Sample SOPs Essay 1 I suppose if we all knew why we think, feel and act like we do, Psychology wouldn't

even exist. It seems next to impossible, therefore, to try to describe in detail why I have chosen to be a clinical psychologist. All I can possibly tell you is the sort of experiences I've had that demonstrate how interested I am in clinical psychology. I can't even remember why I chose to major in psychology, but I knew once I enrolled in Psychology 101 that if I just stayed in psychology, I knew I would never be bored with my education or my career. I soon learned how important it was to get research experience, so I enrolled joined Dr. Sensali's lab in September, 1999. While there, I was primarily responsible for entering data from a survey we were conducting of students' attitudes toward different types of teaching styles. One of the things I most appreciated about this experience was that I got to interact with other graduate students, and observe firsthand the stresses and joys of graduate school. I also got my first exposure to SPSS that semester, and I am grateful for that because it gave me a bit of a head start in learning how to use a statistical analysis software. In January 2000, I enrolled in Abnormal Psychology. Dr. Richmond taught this class, and it was probably his enthusiasm for the subject matter that eventually converted me to the idea of becoming a clinical psychologist. I did well in the course as I did in most of my courses, but the most important thing about that class was that I had to write a research paper on personality disorders as a course requirement. For whatever reason, I was particularly struck by narcissistic personality disorder, and as I spent hours and hours in the library researching this topic, it became clear very quickly that although psychologists know a lot about this and other disorders, more high-quality research is sorely needed. I remember thinking how frustrated I was as I realized that there were gaps in my paper-no one seemed to have explored this question or that question-and I could only imagine how practitioners felt as they tried to do the best they could for their clients but didn't quite have all the information they needed in order to do so. Good research is crucial to alleviating people's distress, and I want to be any research that moves toward that goal. In my final semester of my senior year at XXXXXX, I joined Dr. Raskin's lab. There, I was able to run married couples through an interview procedure as part of a study on how marital communication is affected by the death of a child. I appreciated Dr. Raskin's trust in me, even if it was scary at times. Later I also assisted as a data enterer and response coder. On a few occasions, I also participated in data analysis sessions with the graduate students.

Another important experience I had that semester is that I began volunteering for Crisis services. This was not just an eye-opening experience, it was also a real personal challenge for me, as I was basically forced, with minimal training, to somehow establish common-ground with people who were experiencing acute, severe distress. Some of my life's scariest experiences took place while I volunteered for Crisis services, but it was so uplifting to be able to know I might have made a tiny difference at just the right moment for a handful of people. After this experience, I knew for certain that I would attend graduate school in Clinical Psychology. Overall I am pleased with my academic record and I believe that it has prepared me very well for graduate school. As you may notice, however, my grades improved over time. I began college as a pre-med major, and as should be evident, most of the "damage" to my GPA occurred in my freshman-year chemistry and physics classes. I learned important things about the philosophy of science in those classes, but as I learned about a year later, my interests were clearly elsewhere (i.e., in working with people). I assume that my recommenders have adequately addressed my qualifications for your graduate program. I hope you will seriously consider me as a student in your program, because by interest in personality disorders is well-represented by the faculty in your department. I sincerely believe I would make an excellent student in your program, and I am prepared to work and study hard in order to meet the high standards that CWRU is known for. Thank you for your consideration. Essay 2 A beluga whale helped me first realize my true academic passion. I spent my high school summers and weekends volunteering at the New York Aquarium, first in the education department, and later in the training department. It was there, through casual and research-oriented observations of cetaceans, that I began to wonder about animal and human minds. I later had the opportunity to participate in an observational research project, helping to record data on the behaviors of new whale calves and mothers. My informal and formal observations fed my interest in the phylogenetic and ontogenetic bases of cognition and language. As a psychology student at [my school], I had numerous opportunities to research and observe human psychology, both in and out of the classroom. As a sophomore, along with a professor and fellow students in a seminar class, I helped design and run a study on categorization and user's intentions. Later that year we presented our findings at the annual American Psychological Society meeting. In that same year I also assisted a professor in conducting a study on the effects of familiar and unfamiliar music on reading comprehension.

