Session Two:

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Session Two

• Completing the Statement of Purpose The
  Letter of Recommendation

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Statement of Purpose

• Writing a personal statement for your application.

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• The Personal statement must serve as a reflection
  of your personality and intellect.
• You must sell yourself through this statement,
  just as you would do in a job interview.
  Preparation and thought are essential.

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• A good statement takes a lot of time to prepare.
  If you only spend a couple of hours working on
  it, this could work to sabotage your
  application.
• The good statement of purpose takes time.

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Two types of Personal Statements

• 1- General- Open essay. More of the medical and
  Law school type of question.
• 2- Comprehensive-Addresses a more specific
  question. Business and other graduate forms.

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The Opening Lines of Your Statement Should Catch
the Readers Attention

• I was taking out the garbage one morning on the
  Serengeti Plain when I realized what had been
  bothering me
• I received a bachelor of arts degree twenty
  years later than my high school peers.
• I am the sixth of seven children from a large
  blue-collar Irish-Catholic family in the Midwest.

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Next consider your academic background

• How have you prepared yourself to succeed in
  graduate school?
• What body of relevant knowledge will you take
  with you?
• What study or laboratory skill have honed to
  date?
• What personal attributes or physical
  characteristics make you particularly likely to
  succeed in your new career?

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• What is your biggest accomplishment to date? Take
  a little time with this one, as it may not be
  obvious. While you are thinking about it, make a
  list of many things I am proud of.
• Be confident in your writing. Assume that you
  will be admitted.

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What Should I do when My Grades and Test Score Do
Not Represent My True Ability?

• Explain them in your essay.
• As a general rule, it is better to keep your main
  statement of purpose as positive as possible.
• Do not make long involved excuses keep it simple
  and devoid of drama no whining and no feeling
  sorry for yourself.
• It may help to compute your GPA according to a
  more beneficial formula.

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Your problem must meet these criteria.

• It has to be in the past.
• It has to be resolved.
• It has to be sympathetic.
• It should be unlikely to recur in graduate school.

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Get a Copy of Your Transcript and Analyze It

• Calculate your GPA in your major.
• Calculate your GPA in each of the subject areas.
• Math
• English
• Science
• Compute year by year
• Look for patterns, especially ones that show your
  grades going up.
• Identify your worst semester or grade.

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Warning Keep All Excuses to a Minimum

• Remember this will possibly be your only
  opportunity to explain yourself.
• No whining and no feeling sorry for yourself
• Learn from your mistakes
• My recent GPA is 4.0 including both graduate and
  undergraduate classes Ive been taking in
  geography. As a mature adult, Im looking forward
  to returning to school and focusing on my studies
  in a way I did not the first time around.

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Example

• To make sense of my transcript you will need
  to know that I changed my major four times before
  I finished my sophomore year, which is also why I
  extended my undergraduate degree career to a
  fifth year. I always made straight As in math
  and science, but I just didnt connect to
  engineering until

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Example

• Finally. I would like to address the issue of
  my academic career. As you have my transcripts,
  you can clearly see that I was not especially
  serious in my first few years as an
  undergraduate, and you can also see that I have
  improved dramatically. I have a 3.9 GPA in my
  major, and I expect to continue to do as well in
  Graduate school.

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Edit Your Essay

• Less is more in a statement of purpose.
• There is no correct or ideal number of drafts,
  but fewer than three is probably too few.
• Do not use a small font, so that you can add more
  information.
• Edit to make sure you get the point across.
• Spelling and Grammar should be perfect.
• Be careful not edit the life out of your essay.
• Use Very Clear Printing.
• This is just the beginning.

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The Essay Hall of Shame

• Errors and sloppiness, misspellings, even an
  occasional handwritten essay. You have to wonder
  how they made the grades on their transcript.
• Spelling errors, poor English.
• Anything that starts out, I've always wanted to
  be a____.
• Sometimes they dont really answer the question.
  We ask each question for a reason.
• When they just seem to be saying what they think
  we want to hear. We can pick up on that right
  away.
• Our application is a little different. We want
  original work. I hate it when I can tell that
  theyre recycling material they wrote for other
  schools.
• The essay sounds like they want to be the next
  Mother Teresa, but theres nothing in the rest of
  the application to back up any claims of
  altruism.

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Obtaining letters of Recommendation.
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Letters of Recommendation

• Your grades, your test scores, your essays,
  and your letters of recommendation make up the
  entire body of evidence upon which the admissions
  committee will base its decision.
• A careful, thoughtful letter from a teacher
  or employer sometimes tells the admission
  committee enough about the applicants ability
  for them to judge his or her prospects for
  academic success to be better than mere numerical
  factors suggest.

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Nonacademic factors

• These nonacademic factors are taken into
  consideration. However, only those judged to be
  fully qualified academically will be accepted.
  Examples of factors that may be significant in
  individual cases include the followinga.
  Minority status or unusual cultural
  background.b. Geographic diversity.
• c. Time between college graduation and
  application to graduate school.
• d. Diversity of experience, e.g., work
  experience, college activity, political activity,
  community service, or other life experience that
  may add additional and unusual perspective to the
  student body.

