(Untitled)

[aardvark428]

I've been trying to write emails to profs but I am terrible at it. How much information is necessary? I am just asking if I can meet with them to talk about research and the graduate program, but after the last response I almost feel I should include the fact that I was rejected last time and this is the only place I'm applying to this year. On the

Comments

my suggestions

[paperclippy]

Not that I can say much about what makes a good personal statement because I obviously haven't been accepted into any grad schools yet, but here are some suggestions.

1. Don't talk about the Peace Corps and following Kurt to Texas. That makes it sound like you don't really want to go to grad school, but you're doing it because you can't go into the Peace Corps and that you want to be a wife before being a scientist. I really don't think that's what grad schools want to hear. You can talk about how you always wanted to use science to help people, and how UT has this great program, blah blah. You might throw in "after graduation I moved to Texas with my fiance" or something to let them know you live in Austin.
   
   
2. I chose to do research the summer after my sophomore year, as an NSF-REU student, -- how about rewording this to say something like "the summer after my sophomore year I became involved in research at the university of _____ studying _____"
   
   
3. I spent most of the summer attempting to synthesize -- this sounds like you tried to

[nickjong]

I too don't really know what grad school admissions committees look for, but maybe some of what I say will make sense. Your statement of purpose is very matter-of-fact about what you've done and what you want to do. I think it would help the reader to see a bit more of how and why the research motivates or excites you. For example, I think the most informative sentence is, "it was was also the most interesting part as I enjoyed figuring out how to make reactions work better and what happened when a reaction did not proceed as expected," and I think you could expand on this a little. You might demonstrate a sense of perspective by mentioning how the research you've done might (or could have) accomplished your goal of helping people. Another idea might be to try to form a connection between your research interests and the work of individual faculty members here. Given that you are just applying to one school, it doesn't hurt to customize your statement a little