I spent the summer following my sophomore year (1997) as a research assistant in the [my school] Psychology Department, funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Foundation. I collaborated with a professor, a fellow undergraduate student, and a visiting high school student to research, design, and run a study on attitudes towards germs and illness. This included conducting an extensive literature review, specifying research questions, and designing questionnaires that would help us effectively answer our research questions. In addition to strengthening my research abilities, this experience gave me the invaluable opportunity to interact with fellow researchers as a student, a peer, and a mentor. My extracurricular research experience during my sophomore and junior years of college gave me the tools to independently develop and carry out research projects. During my senior year at [my school], I completed a long term library-based research project on the evolution of the human linguistic ability. As a person who tends to look at the big picture when conducting research, this project was the perfect opportunity for me to integrate research from numerous fields and subfields in order to answer a psychologically based question. Through the study of anthropology, paleoneurology, neuropsychology, linguistics, and psycholinguistics, I explored theories debating the neurological and behavioral bases for language evolution. Although I do not envision the study of language evolution as being my main focus in graduate school or beyond, I still hold an interest in the field. As soon as I complete my graduate school applications, I plan to start preparing peer commentary articles on this topic for the on-line journal Psycholoquy. My current research interests include language acquisition and cognitive development. I would like to study the relationship between language acquisition and the development of other cognitive processes. More specifically, I am interested how the development of metacognition and concepts affects and is effected by semantic and lexical development in toddlers and preschoolers. This research interest has developed over the greater part of the last decade; starting with my observations of behavior development in beluga whales, and shaped by my in depth study of cognition and language as a college undergraduate. I feel that my research interests fit extremely well with the psychology department at [school I am applying to], and in particular with professors [a professor] and [another professor]. I would be elated to have the opportunity to study in a department where there is such a plethora of researchers who study cognition and development. The breadth of research done at [school I am applying to] would allow me not only to pursue my interests in depth with talented researchers, but would also allow me to eventually pursue some of my secondary interests in other areas of cognitive development. It is because of these fabulous opportunities that [school I am applying to] is my top choice for graduate study.

I am confident that graduate study at [school I am applying to] would prepare me well for my long term career goals. I wish to eventually hold a tenured position at a college or university, where I would have the opportunity to do research and to act as a teacher and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students. My undergraduate experiences at [my school] have fostered my love of and dedication to research, and provided the necessary tools to pursue my goals. I know that the opportunity to study at [school I am applying to] would allow me to grow as a student and researcher, and allow me to make significant contributions to the field of developmental psychology. Please note that I have replaced identifying information (my undergraduate institution, and school I wrote this essay for) with "[my school]" or "[school I am applying to]". Also note that the paragraph about my fit with the school was different for each school. And I didn't say that every school was my first choice... I only told that to the two school that were at the time my top choices. (I couldn't decide between the two, so I felt justified in telling both of them that they were at the top of my list, since they were.) Paragraph divisions have also been removed. Essay 3 When I came to college I wanted to be a doctor. I was going to study biology, pick up a second major along the way, and go to medical school to become a rural practitioner. I soon realized that I was suffering from my own version of "Med. Student Syndrome." I did not think that I was sick, but I did realize that I was obviously delusional. I realized that I did not have the burning desire to become a medical doctor. The profession did not interest me; it was my perception of the profession that had caught my fancy. Luckily, by then I had begun to study psychology, so I understood what a good delusion was like. As I studied psychology more and more, I found what excites me most of all were the investigation, dissection and understanding of problems that I saw around me in the world. I began to really excel in my studies of biology when I began to take courses in field zoology, avian biology, and ecology, where I was able to approach questions I could visualize with experience instead of with slides. Likewise, I found psychology courses stimulated me to think and explore my world as I took courses in development, psychopathology, personality and behavior analysis. Dr. XXXX's behavior analysis classes gave me good critical and analytic skills through our repeated analyses, discussion and practice of both basic and complex behavioral principles. I received research training with XXX, Ph.D. while working on an autism and social behaviors study, and with XXX, Ph.D. while writing an honors thesis and subsequent poster presentation. My work with Dr. XXX helped me develop my observational skills and learn to classify and define abstract descriptors into concrete variables. In my honors research, I started with a broad question, wondering whether young adults'

