How to Write a Strong SOP for PhD Applications — Part 1

At Oxford English Services, we’ve helped dozens of applicants get offers from top PhD programs at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, and more.

This is the first article in a series of 3 on writing a strong statement of purpose, or SOP, which is easily the most important part of your grad school application. This information is targeted toward anyone applying to academically competitive graduate programs with a major research component (masters or PhD programs) in the humanities, social sciences, or STEM subjects.

Today we’re going to look at the steps you should take before you start writing your SOP. Many people want to start writing as soon as possible, but in our experience those who do these 4 things first tend to have much stronger statements as a result.

1. The first step is research — specifically identifying key academic publications and ongoing debates in your prospective research area.

The academic world is all about relevance, and applying to graduate programs is your first chance of many to make a case for the potential impact of your work. In order to do this, you need to contextualize your research, or position it in the broader context of what’s already been published and crucially what’s being published right now. This is the sort of research getting grants from funding bodies, getting through peer review at top journals, and helping people get faculty positions.

The best way to approach this is to work backwards from your target schools and supervisors. You can do this in a few ways:

• Look up the most recent few editions of the big journals in your field.
• Look up large labs or research clusters in your department and see what they’ve gotten grants for or are running seminars or conferences on.
• Look at what recently hired faculty are publishing on.

All of this information is available online and you’ll quickly notice patterns like key terms, methodologies, thematic areas, or common interdisciplinary connections. These are the things that are currently in fashion — and luckily academia moves at a much slower pace than other fields so you have time to adjust and react before applying.

Once you have a good sense of the field, we find that it’s helpful to summarize everything in one concise document that highlights a few key publications. This works whether you’re in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities.

To do this, pick one or two pieces of foundational work — the sorts of papers or books that launched the area you’re working in or first described the methodology. These might even be a few decades old. Next, pick a few current and trendy projects that take a side in a key debate or propose a new perspective. Finally add in the most recent publications by the faculty you want to work with.

If you write short summaries of all of these publications and keep them in one place, you’ll soon start to see potential connections, even gaps or inconsistencies. Those gaps and overlaps are exactly where you want your SOP to sit — and finding them before you start writing will put you ahead of the vast majority of applicants.

2. This process will help you move on to our next step, which is forming a research question based on all of this context.

Most importantly, your research needs to innovate either in content (what you’re studying) or method (how you’re approaching it). And ideally it should innovate in both.

But it also can’t innovate too much, or it becomes hard for admissions committees to conceptualize. In fact it really has to stay pretty closely connected to current research in order for it to seem like it’s coming from someone who’s deeply engaged with the current state of the field.

The best research projects strike a balance between these two things: the originality on one hand and the relevance on the other.

The easiest way to make sure you’re doing this is by positioning your work in relation to, and likely against, some existing weakness or gap in the published literature. This doesn’t mean you need to attack your prospective supervisor’s work, but it does mean that you shouldn’t propose a simple reapplication of existing techniques to a slightly different area — no matter how high you think the impact would be. Your research question needs to be substantively new.

Those in STEM fields applying to work in specific labs may be a bit more constrained on this front, particularly if they’re hoping to join a long term funded research project. In this case, it’s important to both show your interest in that existing project but also to do what we just described to show your additional or secondary interests.

Now, in reality, your actual dissertation may end up being completely different from what you propose — and departments know this. But being able to craft a coherent and promising research question with the right context is the key skillset that the SOP is testing for. Doing this part well has a greater effect on your admissions chances than anything else because it draws on and displays all the other expertise you’ve gained in the field so far.

One final note. You may not necessarily settle on exactly one question or it may be a statement instead of a question and all of that’s okay. Some people even get accepted by describing a much broader set of interests. What matters, though, is that they can demonstrate that same ability to design and complete a compelling research project that departments are looking for. And you need to be able to distill that to 2 or 3 sentences, a sort of elevator pitch, to move to the next stage of the process.

3. The third step is either writing or updating your academic CV.

It’s important for our final step that you have a concise and direct CV ready to go early on in the admissions process.

