1. List or do not list the blog on one’s CV?
2. What kind of a “tone” does one take in a Statement of Purpose? Do you share anecdotes or no? Do you mention specific professors and specific books by said professors? How do you brag without bragging? I’m finding this particularly hard to write.

Of course, there is no right way of putting together a PhD application, though there are probably wrong ways of doing it. I’ve written a few of my thoughts related to Josh’s questions, but I am fully aware that others may disagree and rightly so.

The Blog

This brings up the question, yet again, of whether the blog is a benefit or a liability. Of course there is no simple answer. The admission committees might view the blog very positively as a way of embracing new media and fostering an interaction between the academy and the public sphere. More and more people are blogging and so it won’t be unusual for their applicants to have blogs. Yet some on the adcom might still be afraid of the whole blogging endeavor and fear that it might pose problems to the public image or ethos of its institution. Thus, dealing with the perceptions of those reading the application is something to take into consideration.

Even despite the general perceptions about blogging (whether positive or negative), you have to ask whether you actually want the adcom to read your blog. If the adcom reads it, they now possess a new set of tools for analyzing your application in a unique way. The problem here is that a blog is not a carefully-constructed PhD application (and neither should it be). It could be a can of worms that you don’t want opened. Instead of solely looking at your purpose statement, writing sample, GRE, and transcript (all of which you spent countless hours putting together), they will also have at their disposal brief, tentative blog posts written in less than ten minutes. (Of course, they might decide to google your name either way and find this information anyways.) Who knows what goes on in the admission meetings?

One alternative to listing a blog on the application/CV is to make mention of the fact that you work with new media and participate with scholarship through conventional means while still having a passion to make scholarship accessible through public avenues. After all, this is a lot of what we do on our blogs. Lucky for me that my blog had been inactive for a while before I began the application process so that I didn’t have to think about mentioning it or not. Still, I probably would not have mentioned it.

The Statement of Purpose

I had a lot of trouble figuring out what kind of tone to use in my purpose statement. By nature I’m reserved and have never been good at describing myself or my (dis)abilities. Because of this, a couple of my professors told me to be a little more assertive than usual in my application. I think it’s best to frame the purpose statement around your strengths, preparation, and academic interests in a way that’s confident, but not boastful. We hope our professors will do a little bit of the bragging for us in the letters of recommendation, but unfortunately that can’t be guaranteed. Still, every purpose statement is going to have some unavoidable bragginess I think.

Josh also asked about mentioning specific professors and their books. This is paramount because naming names helps the adcom to know where the applicant stands on topics related to the history of interpretation. But there is also a tendency to simply name-drop. As one professor told me, it’s better to demonstrate a more nuanced understanding of the issues than to overly use names, since the nuanced understanding will reveal one’s interaction with scholarship. But it’s still important to talk about specific professors (especially if you’re hoping to work with them) and how their work has impacted you.

Again, there are countless ways of constructing a purpose statement, and so you want to find your own voice. Show that you’re ready for PhD work and especially why you would be a good fit to their program based on your interests and personality. Get the purpose statements done early so that you can have professors and colleagues read over them and help you improve them.