Some belated advice about your SOP
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:49 pm
This might be coming in a bit late, but after seeing some stuff happen to my classmates with their research, I thought it would be good to give you guys a crucial piece of advice concerning your statements of purpose: don't lie about your interests on your SOP.
A lot of you are interested in HEP-theory, quantum gravity, or another competitive field. A lot of people will tell you to write down that you're interested in condensed matter experiment when you're applying because they've got more funding, thus improving your odds of admission. Let me tell you why that's a bad idea: funding doesn't magically appear just because you want it to. Part of the admission committee's decision is based on whether or not there's funding in your field or a professor who might be interested in working with you.
Suppose there are thirty spots in the graduate program, and approximately fifteen of those are given assuming they'll go into CME and two of them are for students expressing interest in string theory. At a lot of schools, that roughly agrees with the available funding in both fields. But if two or three of those students who expressed interests in CME are suddenly trying to get into string theory, at least a couple people are going to be unhappy when they can't find a PI. Sometimes decisions are made based on the predicted situation, but grant proposals get rejected, professors move schools, or a current student has to spend another year to finish a dissertation. So, sometimes there's not even spots for the students accepted who actually expressed an interest in the field.
My example sounds contrived, but I've already seen it happen to some of my classmates. If you aren't sure what your interests are, or if you have multiple interests, that's fine. Write that down. But if you're committed to one field, and only that field, and you write down something different to game the system, you could be setting yourself up for disappointment.
A lot of you are interested in HEP-theory, quantum gravity, or another competitive field. A lot of people will tell you to write down that you're interested in condensed matter experiment when you're applying because they've got more funding, thus improving your odds of admission. Let me tell you why that's a bad idea: funding doesn't magically appear just because you want it to. Part of the admission committee's decision is based on whether or not there's funding in your field or a professor who might be interested in working with you.
Suppose there are thirty spots in the graduate program, and approximately fifteen of those are given assuming they'll go into CME and two of them are for students expressing interest in string theory. At a lot of schools, that roughly agrees with the available funding in both fields. But if two or three of those students who expressed interests in CME are suddenly trying to get into string theory, at least a couple people are going to be unhappy when they can't find a PI. Sometimes decisions are made based on the predicted situation, but grant proposals get rejected, professors move schools, or a current student has to spend another year to finish a dissertation. So, sometimes there's not even spots for the students accepted who actually expressed an interest in the field.
My example sounds contrived, but I've already seen it happen to some of my classmates. If you aren't sure what your interests are, or if you have multiple interests, that's fine. Write that down. But if you're committed to one field, and only that field, and you write down something different to game the system, you could be setting yourself up for disappointment.