Creating Strong Statements

for Graduate School

Understanding the Personal Statement Using Past
Experiences Imagining Future Work Resources

Robert Irish

Engineering Communication Program

r.irish@utoronto.ca

Order of Priority of Factors for Acceptance

External scholarship, e.g. NSERC

Your marks and courses esp. 3rd & 4th year

References from professors and

research supervisors

4
5

Publications and patent applications

Statement of Intent/Purpose/Interest

What is the Personal Statement?

It is a particular type of Argument
So ... Argument Structure
Let me in!

I can do this ...

Claim
= any statement you
assert to be true

Im an excellent
Candidate ...

Please fund me ...

Evidence
degree, marks, list of
courses, research, work
experience, GRE

Explanation/Justification
Personal Statement,
Statement of Intent

Personal Statement draws on two types of Evidence

Past Experience

Future Goals

Using Past Experience

My past experience
isnt relevant to
what I want

Make it relevant; it doesnt have

to be in the same field to
support your claim that youre a
good candidate for research

I dont have very

much research
experience

Dont forget: thesis, course

projects, work experience

I have great grades

(or not), what
should I say?
Should I talk about
my program / UofT?

Good grades speak for

themselves, not so hot grades
could use explanation. Grades
are not the only consideration
Yes, focus of study in program,
unique nature of program

Using Past Experience

I combined my desire for research and curiosity with the

semiconductor industry by interning with the

Foundry/Technology Development Department at Actel
Corporation, a provider of Flash based FPGA solutions located
in Mountain View, California. During my 13-month internship, Specifics of
research
I was involved in the research and development of a 130-nm
floating gate process used in their ProAsic3 product family. I
carried out an extensive study on Hot Carrier Injection lifetime
His specific
of floating gate transistors for reliability evaluation and the
contribution
results were used in a subsequent product qualification. In
addition, I contributed to a paper entitled Investigating and
Modeling Total Ionizing Dose and Heavy Ion Effects in FlashBased Field Programmable Gate Array by characterizing the
heavy ion radiation induced threshold voltage shift of an arrayShows link from
of floating gate transistors. The results of this study were
contribution to
presented at the Radiation Effects on Components and
accomplishment
Systems Workshop in September 2006. It has also been
submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science for
review.
1. Be Specific

Using Past Experience

I am currently in the final year of the Engineering Science program at
Characterizes
the University of Toronto. This demanding and prestigious program
is
N as program
geared towards preparing undergraduates for post-graduate studies.
The first two years cover a broad range of topics such as quantumwith strong
mechanics, digital electronics, and bioengineering, to provide a fundamentals
strong foundation in scientific theory. The last two years allow
students to specialize in the fields of their interest. I chose electrical
engineering as my specialization, and devoted particular attention
to
Demonstrates
mathematics such as abstract algebra, real analysis and topology personal
because I believe that having a strong mathematical background will
motivation
help me think critically in designing algorithms and system level
architectures.
... And as strong
Moreover, Engineering Science strongly encourages students to
on research
participate in summer research
with
professors
and
has
a
research
2. Show Purpose
thesis project in the fourth year. During the summer after first year,

uses research focus

Using Past Experience
to transition from
school to research

During the summer after first year, I worked as a

summer research assistant for Professor Reza
Iravani at the University of Toronto. I implemented
digital circuits using Field Programmable Gate
Arrays (FPGA). The digital circuitry was part of a
digital control block in controlling wind turbines.
Over the next two summers, I worked in a research
lab under the supervision of Professor Aleksandar
Prodic at the University of Toronto for more than
1000 hours. The purpose of the project is to
replace analog control of low-power Switch Mode
Power Supplies (SMPS) with digital
3.
Give
Context
control. Currently,

Using Past Experience

Currently, SMSPs are almost exclusively
dominated by analog controllers. Digital control can
provide flexibility and programmability that analog
control cannot offer. However, in order to compete
with analog solutions, digital control circuits
must at least meet the same power consumption
and on-chip area. The bottleneck block in digital
control is the Digital Pulse Width Modulator
(DPWM). Not only does DPWM consume a lot of
power, it also takes up a large on-chip area. During
the summer of
Identifies the

3. Give Context

importance of the
labs research

Using Past Experience

During the summer of 2004, one of my main jobs was
to design a new architecture of DPWM. Independently,
I was able to innovate a new architecture that has both
low power consumption and small on-chip area. Under
the supervision of Professor Prodic, I built the digital
controller with Field Programmable Gate Arrays
(FPGA). In addition, I worked with two graduate
students, Nabeel Rahman and Zdravko Lukic to build
the power stage and layout the digital controller using
VLSI. This work has resulted in an acceptance
of
Appropriately
identifies his
publication at IEEE Applied Power Electronics
contribution and others
Conference (APEC) 2006 and a provisional patent
application. [1-2]

4. Show Accomplishments

Summary for Using Past Experience

1. Be Specific
2. Show Purpose
3. Give Context
4. Show Accomplishments

Imagining Future Work

How much research
should I do on
institutions?
Idont know what I
want to do? Should I
lie?
Can I be too specific
about a research plan?

Should I say why?

