Shenny Does Gradschool: Statements of Purpose
Dear Friends:
This issue’s title reminds me of my favorite Onion headline, from what feels like lifetimes ago:
When it came to language rules, I used to be the sort of person who’d drop, in fear, whatever I was doing ‘wrong’ and adopt the prescribed usage, used to correct ‘errors’ in family group texts, etc. You know: charming things.
How’d I drop these bad ideas?1 Years of workshopping turned me off prescriptivism broadly. As pleasing as it is to have a credentialed expert come in and fix you, writing isn’t medicine.
I write this to foreground this week’s Shenny—and this whole month of gradschool tips: I’m credentialed, but I can’t promise following everything I say will get you results. This isn’t to say writing can’t be taught. (Flee from those who say writing can’t be taught.) It’s to say there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Which, if writing a book on taxidermy makes me a credentialed expert on skinning animals, is untrue. There’s really just the one way to do it.
Yours:
Dave
Endorsements
1. Emerson Whitney’s Daddy Boy
It’s hard to break the fourth wall in nonfiction, because if any fourth wall is meant to keep the art partitioned from reality, where does that wall stand in a genre that insists you read the narrator as the voice of the author? Nonfiction, memoir especially, doesn’t regard that wall, and so behold this moment in Daddy Boy:
I think I’ve loved intense weather so much because it seemed uncontrolled—something that violent would quiet everyone in my house, would force them in. Would soften even addiction for an hour or two.
I can’t say this better than my editor who, reading this whole thing, proclaimed at this part: ‘Yes!’
It’s a memoir about what follows when something that had been fundamental in your life changes. For Whitney, it was his role as a sub in a marriage with a dom. One thing that follows is that most rules, as they’ve long been laid out, no longer fit. Daddy Boy develops this idea formally: very little of how the book is put together made sense to me, even to the point where it felt at times messy and unedited. Over time, this is what makes it one of the better memoirs I’ve read all year. It’s a book you get to watch find its own way, and it coheres as much as it whirls out of control. A tornado—a literal object Whitney spends most of the memoir chasing—does this, too.
2. Sad Songs for Sad Times
Recently, my friend Steve gave a challenge to make a mix of autumnal songs. This hasn’t been an easy autumn. I’ve been dealing with spells of vertigo since late September, and then I got sick for a while, and all this time I’ve been writing about the years I was in closet, which has made me feel a little bit of anger but a lot of sadness and pity toward that boy I was, nobody around to help him figure things out. I’m not good at crying, but I’m good at queuing up songs that help me stew and let myself feel sadnesses when they come, so given this fall, my mix was all songs about death and grief, about failing at being the person you’re trying to be. It opens with what might be the saddest song ever, Phil Elverum’s ‘Real Death’, and thanks to my friend
The Statement of Purpose
This Main Matter is second in a series of three posts on applying to gradschools, specifically MFA in Writing programs, which I’ve taught in for 13 years and have directed one for 5. Find the first and third posts here:
What It Is
Nobody knows. Or maybe more accurately: nobody agrees. Arizona wants ‘a 300-500 word statement expressing your goals and/or reasons for pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.’ Florida State wants ‘a short essay describing the applicant’s academic and professional experience and goals’. Wisconsin wants ‘[a] statement of approximately 500 words explaining your reasons for pursuing this graduate degree.’ Virginia wants a statement of purpose and a personal narrative, without saying anything about how those differ in their minds.2 But the worst offender may be UC Irvine, which monstrously, cruelly, stupidly wants a statement of purpose, a personal history statement, and an autobiographical statement. (‘It is fine if information in the three statements overlap.’)
Regardless of what the guidelines are, if you think of your writing sample as where you are with your writing at the present, the SOP is a personal essay that expresses what you want to do in the future.
Why It Matters
Does it matter? I’ve written elsewhere about how MFA programs should drop the SOP altogether (tl;dr: it favors writers who are good at school and disfavors writers who are full of (creatively potent) uncertainty), but that post hasn’t yet become a viral sensation, so you’re stuck with everyone wanting you to write this thing. That’s why it matters.
But it also matters because it’s the best way you can indicate to the faculty what kind of student you’ll be, in and out of the classroom. Every MFA program is looking to enroll a community of writers that will learn a lot from each other. Think of the SOP as the place to show how ready you are to learn from and contribute to that community.
What Not to Do
Writing is lonely, and you may feel isolated in your current practice, so likely you’re applying to gradschool to enter into a community of writers (or scholars). Here’s our first lesson in show don’t tell: don’t say you’re eager to enter into a community of writers, show that you are.
How to show and not tell? By focusing in the SOP on what you’ll give to that community, and also on what you hope to get. And why not just tell? Well, because it’s a given. Everyone’s applying to enter into a C.O.W., but not everyone says what this means to them, or how they envision the give-and-take of community. Also: if everyone is writing in their SOP about wanting to enter into a C.O.W., you should do something different, if anything so that your SOP stands out from the crowd.
To that end, I can only again try to visibly stress this enough:
Don’t include anywhere in your SOP a story about how you began writing at an early age.
Don’t tell that story. Don’t do it. You have the memory of the ‘novel’ you wrote at age 8, framed in a way that’s equally charming and evocative of your ambitions. Excellent. Now set it aside, for two reasons:
You want your app to stand out from the crowd, and one app out of three tells the same story.
More importantly, the argument’s fallacious: Your wanting to be a writer for quantitatively longer in your life than other applicants does not make you more deserving of a spot in the program.
It also doesn’t mean you’ll be a more engaged contributor to your peers’ learning than others might. So ignore the distant past and focus in the SOP on the present, and the near future.