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Getting Fantastic Letters of Recommendation

• The first and most obvious strategy is to
  approach your letter writers at the earliest
  possible moment.
• Make it very clear when you plan to submit your
  application.
• Give them time to prepare a good letter.
• Its your job to prompt the letter writers and see
  that they turn in the letter on time.
• Prompt them at least once a week.
• It is a good idea to solicit one more letter of
  recommendation, than required.

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Selecting Letter Writers Carefully

• You should select your letter writers carefully,
  using three criteria
• Do they know you well enough to write about you
  in a detailed and persuasive manner?
• Will they say wonderful things about you?
• Are they reliable enough to write and post your
  recommendation in a timely manner?
• Most schools dont require that all your letter
  writers be professors read and follow the
  schools requirements carefully.

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Writing Your Own Letter of Recommendation

• OK. You've written dynamite essays and filled out
  the applications. All of a sudden you get an
  unexpected curve ball. One of your recommenders
  says "I really want to help you get into grad
  school. Why don't you write the letter of rec,
  and I'll sign it. That way it will emphasize
  exactly what you think is most important."

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• You of course graciously acknowledge the
  recommender's good intentions and thank him or
  her for the outstanding idea. Inwardly you are
  less than thrilled with the idea of writing one
  more word about yourself.
• Relax. We'll tell you what a recommender should
  say. In fact, you can pass these tips on to your
  recommenders. in case they don't know what to say
  and don't ask you to say it.

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• 10 Tips for Recommenders

• Review a copy of the applicant's personal
  statement or application essays so that your
  letter of recommendation can dovetail with--not
  conflict with or duplicate--the rest of the
  application.
• Ask the applicant to supply you with additional
  information like a résumé.
• Describe your qualifications for comparing the
  applicant to other applicants.
• I have been teaching for twenty years and have
  advised approximately 450 students on independent
  research projects over the last five years.
• I have personally supervised ten interns every
  summer for the last five years plus worked with
  over two hundred college graduates in my capacity
  as trainer for Big Bank Corp.

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• 4. Discuss how well you know the applicant.
• I was able to get to know Mr. Doe because he made
  it a point to attend two of my sections every
  week when only one was required.
• Ms. Smith reported directly to me for two years
  prior to her well-deserved promotion to the
  position of Senior in our Big Six Accounting
  Firm.
• 5. Choose two to three qualities that you
  observed in the applicant.
• Jane has a rare blend of top writing and
  interpersonal skills.
• The combination of tenacity, analytical
  abilities, and good communications skills found
  in Mr. Doe is truly unique.

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• 6. In discussing those qualities, support your
  statements with specific instances in which he or
  she demonstrated those attributes. Be as concrete
  and detailed as possible
• He is the only student I ever had who came to all
  my office hours as part of a relentless, and
  ultimately successful, drive to master financial
  theory. He was one of just ten percent in the
  class to receive an A.
• Because of Jane's writing skills, I didn't
  hesitate to ask her to write a report which was
  used by our PAC as the basis for a major policy
  statement. Congressman X eventually used the
  statement, based on Jane's sophisticated 20-page
  analysis of Middle East politics, in lobbying for
  increased funding.

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• 7. Try to quantify the student's strengths or
  rank him or her compared to other applicants that
  you have observed.
• He was in the top 10 of his class.
• She has the best analytical skills of any person
  her age that I have ever supervised.
• 8. Avoid generalities and platitudes.

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• 9. Include some mild criticism, typically the
  flip-side of a strength.
• The only fault I have encountered in him is his
  retiring nature. His modesty sometimes hides a
  young man of remarkable strength and broad
  interests.
• Occasionally, her fortitude and persistence can
  turn into stubbornness, but usually her good
  nature and level-headedness prevail.
• 10. Discuss the applicant's potential in his or
  her chosen field.
• I enthusiastically recommend Mr. Doe to your
  business school. This well-rounded student will
  be a fine businessperson..
• With her exceptional leadership, writing, and
  quantitative skills, Ms. Smith will be an
  outstanding strategic consultant and a credit to
  the business school she attends.

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• Sample Essay 2
•   The Engineering Student
• A simple bridge truss was the first
  structure I ever analyzed. The simple combination
  of beams that could hold cars, trains, and trucks
  over a long span of water fascinated me. Having
  the tools to analyze the loads on the truss
  further increased my interest in structures. I
  encountered the bridge in a textbook for my first
  engineering class.
• Knowing that the professor, Mr.
  John Doe, was a tough teacher, I asked him for
  the textbook so I could study and get ready for
  the class over the summer. Just arrived from
  Belize, I was determined to succeed. In class we
  learned about forces on simple members and then
  we put the members together to form a simple
  truss. At this point I had almost decided that
  structural engineering was the career for me.
  From there the class just took off We went on to
  frames, distributed loads, considered friction
  basically we were . . .