

A Word on “Advice”

Be very, very careful about who you accept advice from in this process. There may be lots of well-wishers that show up during your application process. Professors, friends, and family members may offer to read over your materials. Be ruthless in determining who reads your content. Be wary of friends or individuals in your undergraduate cohort. Their advice will be mostly worthless as they have not served on an admissions committee before (the same goes for many graduate teaching assistants). Try your best to find an individual with experience on an admissions committee. If you can’t, try and find an actual faculty member with experience (there are many faculty members that have excellent track records of placing students in competitive graduate programs. Try and locate one, if possible). When written well, these letters are purely academic artifacts, so find someone with ample experience with that kind of writing. Accepting advice from well-meaning friends will likely set you back and result in more confusion about what to write and how to write it. I’ve also heard a lot of anecdotal evidence from students about letting people with lots of experience in the private sector read their letter. I would avoid those sources. If you are applying for industry jobs, sure. A person that’s worked in industry will understand how to write an industry cover letter, not an academic one.

Why Are You Interested in Hot Dogs?

Before I cover structure/objectives, I will explain a little about context and intent. Many graduate applications will ask for students to address a few key questions in their letter of application/intent. The first thing to understand about admissions questions is that they are much more complex than they initially seem. Application boilerplate on websites is often inviting and bubbly, and will say things like “tell us about yourself!” When a graduate application asks why you are interested in a subject, they actually mean what academic experiences during your undergraduate degree or work life make you interested in researching a topic. Re-read that last sentence, because there is a lot to unpack. I routinely see letters that tackle the “interest” question like this:

Notice that these answers fail to explain academic experiences that make a candidate interested in studying with a department. Passion and non-academic experiences do not qualify you to pursue research in a field. Playing with frogs does not qualify you to study frogs. Being passionate about a subject is a good thing, but passion alone is not enough to qualify you to study a subject. I am passionate about cooking, but I am not a chef or a particularly good cook. I am passionate about teaching, but I have experience and expertise that qualify me to teach. Many people begin to study a subject because of personal experience. In the second example, the personal experience of the author is certainly a valid reason for pursuing studies in psychology, but the text needs to go further and connect the dots.

There’s an easy way to avoid this kind of writing. Isolate some examples from your academic career that lead you to where you are now, and then chain them together for a bit.

The difference between these examples should be immediately apparent. They both articulate an interest, but the second set does so with specificity and examples, two hallmarks of academic thinking and writing. Students can use personal experience in their admissions letters, but that experience needs to be part of a larger, causal link between events (my interest/experience in W has lead me to study X in Y course, and I completed Z research paper as a result).

Admissions committees are often striving to be fair in their deliberations. It’s becoming increasingly popular to use rubrics in order to score candidates, and the rubrics are usually formed in part from the application questions. There is frequently some kind of category called “Candidate Lays Out Course of Study” with a range of responses from unacceptable to excellent. These rubrics can make the work of the committee considerably easier, but also makes their work less flexible. Candidates can’t be admitted without sufficient evidence of their potential. The first example about playing with frogs, for instance, would likely rank poorly. If the second example continued that pattern of clarity with examples, I would rank that with a much higher score. Not all programs use physical rubrics to score candidates, but many professors are thinking in these terms.

Fundamentals of Paragraphing

Something that many students know but tend to discard are the basic principles of academic writing. All academics, regardless of field, tend to write using some staples of academic discourse. This is good for most students because there are some clear rules to follow. Academic prose is, of course, quite diverse, but most academics adhere to the following mechanisms because they are established in the genres we produce (conference proposals, grant applications, articles).

The Topic Sentence

The first, and most foundational, is a topic sentence. Every paragraph you write for academic purposes should have a topic sentence that summarizes the content of a paragraph. In an admissions letter, you are arguing for your spot in a program, so that topic sentence should be unwavering, direct, and clear. Consider the differences between these two topic sentences.