substance use behaviors were related to both sensation seeking and their friendships and if so how. Once I narrowed my ideas, collected and analyzed the data, I had to deal with the frustration of getting results that did not support the hypotheses. I did more data collection and analyses for a poster presentation at the Society for Prevention Research annual conference, and in post-hoc analyses I found that while I had studied the sample as a whole, males and females had different predictors of alcohol use. Even though I hadn't supported my original hypotheses, this gave me ideas as to why. One of my favorite biology professors used to say that advances in science are often made by proving something does not exist, something I learned well through my research. I am currently volunteering for a year in Fairbanks, Alaska, through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps at a parenting resource center. I work in Family Preservation Services with families whose children have been in state custody trying to keep the families together. It's difficult work; I see kids every day who are very young but who have already had pretty tough lives. Many of these children could be case studies of multiple risk factors. As some here have put it, they are "damaged." My work here has really driven my thinking about how abuse, divorce, and familial discord interact to affect children in their social interactions, their view of themselves and the world, and the future predicted for them. I would like to find ways to help kids like those I work with have more promising lives. I am interested in studying child and adolescent mental health, particularly issues of substance use, risk and resilience, pathology and aggression, and how social and family context affects each of these issues. Essentially I am interested in ways in which we can make growing up less difficult, particularly for high-risk kids. Through my undergraduate research, including my honors thesis, I was introduced to the issues surrounding adolescent substance use. I found myself very interested in both the specific issues of adolescent substance use and the ideas of how an adolescent's context, whether it is familial, environmental or peer, could affect the adolescent's life. I have been exposed through other classes and independent study to other work in risk and resilience, and specific child and adolescent problems of aggression, delinquency, depression, suicide and eating disorders. Each of these clinical issues has interesting causal mechanisms and pathways, which frequently have much in common. How so very many different developmental pathways can result from subtle differences in both context and learning history fascinates me. I am starting to see that many clinical problems are a result of a complex interaction between the person and their context, and that teasing apart the individual pieces of these interactions as much as possible will better inform our understanding of them. I see myself spending my career primarily in research and teaching. I see it as crucial to have research that is well informed by clinical practice, and clinical practice well

grounded in research. I also see it as necessary to ensure that research is properly disseminated, and that under-served areas gain increased attention as targets of study and clinical practice assistance. For example, most of Alaska does not have a strong university presence, and I believe that the social service programs here suffer from not being up to speed on the latest in clinical developments. I'd like to develop prevention programs and interventions to help address what I choose to specialize in, and a position as a university professor would be the ideal way to achieve this goal. Further, I am very attracted by the prospect of teaching and mentoring college students about what I love. I decided to apply to XXX University for several reasons. I am attracted to XXX University by the strong emphasis on research and methodology. Particularly, the strong preventive focus of the Child Clinical area of emphasis is one that meshes well with what I am looking for in a program. In researching XXX University, the work of Drs. XXX and XXX particularly piqued my interest. I worked with XXX at XXX University, who exposed me to much of Dr. XXX's work on children of alcoholics. I would be interested in further pursuing work in risk factors for substance abuse, particularly looking at how familial and social context affect risk behaviors. Dr. XXX' research in risk and resilience and her prevention work with high risk adolescents is very much what I am interested in doing, as I not only have research experience but the clinical work with similar populations to what Dr. XXX' is working with. The Clinical Psychology program at XXX University has everything I am looking for in a program, just as I feel I have what XXX University should be looking for in an incoming student. I would be very excited to join the incoming class at the XXX University for 2000. I feel I am well prepared to enter graduate study, and my strong motivation and career goals are a good match for what XXX has to offer.

Sample of SOP for PHD

My objective for PhD studies in Computer Networks is to prepare myself for the long term goal of pursuing a career of teaching and research. I have nurtured a strong passion to become a scientist and pursue research. In the pursuit of Knowledge, I have always adopted a rigorous approach in order to attain an indepth understanding of the subject at hand. This has amply reflected in my consistently brilliant career. I have been involved in research in parallel and distributed computing systems. I

studied various problems in distributed systems and distributed databases including deadlock detection and resolution , termination detection , distributed snapshots and consistency. I have been attracted towards the field of correctness of parallel programs. I published a Technical Report reporting errors in two published deadlock detection algorithms and highlight their underlying deficiencies with respect to the distributed nature of computation. I am also involved in the Development of an optimizer generator which would automate the process of writing optimizers based on the specifications of the optimizations. I am currently engaged in writing a paper on an efficient algorithm for performing global data-flow analysis. The new algorithm that I have developed utilizes the notion of backward information flow to perform propagation using work-lists in an efficient manner. I have been in correspondence with Professor xxxx about my algorithm and other aspects of the problem. I have chosen to pursue graduate studies at Stanford University because by working under the guidance of the distinguished researchers I am confident of making an original contribution in the field of Computer Science. My interest in research has burgeoned during my undergraduate studies at IIT. I have excelled in our well-rounded and exacting undergraduate program and have developed a solid background to take up research in Computer Science. I have decided to go in for graduate studies which calls for a personal commitment to the fulfilling craft of independent research and that involves willingly making personal sacrifices of time , leisure and immediate reward . In turn I shall get intellectual satisfaction and the gratification of becoming a contributor to knowledge through research and the greater personal rewards of learning and discovery. I believe that I possess the motivation, intellectual ability and preparation to set out on this exhilarating and arduous path and to make Significant original contributions to your on-going research work.

I look forward to joining Stanford University as a graduate student at your esteemed department.