Grad Admissions essay help

tmhyd720
Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:04:25 +0000

Out of the 4 sections of the application that required text responses it seemed that 3 of them asked for some of the same material.

The sections are as follows:

Prior Experience: basically labs, teaching, research, etc

Statement of Purpose: the prompt is in the OP

Personal History Statement: not really relevant to my point

Future Goals and Interests: fairly self explanatory

It seems like the statement of purpose combines aspects of both prior experience and future interests and goals, among other things. So unless you have a pretty large resume, it seems like these questions ask for information that is redundant or at least is contained in another part of the app.

I have already submitted applications, but I am curious what people think of this. Obviously it is not very desirable to be redundant, but being inconsistent with the rest of your application cant be much better.