If you ever decide to pursue
graduate study in the US (I am unsure about foreign institutions) you will surely find yourself writing a
Statement of Purpose. It is a
document required by nearly all institutions. In it you should convey three essential things:
zero: What has compelled you to undertake graduate study.
one: What makes you excellent. Why you should be selected from amongst all the other candidates.
two: What you intend to
research/
study in terms that are as specific as you can mannage.
Some
resources that I have found scattered about the net:
http://www.accepted.com/ -- A site dedicated to this kind of thing.
http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/cues/grad.purpose.html -- A helpful
howto put together by Dr. Carla Trujillo at
Berkeley.
http://phd.stanford.edu/ -- An amusing comic about grad students and some good links as well.
More as I find them.
Note that this node may be slightly biased toward more technical fields. Forgive me but I can only
node what I know.
Ironicly I should be writing my
Statement of Purpose right now instead of
noding. Any advice by my fellow
everythingians is greatly appreciated.
Update: 26 January 2001I was accepted to the
PhD program in
Computer Science at
Purdue University today.