How to write a statement of purpose?

I’ve had a lot of people reach out for application help, so I thought I’d share some general advice/tips when writing your biostatistics PhD/Master’s application. The goal of this post is to help you write your Statement of Purpose!

Before we get started

Before starting, the general advice I give to everyone who asks for help is to read these two articles:


For those that come from less privileged/underrepresented backgrounds, I highly recommend you submitting your application for UW’s Pre-Application Review Service (PARS). PhD students in both UW stats and biostatis will review your application to help you out. Resources are limited for this, so please use responsibly!

And remember, although the application process is long - you got this! You’ve likely been preparing for this for years via studies or work, and now is your time to shine 💫

Getting Started: The Statement of Purpose


I am writing this short post to help you knock your statement of purpose out of the park.


When I applied in the fall of 2021, I frequently had to submit a statement of purpose (SoP) AND a personal statement (PS). Usually, the SoP was more academic/research oriented while the PS provides more context about your personal narrative. In my opinion, the PS sells you as a person while the SoP sells your ability to do research.


The 2024 SoP prompt for the UW Biostat Dept’s website is:


Submit a 1-2 page statement which includes your reasons for pursuing graduate studies in the field of biostatistics and at our program specifically, your area(s) of interest, relevant experience, and goals.


Simply writing “I want to apply deep learning to electronic health records” does not communicate the why and how you do research.

SoP Structure


There’s tons of advice out there on how to structure this, so I’ll keep it simple. My philosophy for the SoP is that you want to show that you are ALREADY doing the work. I structured my SoP as:

…

That’s it! As you can see, research experiences (loosely defined as research assistantships, internships, projects, etc.) were the focus of my SoP.

An algorithm to write about research experiences.


I learned this “algorithm” from a mentor during my bachelor’s when writing my application for the Goldwater fellowship, and it has served me well!


Use the following “algorithm” to write a compelling paragraph about each research experience:



An important note on (5) is that you can recycle your application by swapping out the professor's names between schools.

An example from one of my applications


Here is a paragraphs from one of my applications:


Not all transcribed genes code for proteins, and the biological roles of most non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) remain poorly understood. Recently, several ncRNAs have been implicated in cancer development. To identify novel assocations between ncRNAs and cancer, I used mediation analysis to explore the regulatory hypothesis that ncRNAs act as trans-acting mediators of gene expression regulation in both non-cancerous and tumor breast and prostate tissue. We identified over 300 mediating ncRNAs and demonstrated that the associated protein-coding genes (pcGenes) are enriched for immunoregulatory and cellular organization pathways. After presenting these findings at the BIG conference, I received a “Research Excellence Award” from a cohort of nearly one hundred researchers and produced a first-author manuscript, which is currently under review. Given my background in analyzing -omics data, I am particularly interested in working with Dr. Daniela Witten, whose recent advances in selective inference could help address the reproducibility challenges in genomics.


Let’s dissect the second paragraph:



Other tips: 


Hopefully this helps you write and structure your statement of purpose so you can communicate the why and how you do research in addition to the what!