Our main tip is to model your CV on a younger member of faculty in your field — someone who’s currently working and getting published but not already so famous that they don’t need to worry about their CV. You can find this on their faculty page at most universities’ websites.

Follow roughly the same order they do but keep it short. 2 pages is plenty for most people applying to PhDs, especially if you’re coming straight from undergrad. Here are a few specific tips.

• This is not the place to load in every extracurricular activity you’ve done or test scores from high school. It’s a highlight reel, so list your most relevant coursework rather than giving an exhaustive list.
• For the major areas like employment, research, extracurricular, etc, write bullet points that are relevant to your proposed research either in content (the what) or method (the how). If it doesn’t pass either of those tests, ditch it.
• Finally and most importantly is an exception to that last rule: include any longer research projects you’ve completed or writing you’ve published, even in other fields, and especially including your MA or BA thesis. Showing you can do this and describe it succinctly is key.

If you do all this and follow a standard format, your CV will stand out from most undergrad applicants which are full of scattered detail and often way too long.

4. The fourth and final step is what all of this builds up to: contacting prospective supervisors.

Some people prefer to wait to contact supervisors until they have a draft of their SOP to attach to the email, but we tend to advise people to actually send a shorter email first.

These emails often intimidate people because they go in with too many expectations. The purpose of this email is not to charm your way into the PhD program or even to form a relationship with the supervisor at all. Instead, all you’re trying to do here is establish a few simple details.

Most importantly, you need to confirm that the professor will be available to supervise new students for the years you’re applying. Especially in smaller departments, if a key professor in your research area is on a leave of absence or a temporary position abroad, the department may automatically reject your application because they won’t be able to offer you adequate supervision — and this information isn’t always posted on the faculty page, especially a year or more in advance when you’re writing your SOPs.

Your prospective supervisor also needs to be actively accepting students. Asking this question is a great way to get possible hints about the department’s admissions outlook for the following year too, because many professors will let you know if they don’t currently have the time or funding to take on new students in the next few years. Alternatively, their research focus might have shifted because of a new grant or a completed project, meaning that they are looking for students that better match that new area.

Knowing any of these things up front will save you time and money before you start writing a SOP specially tailored to work with that person. It can also result in helpful recommendations, such as other departments and faculty members that you should consider.

One warning. No matter how much thought you put into this email, many professors will simply reply with something short and polite, like “Your research topic sounds very interesting. I look forward to discussing it further if your application is successful.”

And that’s completely fine! Don’t read into this and assume it’s a polite rejection. In all likelihood, they’re overwhelmed with emails or could even be on an admissions committee that doesn’t allow them to discuss your application in depth with you. You’ve established the key details and now know that applying is worth your time.

So how should this email look?

• Start with a brief introduction — your name, your current or previous institution, and why you’re emailing, which is that you’re hoping to apply for a graduate degree
• Then add that two to three sentence summary of your research question in context from step two.
• Next add your questions, such as “Are you planning to accept any potential students next year in this area?” Or, our favorite — “Do you think this project might fit well in [school name’s] department?”
• At the end, make sure to politely sign off.
• Finally, attach your CV to the email.

Here are a few things not to do:

1. Ask to get on a video call.
2. Ask about your chances of admission.
3. Praise random publications of theirs that you haven’t read. Small complements are fine if they’re genuine, but glowing praise is likely to come across as inauthentic.

When it comes to timing, ideally you’d send this email somewhere between 6 and 3 months before the application deadline. This gives them enough time to reply while also allowing their plans for the following year to be fully set.

Conclusion

Once you complete these steps, you’ll be in a much better position for starting work on your SOP. In the next article, we’ll go through the format and writing process in detail. Be sure to subscribe so that you can get a notification when it comes out!

And if you ever need any personalized help with your SOP, send us an email or check out our website.

2024 UPDATE: Due to overwhelming demand (in part from this post!) we’ve now launched a complete guide to graduate admissions, available here: https://payhip.com/b/DSZmq

The course includes 20,000+ regularly updated words, 5 case studies with real applicants in common situations, and 5 templates to simplify the application process. Our goal is to help you get as far into the process as possible on your own (even all the way through) — or to help you get more out of your time with an admissions consultant.