Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction

What’s a Good Statement of Purpose?

Your application to the Ph.D. in Curriuclum and Instruction requires you to submit a

statement of purpose. We attach great importance to the statement. A thoughtful and

well-written statement often makes the difference between admission and denial. But

applicants frequently fail to do justice to themselves in statements of purpose. In what

i.e., a professor at UNC Charlotte who teaches in the program to which you are applying

– that you have a serious and well-considered purpose in applying to that program. For

the Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, the statement should clearly articulate your

interest in a specific concentration. A compelling statement will convince the reader that

you are the kind of student likely to thrive in the program, and more specifically the

concentration, to which you are admitted and who would contribute to (and not merely

benefit from) our academic community. Too often, statements of purpose are poorly

focused, vaguely autobiographical essays, in which case they become inadvertent

disclosures of purposelessness. Be very intentional in your writing to showcase not only

your professional interests in one of the program concentrations but your academic passion

transcripts, what your referees say about you, and your curriculum vitae, that reveal your

academic and other accomplishments. There is no harm in mentioning a particular

accomplishment in passing in your statement when this is relevant to explaining your

purpose in applying to the program and concentration. But statements go astray once the

author assumes that the purpose is to persuade the reader that the author is highly

qualified for admission. Remember that we will be quick to deny admission if we have

insufficient evidence that the candidate is well-suited to the program by virtue of one’s

interests and ambitions, regardless of how intellectually well qualified the applicant

might be. The statement of purpose is usually the only part of the applicant’s file where

one can find strong evidence of whether the program and specific concentration will

something substantially longer is not to the applicant’s benefit. Succinctness is a virtue in

academic writing and a skill indicative of a future doctoral student. When your file is

being read by members of the faculty, it will be read alongside many other files, and will

typically be read under severe time constraints. People tend not to be especially tolerant of

verbosity under these circumstances, to put it mildly. If your reader has evidence that you

will take ten words to say something that another, equally qualified candidate will say in

six, you might well find that the other candidate will be preferred over you.

Sometimes a statement can be overly concise by failing to give a sufficiently detailed

account of the applicant’s purpose in applying to the program. If your first draft of the

its very best. After all, if you are really serious about applying to graduate school, then

you will have devoted a lot of time to your statement, and what the reader sees is

presumably the outcome of multiple drafts and prolonged effort. Poor writing and factual

errors are very strong evidence that you are not yet ready for graduate school and in

particular a doctoral program.

A statement of purpose for a doctoral program is different than one for a master’s

program.

A master’s program is not inferior to a doctoral program; it is merely different. Therefore,

ones in his or her studies. Being unclear about these matters is not inappropriate when one

is applying to a broadly focused master’s program. But being unclear about them would

certainly be a liability in a doctoral application. Academic programs are more intensively

specialized at the doctoral level, and a corresponding degree of specialization and

precision in the way applicants indicate their academic purposes is reasonably expected.

Evidence of your familiarity with the educational research currently under way at

Charlotte is probably a good thing to see in any statement of purpose in a doctoral

application. It is extremely important to show that your interests converge closely with the

current research of faculty who work in the program and concentration to which you are

applying. Other doctoral applicants will certainly do this, and if you don’t, you will forfeit

When reviewing applications, concentration coordinators are seeking to understand how

the applicant’s professional interests align with the aims of their concentration.

There are five concentrations available within the Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction

program for Advanced Standing students:

1. Curriculum and Educator Development (CED) (includes Elementary Education)

2. Learning, Design, and Technology (LDT)

identify faculty with specific expertise in a concentration that might serve as a doctoral

and research mentor.

Your statement should be tailored to the particular institution to which you are

applying.

Your statement of purpose should address why you are applying to this institution. This

particular information can be very helpful in consider if the applicant is familiar with the

mission of UNC Charlotte. A student’s application might be quite strong overall without