Revising

You might notice that in this model, revising and editing are separate parts of the process. While many people use “revising” and “editing” synonymously, I will distinguish between them. For our purposes, revising refers to considerations of content development, clarity of and connection between ideas, transitions, paragraph structure/development, and logical order of information. Editing, on the other hand, refers to word choice, sentence structure, mechanics, spelling. These are important to distinguish between because sometimes writers think that just double-checking spelling is sufficient; however, a more robust revising process is usually more important because it’s in that stage where you make sure your message is clear for the reader.

Once you’ve completed a draft of your SoP for one school, consider using this revising checklist. Did you:

• Order the paragraphs logically?
• Use transition words and phrases to guide the reader between paragraphs?
• Order the sentences within each paragraph logically?
• Use transition words and phrases to guide the reader?
• Develop one main idea per paragraph? Meaningfully use a topic sentence which helps the reader understand the central purpose of the paragraph?
• Fully respond to all parts of the prompt?
• Move from summarizing your CV to contextualizing and helping the reader understand the “so what?” of your experience, motivation, and fit to program?
• Specifically identify why the program and professor(s) are a good fit for you and your research interests and career objectives?
• Update the name of the school and program for the SoP?

Even confident writers might struggle with these questions, so you are encouraged to seek feedback from mentors, professors, friends, colleagues, and family members who can give you meaningful feedback. Sometimes it’s helpful to share these questions as a way to guide their feedback and signal that you’re not yet ready to focus on sentence-level concerns, but instead, the content and organization.