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rynlingI could never post this on Twitter, because I know it would land me in hot water, but I think it might help people to be told that you can’t let social media brainrot influence what you write about yourself in the Statement of Purpose that you submit with your application to a graduate program.
In Canada and the United States especially, there’s a culture of online identity politics in which you have to demonstrate that you’re some sort of minority in order for your voice and opinion to be valid, which has led a lot of young people to assume that it’s normal to talk about significant private traumas and medical conditions in public spaces. This is fucked up to begin with, and most people who don’t participate in online subcultures perceive these sorts of casual disclosures as a major red flag.
I can’t emphasize strongly enough that the people deciding whether you get into grad school are professional working adults, not your peers on social media. What a departmental admissions committee (which, let’s be real, is almost always just one person, usually a senior-ranked faculty member) is looking for are intellectually and emotionally mature applicants who will be able to succeed in their program.
Graduate programs are intense, and nobody wants to admit an applicant who can’t handle the workload. Undergraduate curricula tend to emphasize “accessibility,” but graduate curricula focus on helping people acquire the sort of specialist professional knowledge and skills that aren’t accessible to just anyone. In addition, undergraduates are mostly shielded from the culture of academia, so the experience of being plunged into the swamp of academic politics and expectations as a grad student tends to be extremely unpleasant, even under the best possible circumstances and conditions.
This is true in the sciences, but it’s equally true in the Humanities. A lot of people seem to think that things like cultural studies and media criticism are something that anyone with a Twitter account or a YouTube channel can do, but Comparative Literature and Media Studies are academic disciplines filled with very smart people who are specialists in multiple narrowly defined subfields. If you can’t read long and complicated texts quickly and well, and if you have trouble managing continually ongoing writing deadlines, and if you can’t deal with critical feedback, then you’re going to fail. You won’t get the degree you came for, and you’ll probably be deeply in debt when you eventually give up and drop out.
Some graduate programs are predatory and evil, but most graduate programs won’t accept applicants who don’t present themselves as academically and emotionally prepared to meet the challenges of the curriculum. In addition, graduate programs don’t want to admit candidates who will cause trouble for their advisors, for the other grad students in their cohort, or for the undergrad students for whom they’ll potentially be responsible. They don’t want bad apples, essentially. What this means is that you need to present yourself as a mature adult in your Statement of Purpose.
In other words, your Statement of Purpose is not the place for you to disclose your trauma, your health conditions or mental illnesses, or your anger at the injustice in the world. It’s also not the place to explore intimate questions relating to your sexuality or your racial/ethnic identity. Honestly, the person who reads your application will probably already have a good sense of where you’re coming from based on what you want to study, and saying that you have a disability or a mental illness in academia is like saying you’re a clown at the circus.
I should add that your Diversity Statement also isn’t the place for you to discuss your positionality, as the only purpose of a Diversity Statement is to say that you “value diversity” and meet the minimum requirements for not being a racist or sexist asshole. In other words, your Diversity Statement should be directed outwards toward your potential colleagues, peers, and students, not inwards toward your own sense of identity. This part of your application is more or less a formality, and most people work from a template that they get from an advisor or find online. I hate to say this, but Diversity Statements are used mainly to discriminate against applicants from outside North America and Western Europe who aren’t already socialized into Western academic cultures. I know that’s fucked up, but academics suffer from their own form of brainrot.
So your Statement of Purpose should be about, in this order: (a) your academic history and background, (b) your research interests and projected thesis project, (c) your rationale for applying to that specific program, and (d) your concrete career goals.
It’s actually 100% okay to discuss your positionality and your commitment to social justice, but that disclosure needs to fit within a professional framework. Your goal is to present yourself as a ready-made success for the program, not a liability.
You might be asking yourself why I’m posting this on Dreamwidth where no one will read it. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in what I’ve written, but rather that I’m a coward. I dearly wish I were the person making the rules, but I’m not, so all I can do is explain what the rules are so that the process of graduate admissions isn’t so opaque. That’s never stopped anyone from shooting the messenger, unfortunately.
