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4.

Your personal statement


Purpose and parameters of the personal statement
Your personal statement is an opportunity to sell yourself in terms of your research interests, previous
research experience, and research goals. Unless you have extensive research experience, most personal
statements should be about two pages long (single-spaced). Your writing should be clear, concise,
grammatically correct, and professional in tone. You may wish to convey some personal experiences that
have led to your current interests or that mae you a particularly promising candidate.
Components of the statement:
You will want to describe the following! ") #elevant personal experience$ %) previous research experience$
&) current research interests$ and ') career goals.
Relevant personal experience:
( good way to start your statement is by describing experiences that have spared your interest in a career
in psychology. Perhaps a particular class, internship, or volunteer experience led to your interest, or perhaps
it was a series of experiences. )n some cases students start out interested in one area of psychology to
discover in the end they interested in an altogether different area. *ther students obtain a degree in a
different discipline (lie physics), spend time in the wor force, and then decide a career in psychology is
what they really want to pursue. )n describing your personal experiences, be sure to convey how these have
prepared you for graduate school. (lso be sure to include information uni+ue to you that will enhance our
program having to do with culture, race, ethnicity, gender, social class, or religion.
Previous research experience:
,escribe research you have wored on in sufficient detail to convey your understanding of the scientific
goals of the pro-ect. .ote the advisor, your role on the pro-ect, any class papers you may have written, and
publications or conference presentations that list you as an author. /e sure to describe the sills you have
ac+uired in your research.
Current research interests:
,escribe the topics you find most interesting and why. (lthough you may not now the exact problem you
want to address within a particular area, you should be able to narrow things down to the expertise
represented in a particular graduate program. 0or instance, as an applicant to the 1.2 program at the
University of (ri3ona you may be interested in the sub-area of language ac+uisition, visual perception, or
memory (as opposed to all of cognition and neural systems). (s an applicant to the clinical program you may
be interested in family psychology or sleep. (s a candidate in social psychology your interests may extend to
pre-udice and stereotyping or cultural psychology. /e sure to let us now if you are interested in more than
one sub-area or topic within an area so we can determine all of the ways you may fit into our program. Use
our website to identify potential advisors and explain how your interests overlap with theirs.
Career goals:
4nding by describing the type of career you would lie to have. ,o you want to conduct research in an
academic setting where you will also teach or in a private or government institution where you will only
conduct research5 ,o you see yourself in a more applied setting5 6his information will help us determine
your fit to our program.
Key Word(s) of the Page:
Advice to applicants_grad

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