"

Section 3: Identifying and Writing About Your Relevant Experiences

3.7. Discipline-Specific Knowledge

In addition to writing about your relevant experiences, another strategy some writers find helpful is to discuss Discipline-Specific Knowledge.

In writing your SoP, there might be discipline-specific knowledge that you want to communicate for a variety of reasons. The purpose here could be to demonstrate your knowledge of the discipline or your ability to think critically. For example, you might discuss a problem in your field of study, offer a summary of relevant research which has informed your developing research interests, or identify a gap in the literature that motivates your research interests. This is not a required strategy, but it can be useful depending on how you want to contextualize your motivation, especially your research interests and academic and/or professional objectives. Often this strategy is a jumping off point for your motivation.

Notice in the examples below that the writers are pulling from information they have learned during their course of study and how it is immediately tied to an articulated interest.

 

Example
The way that these organisms communicate and collaborate to survive in one of the most extreme environments on earth is both captivating and inspiring. However, the more I learned about marine life, the more I learned about the ways human society harms it.
Example
My specific interest in lactation began after I read an article about the relationship between breastfeeding and childhood illness. The authors found that children who were breastfed did not get as sick when they were in daycare because they received nutrients to fight off bacteria from the breast milk they were given.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

A Guide to Writing the Statement of Purpose for Graduate School Applications Copyright © 2025 by Erin Todey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book