In Canada and the United States especially, there’s a culture of online identity politics in which you have to demonstrate that you’re some sort of minority in order for your voice and opinion to be valid, which has led a lot of young people to assume that it’s normal to talk about significant private traumas and medical conditions in public spaces. This is fucked up to begin with, and most people who don’t participate in online subcultures perceive these sorts of casual disclosures as a major red flag.
I can’t emphasize strongly enough that the people deciding whether you get into grad school are professional working adults, not your peers on social media. What a departmental admissions committee (which, let’s be real, is almost always just one person, usually a senior-ranked faculty member) is looking for are intellectually and emotionally mature applicants who will be able to succeed in their program.
Graduate programs are intense, and nobody wants to admit an applicant who can’t handle the workload. Undergraduate curricula tend to emphasize “accessibility,” but graduate curricula focus on helping people acquire the sort of specialist professional knowledge and skills that aren’t accessible to just anyone. In addition, undergraduates are mostly shielded from the culture of academia, so the experience of being plunged into the swamp of academic politics and expectations as a grad student tends to be extremely unpleasant, even under the best possible circumstances and conditions.
This is true in the sciences, but it’s equally true in the Humanities. A lot of people seem to think that things like cultural studies and media criticism are something that anyone with a Twitter account or a YouTube channel can do, but Comparative Literature and Media Studies are academic disciplines filled with very smart people who are specialists in multiple narrowly defined subfields. If you can’t read long and complicated texts quickly and well, and if you have trouble managing continually ongoing writing deadlines, and if you can’t deal with critical feedback, then you’re going to fail. You won’t get the degree you came for, and you’ll probably be deeply in debt when you eventually give up and drop out.
Some graduate programs are predatory and evil, but most graduate programs won’t accept applicants who don’t present themselves as academically and emotionally prepared to meet the challenges of the curriculum. In addition, graduate programs don’t want to admit candidates who will cause trouble for their advisors, for the other grad students in their cohort, or for the undergrad students for whom they’ll potentially be responsible. They don’t want bad apples, essentially. What this means is that you need to present yourself as a mature adult in your Statement of Purpose.
In other words, your Statement of Purpose is not the place for you to disclose your trauma, your health conditions or mental illnesses, or your anger at the injustice in the world. It’s also not the place to explore intimate questions relating to your sexuality or your racial/ethnic identity. Honestly, the person who reads your application will probably already have a good sense of where you’re coming from based on what you want to study, and saying that you have a disability or a mental illness in academia is like saying you’re a clown at the circus.
I should add that your Diversity Statement also isn’t the place for you to discuss your positionality, as the only purpose of a Diversity Statement is to say that you “value diversity” and meet the minimum requirements for not being a racist or sexist asshole. In other words, your Diversity Statement should be directed outwards toward your potential colleagues, peers, and students, not inwards toward your own sense of identity. This part of your application is more or less a formality, and most people work from a template that they get from an advisor or find online. I hate to say this, but Diversity Statements are used mainly to discriminate against applicants from outside North America and Western Europe who aren’t already socialized into Western academic cultures. I know that’s fucked up, but academics suffer from their own form of brainrot.
So your Statement of Purpose should be about, in this order: (a) your academic history and background, (b) your research interests and projected thesis project, (c) your rationale for applying to that specific program, and (d) your concrete career goals.
It’s actually 100% okay to discuss your positionality and your commitment to social justice, but that disclosure needs to fit within a professional framework. Your goal is to present yourself as a ready-made success for the program, not a liability.
You might be asking yourself why I’m posting this on Dreamwidth where no one will read it. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in what I’ve written, but rather that I’m a coward. I dearly wish I were the person making the rules, but I’m not, so all I can do is explain what the rules are so that the process of graduate admissions isn’t so opaque. That’s never stopped anyone from shooting the messenger, unfortunately.