Whether strong or weak, topic sentences lay the foundation for a paragraph. The first example sets the stage for a vague paragraph about passion. The second example sets the stage for a paragraph about specific interests in biology. Topic sentences in a letter of application should be short, direct, and say something about your qualifications for study in the program. Consider the examples below:

Note the tone in these examples: clear and firm. There are no qualifying terms or infirm language. Students frequently tell me “I haven’t researched anything! I’ve just written papers about it!” Welcome to academic research. That’s what we do, we read and write papers about things, usually with some kind of research method sprinkled in. If you’ve written a few research papers about American cinema for school, you’ve been researching American cinema. Presumably, the graduate program will help you to sophisticate your research, but you want to establish a foundation here. Avoid mushy, gushy, overly-excited topic sentences.

Note that none of these provide specifics, and they all lay out a plan for vague, sloppy paragraphs.

The Evidence

Academia can be broadly understood as a collection of places that create evidence for things through research. We all collect evidence for different kinds of things, but evidence is monumentally important to how we do things. A research article with bad evidence is not going to get published. A promotion file lacking evidence of effective teaching and research won’t get tenure. A book proposal without enough evidence suggesting the validity of the project won’t get approved. Your professors live in a professional world that is built atop evidence, and it’s important to begin thinking in the same terms.

Your paragraphs need evidence to illustrate their claims, otherwise they end up being anecdotes with a kind of “trust me” flavor. I don’t trust anything in my work life unless it has evidence. Your paragraphs should include evidence after the topic sentence. To return to a previous example, the claim of interest in biology is substantiated by examples of work done in courses:

Many letters lack these key details, which creates a vague, untrustworthy piece of writing.

Notice that this letter provides little academic evidence of interest or achievement. It is also disorganized, jumping from one concept to another. This choppy feeling is directly related to the fact that the paragraph has no focus, thus, there is no evidence that can support the claim other than a string of loosely-related anecdotes. Let’s look at a better example:

Notice the interplay between the topic sentence and the evidence. Some one that hasn’t really studied gender and environment couldn’t produce those next few sentences, which mean those sentences act as evidence that proves the claim, or the topic sentence.

Evidence can also come through experience. There is a fine line between irrelevant and relevant experiences in academia. In general, the experience should be very closely related to what you want to study.

In the first example, the student’s volunteer experience is directly related to their field of study. It’s highly likely that their thesis or dissertation research would involve campus food pantries (based on this letter, at least), so this experience is good evidence of research potential. The second example is listing experiences that are irrelevant to the study of English Literature, so they do not count as evidence to support interest in study.

I see this sort of experience listed frequently. Participating in or leading a general-interest club/group does not count towards research experience. Only list experiences that will show your ability to do research and succeed in a graduate program. You will not be required to lead a club as a graduate student. Your leadership of a club will not aid in your academic pursuits unless it is directly related to your research interests.

Analyzing and Impacting

The final stage of a paragraph involves concluding it. These concluding sentences are important. Some letters of application tend to function as evidence dumps where a student lists 15 reasons why they should be admitted to a program. This is often called “listing,” and isn’t particularly interesting to read. Analysis and impact statements will show your thinking to a committee. Evidence is important, but explanation as to why evidence is important is paramount. If I could boil down academic writing to two key concepts, it would be 1) evidence, and 2) an explanation of why that evidence is important. This roughly corresponds to the results/discussion section of many academic articles, the two sections that will make/break any publication.

Admissions committees are often reading dozens, if not hundreds of these applications. Professors don’t have the time or energy to think about the relevance/importance of your evidence. You must explain it to them in an explicit way. A common reason that journal articles are rejected is because the authors haven’t done a good enough job of explaining why their research is important. They lay out a solid foundation of claims and evidence, but fail to interpret the evidence clearly enough. The guiding question for the end of your paragraphs should be “why is this evidence important?”

Answering the “why is this evidence important” question is very difficult if your evidence isn’t important. Notice the difference between the paragraphs above. The first comes to a strong, important conclusion. The second arrives at a kind of personal revelation. Those are important too, but not in an academic letter. Closing up your paragraphs will help guide your reader and signal your thinking about why certain aspects of your career are important to your future studies.

These three ideas should be present and clear in every paragraph you write for a letter. I personally recommend that students outline their letter based on topic sentences, evidence, and analysis, and then draft. This will ensure your letter is saying something important.

