• Think very seriously about why you really want to go to graduate school and put it in your statement.

• Make your Statement reflect your thought about the research and writing work you have done. It should mention what inspired you to pursue literary criticism, and the sort of very broad trajectory you’d like to pursue.

• It’s fine to mention professors who inspired your work and thought, and why.

• Personal history is fine if it is relevant to your decision or what you intend to pursue in school.

• Spend LOTS of time on your statement of purpose! It is one of the things in your application that will set you off from the other applicants.

• Be honest, but don’t be sappy. You should really think about why you want to go to graduate school, and why a particular program seems to be a good fit. Avoid the “I love literature”, the “I love to read” or the “I really want to teach” statement at all costs.

• Be ready to outline your interests as closely as you can. Explain what you want to work on and why a particular program’s faculty is exciting to you.

• Have current faculty members (especially those writing your letters of recommendation) read your statement. This is very important. Begin working on it early so you can revise!

• Ask a TA you trust to read it over as well—again, give them lots of time to do this!

• There are readers at CLAS (Campus Learning Assisted Services) that are trained to help you with your Statement of Purpose as well.

• Your writing sample should be a research paper from a class you have taken here. It should usually be from 12-25 pages long and should represent your best intellectual work.

  If it is in the field you want to pursue, all the better, but it need not be. Your English 197 seminar paper might be a good example of the type of work you should be submitting.

• REVISE that writing sample substantially! Again, with the help of those faculty writing letters on your behalf. You may want to ask (well in advance) what sort of changes might move the paper towards graduate level and work on those revisions for your applications.

1. Don't have as your primary goal sounding cute, clever, witty, and brilliant. Have as your goal presenting yourself as an interesting and serious student/person, someone who is reflective about her goals, pursuits, life. I don't mean write something boring, obviously - but foreground yourself and your interests in a fairly local and precise way.

2. If you know what you want to study, foreground that. It gives you something specific to say and helps you to write a vibrant and detailed statement. If you don't know, talk about papers you've written or classes you've taken whose methodology or subject or period interests you. You need to sound engaged and able to focus - not already committed to a project.

3. If you've had unusual life experiences or academic experiences, talk about them. Describe them clearly and forcefully, but don't overwrite. Avoid too many evaluative words since, after all, you're evaluating yourself and that sounds biased.

4. Avoid empty phrases about how much you "love" literature or "love" reading or have "always found a private world" in books. We assume that you love to read, or you wouldn't be pursuing an advanced degree. What do you love about it? How does it affect you? What do you want others to know about how and why you read? Who do you most hope to reach through your reading and writing?

5. Think about the traits in other professors or grad students or literary critics/writers that you most admire. Frame your statement in relation to that.

I think the main thing I'd stress - and really stress this - is that the student should have two or three or more other people read their proposal before sending it in. Preferably faculty or folks who have read a lot of these things. Tone is crucial and is hard to teach, but adopting the wrong tone - overly-cute, precious, "intellectual" - is deadly.

I look for a sophisticated sense of what graduate study is all about and a good match between the student's goals and what our program has to offer. A well articulated expression of interest in some particular field can also be important, as can evidence of some serious engagement with that field. Applicants also benefit from letting us see something of themselves as people. Personal stories can sometimes be effective, particularly stories of hardships overcome or of an emerging sense of purpose. Stories of that sort can also help with certain kinds of fellowships, which are only available to students who come from a disadvantaged background. But stories of whatever sort must of course be made relevant to the hope of studying for a Ph.D. Good writing also counts for a lot.

First of all, do you have copies of application materials from various schools? I think it would be really useful for people thinking about graduate school to LOOK CLOSELY at the instructions different programs provide for the Statement of Purpose and the Personal Statement!

Aside from that, I think the most important points I can offer are these, alas too diffuse to serve as soundbites:

• Remember that the more you do the Admissions Committee's work for them by providing explicit evidence that you will make excellent use of the opportunity to train in their program, the easier it will be for them to admit you AND to give you support money. Don't hesitate to spell out details and facts provided elsewhere in the application (honors, awards, GPA, etc.). Beyond that, what specific features of THEIR particular program complement the training and interests you already possess (faculty and their current work; affiliated programs at that campus; research facilities, etc.)?

• Admissions Committees at mid- to large-sized programs will probably read collectively between one hundred and fifty and four hundred applications for, say, ten to twenty slots (and fewer slots with funding packages attached). They are looking for:
  
  1. evidence that the person applying will be able, right off the bat, to participate actively in training her/himself - that is, someone mature enough to motivate and discipline her/himself in seminars and TA work for the next five to six years;
  2. evidence that this person has a mind that her/his faculty will enjoy watching at work on literary texts; and
  3. evidence (as you can imagine, pretty much inference) that this person will be able to evolve and eventually complete a dissertation interesting and substantial enough to attract job offers, six or seven years down the line.
  
  The Statement of Purpose, along with any complementary personal-essay type of writing asked for in the application, is where you can present yourself as someone who is aware of the different kinds of work involved in this professional training and excited about engaging with them. * Your "voice" should be confident about your preparation and potential for the program. *

• At UCSB, at least, the Statement of Purpose is distinguished from a Personal Statement. What is the difference here? The Statement of Purpose is about what you want to accomplish by means of the professional training a graduate program provides. This is the place to talk about specific research interests (not yet accomplished), and to talk about the kinds of research you've done in the past, as well as about how you are prepared or plan to prepare yourself to do that research (languages? training in certain kinds of archival work?). This is also the place, though I'd suggest to a lesser extent, to talk about your pedagogical interests and again how you are already prepared, or plan to prepare yourself, to teach. (So then what's a Personal Statement? This is the place to talk about other kinds of motivation and self-discipline (evidence that you WILL complete their program, if they assign you one of their precious admission slots / funding packages) AND about diversity factors, in this post-209 era.)