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After getting into some top schools, I linked my statement of purpose on my personal website so it could serve as a resource for others. Are there any reasons this might be a bad idea?

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    One problem is that no one can know for sure that they were accepted because of their <feature>, or despite, especially with something as potentially subtle as the statement of purpose. And what would make sense with one larger file might make negative sense with another... People often copy blindly... ?!?
    – paul garrett
    Dec 27, 2014 at 0:43

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In general, I think this sounds like a great idea. I would further say that the same essential content is often a good starting point for your personal professional website.

The only potential downside that I see is that in the future you might look back with embarrassment on naive ideas in your statement where your feelings have evolved over time. If you have enough self-confidence to be OK with with that, it's fine: nobody will expect a mature researcher to believe all of the same things they did when just starting grad school.

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I think it would be a good idea. I often field letters from applicants asking about how to frame an SOP and have trouble pointing to good (and bad) SOPs as examples.

That being said, you should add a note to the top of your SOP saying that you've submitted it to turnitin.com and other plagiarism detectors -- even if you haven't and never intend to, it should serve as a deterrent for a lazy applicant who just wants to copy/paste your text in and submit it as their own.

In comments, I was asked if graduate admissions use plagiarism detectors. The graduate school at my R1 started doing so a year or two ago. The results are included with the dossier. The admissions committee is free to ignore it, but the DGS or Chair is asked by the Provost about applicants whose statistical coincidence is higher than the norm.

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  • Does anybody run SOPs through a plagiarism detector? Of course, I suppose that doesn't matter if applicants think they might.
    – mako
    Dec 26, 2014 at 17:49
  • We do at my R1. The graduate school started doing so a year or two ago. The results are included with the dossier. The admissions committee is free to ignore it, but the DGS or Chair is asked by the Provost about applicants whose statistical coincidence is higher than the norm.
    – RoboKaren
    Dec 26, 2014 at 18:02

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