The more the better. Apps that

speak to specific programs,
researchers, and the schools focus
are more likely to draw attention

No, make qualified statements

that dont limit you . . . may, a
possible avenue, one area of
interest RS are not contracts, but
you should still hedge to leave
your opportunities open
Yes; frame as a pressing problem
for society or engineering puzzle ...

Imagining Future Work

Tie it in to your
previousMy
experience
research experience has revealed that there are two

important and challenging criteria that future electronics will

need to meet: energy consumption and performance. As
many devices become mobile, low power consumption
Show broad
relevance
becomes
quite crucial. Regular batteries simply cannot
since most
peopleenough energy for sufficient duration of use. This
provide
arent specialists
leads to frustration on the part of the user and creates a
huge challenge for the circuit designers.
Use qualifiers to limit
your commitment

Position yourself
within the context

Imagining Future Work

Tie it in to your
previous experience

My research experience has revealed that there are two

important and challenging criteria that future electronics will
need to meet: energy consumption and performance. As
many devices become mobile, low power consumption
becomes quite crucial. Regular batteries simply cannot
provide enough energy for sufficient duration of use. This
leads to frustration on the part of the user and creates a
huge challenge for the circuit designers.

Imagining Future Work

Regular batteries simply cannot provide enough energy for
sufficient duration of use. This leads to frustration on the part
of the user and creates a huge challenge for the circuit
designers. Furthermore, mobiles devices, such as cell phones
and laptops, demand high performance circuits that are
capable of processing and converting large data at fast speed.
Hence, it is quite a daunting task to create innovative solutions
that have high performance levels while maintaining
satisfactory power consumption. This challenge has motivated
me to pursue my career in the subject of electronics.

Show broad relevance

since most people
arent specialists

Imagining Future Work

As I continue my career, I want to surround myself with likeminded, proactive colleagues, and I see them at ---. For instance,
Prof. ---s demonstration of tunable Si-based photoluminescent
nanowires (NW) would be a fascinating arena for me to expand
my research experience in the growth of oriented NWs and my
study of photonic integration into Si-manufacturing, specifically
in NOEMS. Furthermore, my thesis work and graduate-level study
in Nanochemistry have given me a strong understanding of
surface growth and various techniques for nanopatterning. These
skills would allow me to further apply myself to the research that
Prof. --- leads, especially in terms of patterning for plasmonassisted CVD and NW catalysis. In fact, nanoscale precision in
nucleation and catalysis is the primary goal of my undergraduate
thesis project

Position yourself
within the context

Use qualifiers to limit

your commitment

Things to Remember
Clear Communication Counts
Create a clear and
visible structure
Use Transitions to
make transitions
Be concise.

Possible Strategies for Structuring a Statement

Strategy

Advantages

Disadvantages/Cautions

Chronology

We all live in time, so talking

about development makes
sense

May not emphasize important

experiences

Order of
Realization

Allows you to develop key

realizations (e.g. about research
ability, about a field of study)

Most important realizations

may be hard to emphasize

Order of
Importance

Allows you to highlight the key

experience or realization by
putting it first

Making connections between

pieces can be difficult

Order of
expected
familiarity

If you expect the school to know If the school doesnt know,

your supervisor or research
you lose that advantage
work, it adds to your credibility

Simple
Enumeration

You can clearly say four reasons Easy-to-follow coherent, so

I want to go to grad school ... so you need to work to show
it is easy to follow
how the pieces fit together

What about Alternative Structures?

A More Personal Personal Statement
The first time I realized that the world advanced
by research was on a high school fieldtrip to the
University of Toronto in which our group had a
tour of a Materials engineering lab where the
group was working on replacements to lead
solder in circuit boards. I was fascinated by
Scanning Electron Microscope and by the rigorous
testing that each new alloy was subject to. Two
years later, after my first year in Materials
Engineering, I had the opportunity to volunteer as
aThe
summer
in on
that...same
labspecifically,
under
projectstudent
I worked
. More
my
Professors
Erb and
Hibbard.
role was ... Uwe
Although
I didGlenn
not stay
with Materials
Engineering, from that experience, I learned ... .

A strategy of first
realization that goes
back to high school
Includes specifics
Volunteering shows
commitment
Establishes his role
Makes a good
shift from MSE to
show learning

Trying to Link Past Experience to Future

For two summers, I worked as a Student Engineering
Intern with PCL, a major Canadian construction
Connects work
management firm. Through that experience, I came toexperience to a
understand the careful ongoing negotiation between learned principle
the contractor and the engineer. For instance, in a
Toronto highrise, a subcontractor had made a change
to the specification for a particular steel joint bolting Gives specifics
rather than bolting and welding. When the PCL
building inspector found the change, I was asked to do
Identifies role
the calculations to determine whether the
subcontractors work would meet code. In the end, a in the project
major retrofit was required for all the joints that were
done in this way. It was a compromise position, but it
ensured the safety of the building. For me, it
demonstrated the importance of project management
in any construction project.
Identifies learning
That experience also led to my interest in research in Ties it to school
the area of project management, which became my
objectives
fourth year thesis with Professor Brenda McCabe. In
that project, I modelled ...

Things not to Forget

There is help!

Your departments undergraduate/graduate advisor

Your thesis supervisor or research advisor

3
4

Engineering Communication Program tutors

http://www.engineering.utoronto.ca/ Under Directory | Student Resources

Me: r.irish@utoronto.ca SF B670