The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Hi,

I am a civil engineering PhD student, and I am finding it particularly difficult to describe all of my research experience, dissertation ideas, and future research goals in 5000 characters. I have 2 undergrad internship/research experiences and 3 graduate research projects that are especially relevant, in addition to talking about applications at DoD.

Does anyone who applied as a grad student have advice about what they are looking for, or the level of specificity to include in this statement? Does it need to tell a story, or do they just want to know my skills? Are there any examples of successful essays online?

As a reminder, the prompt is:
In a concise statement, please elaborate on the kinds of research in which you have engaged and in which you would like to engage during your studies as well as during your expected tenure with the Department of Defense (DoD).
Your response will be limited to 5000 characters, including spaces. You must enter a minimum of 2500 characters. Please cite any sources used in your statement.

Thanks.

ls3en wrote:Hi,

I am a civil engineering PhD student, and I am finding it particularly difficult to describe all of my research experience, dissertation ideas, and future research goals in 5000 characters. I have 2 undergrad internship/research experiences and 3 graduate research projects that are especially relevant, in addition to talking about applications at DoD.

Does anyone who applied as a grad student have advice about what they are looking for, or the level of specificity to include in this statement? Does it need to tell a story, or do they just want to know my skills? Are there any examples of successful essays online?

As a reminder, the prompt is:
In a concise statement, please elaborate on the kinds of research in which you have engaged and in which you would like to engage during your studies as well as during your expected tenure with the Department of Defense (DoD).
Your response will be limited to 5000 characters, including spaces. You must enter a minimum of 2500 characters. Please cite any sources used in your statement.

Thanks.

I'm having the same issue. With references my statement is over 6000 characters

ls3en wrote:Hi,

I am a civil engineering PhD student, and I am finding it particularly difficult to describe all of my research experience, dissertation ideas, and future research goals in 5000 characters. I have 2 undergrad internship/research experiences and 3 graduate research projects that are especially relevant, in addition to talking about applications at DoD.

Does anyone who applied as a grad student have advice about what they are looking for, or the level of specificity to include in this statement? Does it need to tell a story, or do they just want to know my skills? Are there any examples of successful essays online?

As a reminder, the prompt is:
In a concise statement, please elaborate on the kinds of research in which you have engaged and in which you would like to engage during your studies as well as during your expected tenure with the Department of Defense (DoD).
Your response will be limited to 5000 characters, including spaces. You must enter a minimum of 2500 characters. Please cite any sources used in your statement.

Thanks.

Hi, so even though I'm not a PhD student, I applied last year for undergrad and received the award, so I might be able to help.

As far as your research experience goes, when I applied there was a list of research accomplishments that I listed in a separate category as well as in the prompt. I'm just going to assume that my application is similar to yours and that you already listed all the research you have done in your main application so in the prompt perhaps briefly go over each research opportunity in one or two sentences then elaborate on the two that you are most interested in/most relevant to the work you will be doing at your preferred facilities.

And also when writing your prompt, I suggest maybe to try to write in a way that you're not just listing accomplishments off. They want a person, not a robot, so if you can it would be better to make it a story which shows not only what you've done, but also some personality traits about yourself while keeping the reader interested.

Hope this helps, best of luck!