And not the distant future! Often in an SOP you’ll see people say that one of their goals with gradschool is to teach at the college level, or get a book deal. Given the job and publishing markets, few if any programs can ensure either of these outcomes for their students.3 Ambitions are good, but best to be ambitious about your work. What comes after your degree is as much up to you as it is the program.
How to Write a Good One
Foremost: Follow the prompt as closely as you can. And then: be honest with every word you write.
I personally don’t want to hear much about your ‘academic and professional experience’ in the SOP (see below on why), but that’s what FSU calls for, so give it to them.
Does this mean you need to write a different SOP for each program you’re applying to?
Yes, if you want serious consideration from that program.
But, most of your material can carry over from SOP to SOP.
What should that material be? Most schools seem to want something around your reasons and your goals. This maps onto what we want at USF:
In no more than three pages, tell us about your writing…. Explain how your writing sample gives evidence of your interests and aims as a writer [i.e., reasons]. Please discuss your goals for your writing during your time as an MFA student, and tell us why you are interested in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco.
Try to figure out your reasons, here in the present, for applying to MFA school. This is why we ask applicants about their writing, we want to see that people have already begun thinking critically and analytically about their creative work. There’s something(s) you like about your writing and something(s) you don’t like—both of which are what keep you coming back to it. Anything you don’t like yet is likely what you hope to learn or improve in gradschool. Talk honestly about that in your SOP.
Me, I loved writing short stories in my 20s, but I didn’t know much about how to develop a plot, or how to make characters more distinct from each other. If I knew then what I know now about SOPs, I would’ve talked about that in mine.
Also: Why gradschool now? And why this school, this specific program? These are part of your reasons, and the admissions committee wants to know them.
As for your goals, think about the plans you have once you’re enrolled in the program. I think it’s more useful to articulate the things you’d like to learn and work on—i.e., the doings of your student years—more than the outcomes you’re hoping for. (See distant future don’ts, above.)
So: do you have a memoir you feel driven to write? A family story to tell in book form? Or do you want to write a lot of poems that aren’t all form-based, to expand your understanding of the genre? What kinds of books do you want to read there, which will indicate the kinds of courses you’ll be drawn to? Is it all contemporary stuff, because your background is full of canonical work, or vice versa? What extracurricular aspects of the program—reading series? student-run journal?—sound enjoyable to you?
Here’s a good place to address the other foremost rule above, which I’ll again stress as much as I can:
BE HONEST.
It won’t be easy. So many SOPs I’ve read include sentences like, ‘I am thrilled by the opportunity to work with your outstanding, award-winning faculty and become a generous member of your dynamic community of writers!’ Maybe that’s true, but whose voice is that?
Likewise, maybe the idea of reading for a literary magazine makes your eyes glaze over and your stomach lurch. That’s fine. Don’t write that you’re excited about the literary magazine, thinking the program is expecting you to be.
If there’s an anxiety underlying so many SOPs, it’s this guessing at what the committee wants to hear. But other than the guidelines stated on the website, all we want to hear is your voice. The SOP is a personal essay—not a term paper, not a cover letter for a job—and as every student of the genre can tell you, vulnerability (i.e., risking the truth even when it’s not sheen-y and safe) will only work in your favor.
Also: be honest when you talk about why you’re applying to that particular program. Look frankly at your decision. Why are you applying to Texas? Or Warren Wilson? Or Northwestern? Or Emory? If it’s because of their prestige, say that. If it’s because they offer tuition remission, talk about why that’s important to you. If it’s just because it’s in the city of San Francisco, that’s fine. We’re happy to have you.
But don’t make up a reason that you think we want to hear.
Caveat re the Above
Often the truth is ugly. My reason for applying to gradschool was that I was unhappy with my job and the city I lived in and didn’t know how else to get out. I applied anywhere I felt like I could move to, plus Iowa and other top schools just because. I was depressed, desperate, out of ideas, and my goals were to stop feeling that way and then get a book deal.
That was my truth, but I couldn’t be honest about that in my SOP. So let’s amend the above to, Be a certain kind of honest. Note how my truth was all and only about me: my current malaise, my future success. The best SOPs consider the students and faculty that will surround you, the applicant. How will you fit in among them?4 What do you bring to the table?
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard
After the Supreme Court’s racist, regressive decision to end affirmative action in college admissions, our school has decided to mute on the application any demographics volunteered by our applicants on race and ethnicity. I don’t know what other schools are doing, and I don’t know your thoughts on giving special consideration to applicants from groups underrepresented in the academy as one way to redress our country’s long history (and present) of inequitable treatment and injustice, but I can say, speaking personally and not in my ‘official’ capacity as a program director, that if you’ve overcome any kind of hardship or obstacle to get to where you’re ready for graduate study, obstacles you imagine the majority of applicants have not had to overcome, I’d love to hear that story in an SOP—even, especially, if it’s about how you began writing at an early age.
This week’s thing I did not buy at the antique store are these home perm kits:
And they are bad, and if you need an argument for why, an enjoyable (and long) one is David Foster Wallace’s ‘Tense Present’
Not to shit on my home state’s leading institution, but even though Virginia has a very early app deadline of Dec 15, they’re not able (or willing) to notify about acceptances until April 1. And then they give accepted applicants only two weeks to decide to attend. The unnecessarily bossy pressure this places on applicants can’t bode well for your overall experience as a student.
If your expectation with the degree is to leave with either of these outcomes, rethink your desire to go to gradschool.
Remember that community ≠ conformity.
Enjoyed all of this, and especially enjoyed the choice of stock photo.