Wherever you are in your educational and professional career, you have a unique set of experiences which have prepared you for graduate study and have informed your decision to pursue a graduate degree. But what kind of experiences do you think the readers want to learn about? They might be genuinely interested in who you are as a person, but readers (i.e., professors in the graduate program) want to understand what academic and professional experiences you’ve had which have prepared you to be a successful graduate student. For many disciplines, especially STEM, this experience will rely heavily on research experience, but it can also be equally as valuable to talk about teaching, mentoring, internships, and professional experiences.

Remember that the SoP is not a summary of your CV; instead, think of these two documents as complementing one another. The CV provides the overview of your experiences while the SoP allows you to go in depth in a discussion of past experiences, how you engaged in the experience, the skills you learned, and, importantly, how this experience has prepared you for graduate school and/or helped you understand why you would want to pursue a graduate degree. When you write about your qualifications and experiences, think about both answering the question “what?” and also “so what?” about the experience.

For most SoPs, relevant experiences will be related to educational, research, and professional experiences during college, internships, or other professional employment. This does not mean that you are forbidden from writing about experiences in high school; however, stronger SoPs typically focus on experiences during and after college.

Brainstorming (Part 1): Take time to respond to the following questions. It might be helpful to remember that at this point of the writing process, there are no right or wrong answers. Be honest with yourself and think expansively about your responses to these questions. These notes are just for you; your purpose here is not to evaluate the ideas, but to simply explore your motivation as it pertains to applying to graduate school and your larger career goals. If you’re struggling to respond to the questions, talk through these ideas with a friend or mentor.

This activity can also be downloaded: SoPBrainstormingQuestions [DOC]

Like the previous section, there are also a set of strategies which writers can use to engage writing about their experiences. Remember, these are a list of options, not a required checklist. Let’s look at some of the strategies you might use to write about your relevant experience in your SoP.