[originaltext]M: Hi, Helen. How are you doing?W: Pretty good. Thanks. Have you

M: Hi, Helen. How are you doing?
W: Pretty good. Thanks. Have you helped me look at my graduate school application, and the statement of purpose I wrote?
M: Well, yeah. Basically it’s good. What you might actually do is to take some of the different points here and actually break them out into separate paragraphs, like your purpose for applying for graduate study, specialty, and why do you want to do the area you specify, what you want to do with your degree when you get it.
W: OK, right.
M: So you may expand on each point. Expand some more on what’s happened in your life and what shows your motivation and interest in this area—geology.
W: OK, so make it a little more personal? That’s OK?
M: That’s fine. They look for that stuff. It’s critical that somebody see what your passion is and your personal motivation for doing this. You might give a little more explanation about your unique undergraduate background, like the music program, what you got from that and why you decided to change. I mean it is kind of unusual to go from music to geology. Right?
W: Yeah. I was, I was afraid of that, you know, maybe the personal type stuff wouldn’t be what they want. But...
M: You know, I think probably your music background is the most unique thing that you get your records.
W: Right.
M: So you see, you get to make yourself stand out from a couple of a hundred of applications. Does that help any?
W: Yeah, it does. It gives me some good ideas.
M: Also, think about presentation, I mean the presentation formats, your grammar, and all that stuff they are looking at in your materials at the same time.
W: Right. OK.