How to Structure a Letter/SOP

Letters and SOPs are generally similar, but may diverge in some important ways. The key here is to follow directions. Not following directions is a great way to show that you are not prepared for graduate study. Also, you want to avoid the appearance of spamming. Many students will create a single, generic letter of application, and then spam it to dozens of graduate programs. If a letter doesn’t adhere to the instructions, then it’s a safe bet that the student is a spammer and should be avoided (this also happens in job application letters. If the letter is not specific, then it’s likely the candidate is spamming every school possible).

Schools are generally going to ask for a few things or will ask that you respond to a few questions. The first thing to do is understand the length requirement. If a school says that your letter should be no longer than a single page, then do not go over that page count. That’s a quick way to end up disqualified from consideration. Some students think “well, that must be a general guideline that obviously doesn’t apply to me!” Wrong. Those guidelines are there for several reasons. If the length is a page, that means it’s entirely possible to satisfy their questions in a page and thus there is no reason to go over that.
Structure is generally going to be a matter of following directions as well. A prompt may look something like this:

These directions fairly explicitly provide you with an outline. Produce three distinct content paragraphs, each satisfying one of the questions in the order in which they appear. That’s it. If they ask four questions, then do the same, but add a fourth paragraph. This order will generally tell you how long each paragraph should be. For three questions, each should constitute roughly one-third of the page. Dividing your total length by number of questions is a good way to begin planning your letter. While each question doesn’t have to be exactly the same length, they should be fairly similar in length. Do not respond to one question for two-thirds of the document. If they ask three questions, it’s likely because they want three, substantive answers.

Find Examples

Since you have likely never written a letter of application, it’s a good idea to find examples from within your field. Some graduate schools provide them. Some career services offices provide them. There are many available on the internet, and many of them are dubious in quality. Some students triumphantly post their letters after being accepted to a good program and think they are performing some great act of charity by releasing their amazing letter. What that student may not know is that they were at the bottom of the applicant list and only given a slot because 30 other students accepted offers at different schools. Don’t trust any one example too much. Instead, try to get a sense of some general ideas present in letters in your field. Mold those general principles onto the structures present in this chapter.

Answering Common Questions: Why Did You Choose Our Program?

Many students interpret this as an ass-kissing question, and that the most effective strategy for answering is to shower the program with praise and adulation.

Presumably, you are going to graduate school to develop your abilities as a thinker and researcher. The above answer is decidedly un-academic. Aside from some bad apples, every graduate program out there will feature a set of accomplished faculty teaching a solid set of courses. The amount of vetting (both internal and external) that goes into a creating a graduate program is extreme. It will have taken years to establish such a program and lots of work to maintain. As a potential student, your praise of the program is more or less meaningless. Faculty know when they are doing good work. Your letter  is better spent answering the question.

This question may seem very straightforward, but it’s asking about some fairly complex thinking. What this question is really asking is why did you choose our program vs. every other program in this field? That’s impossible to answer fully, but you should be able to isolate some specific reasons as to why you chose a program. This question is really good at weeding out application spammers because they rarely slow down and write specific answers.

As with all of your answers, you will need to find specific evidence to support your thinking. There may be a particular professor on the graduate faculty that writes about issues that you are interested in. Name that professor as evidence of why you chose that program. There may be a set of courses that are perfectly aligned with your interests. List those courses as evidence. There may be an internship/campus office/job placement record that align with your goals. List those. Specificity in this section is very important. Let these faculty know that you have done your homework on their program.

Answering Common Questions: What Do You Want to Do with a Degree from Our Program?

Most students don’t know exactly what they want to do after a graduate program, so this question tends to stump them. An important note: The answer to this question is not binding! Your graduate faculty will not track you down after graduation and force you to commit to the future you outlined in a letter of application. This question is asking you to make an inference based on data, also known as a conclusion. In academic research, we frequently write conclusions that are projections. They aren’t a wild guess because we  usually base that projection on something, likely a collection of observations and data. It’s an upgraded version of an educated guess. For this question in a letter, you should choose an actual career, and then provide evidence that shows how your graduate program will help you reach that career.

A former student of mine wanted to become an editor for a publisher or content creation firm. Their graduate program offered an internship as an editor and several courses in editing and document design. Their answer to this question described a few potential companies they were interested in working for, and then provided the evidence from the program to support that claim. I tell students to frame this as a best-case scenario answer. Delete any mushy language like “hope to” and replace it with “will.”

This answer should read like a detailed plan rather a list of “hope to” statements. Again, this plan doesn’t have to be perfect or correct. The function of this answer is to show the program that you have done your homework and are seriously engaged with your professional outcomes. Routinely, students write about career plans that have little to do with the plan of study within a program, and this is a strong reason to reject an applicant. It’s better to admit students that will use the resources of the program to better their career potential.

Answering Common Questions: What Made You Interested in this Subject?

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, this question is deceptive. It is not asking about a specific life event in your childhood that got you interested in bugs or literature. This question is asking about relevant academic experience. Your best strategy here is coursework and projects. Outline experiences you’ve had academically that engaged you and made you want to explore a topic further. It is sometimes appropriate to mention important life experiences, but only if they are directly related to something you want to research. For example, I recently worked with a student interested in studying meteorology. This student had completed an internship with a local news studio and worked extensively with the weather crew during that time. The experiences during that internship were important on a personal and academic level. They helped this student understand what they wanted to study, but also shows academic initiative.

The most common answer to this question involves the death a relative or some experience in distant childhood. These often come across as pandering and overly emotional. Students are also told that admissions committees want to see this kind of writing. For undergraduate admissions, that is likely true. Those applications are often being read by entry-level employees that are often alums of the institution. Appeals based on personal struggles might be appropriate  as these employees are often looking for “Insert-university-name-here material.” The people reading your letter of application for graduate school will be professors. We live and work in the realm of data and research, so your letter needs to be substantive, thoughtful, and evidence-driven.

Writing the CV

“My CV is too short! Should add my job as a computer lab supervisor?” This is the only question I hear about CVs, and the answer is always no. CVs are life-long academic records. If you look at the CVs of your professors, they are likely many pages long. You will not have that amount of academic accomplishments as a prospective graduate student, and committees know this. The most important part of your CV is that it look like a CV in your field. There are variations in CVs across discipline. I recommend that you research the CVs of your prospective faculty and then model your CV after them. Do not list academically irrelevant experience on the document.

Prospective applicants tend to dramatically over-estimate the influence of their CV of the application process. In my experience, a well-designed CV can’t help you, but a poorly-designed/fluffed up CV can hurt you. By far, the most important thing in this process is the letter of application. I often notice students procrasti-working on their CVs rather than working on the letter. The letter is much harder to write, so people naturally look for distractions or ways to avoid working on it. The CV is a perfect fit for this because it is a part of most applications. Know that the committee may spend 30 seconds or less on your CV, so designing one with a conventional layout for your field is important. Also, follow directions. Some programs may ask for specific information on your CV (like a GPA). Ignoring those instructions shows that you haven’t researched the program well enough.

Revise, but Within Reason

Many students (and working academics) revise documents into oblivion. It’s a form of procrastinating in its own way. You will need to work through some major revisions of your letter and CV, but within reason. In an ideal world, you would find a professor that has served on an admissions committee in your department or in another department. Anonymity is best here because it will produce the best feedback. A good strategy is to ask a trusted faculty member to strip your letter of identifying information and then share it with a colleague. It’s hard to heavily critique the letter of a student I know. Anonymity will mirror how peer-review works, and will produce good feedback for revisions. The feedback will be much more harsh, but that kind of feedback is infinitely more useful than the “looks great!” variety.

Do not over-revise. Some students end up laboring over needless word edits for months because they are scared of ultimately submitting their letter. I’ve seen many people postpone their application cycle due to unnecessary edits. The revising isn’t really the issue there. It is is being used as an outlet to deal with the anxiety of applying to schools. You have to take the plunge at some point. I’ve also seen tons, tons of grammatical errors in letters of application for faculty positions. Errors happen. When some one has an amazing letter, a minor error won’t immediately disqualify it. In a weak letter, however, grammar errors can contribute to a sense that the student is not ready for graduate study.