Applicant Statements?

[trouble]

I feel like I am blatantly abusing this community.

Help? Again? /o\

I'm doing my PhD Apps to McGill (yay!) and they say this:

Please submit your curriculum vitae and your applicant statement as two (2) separate documents, in addition to the short descriptions requested on the application forms. In your applicant statement, you may inform us of any special circumstances that should be taken into consideration of your application.

Okay, but what does that mean? I mean, the applicant statement part. Do I write about my husband having cancer (and thus my MA taking two years instead of the projected one)? Do I write about my interest in disability history and where that comes from? Do I write about why I want to do disability history? All of the above? Some of the above? None of the above?

*flails* Please help, I am feeling totally overwhelmed and in despair. Again. I hate applications.

Comments

[rhivolution]

Honestly? All of the above. Though I would say you'd have to be careful to not just skim the surface, then, because you do want depth.

[trouble]

Okay, I think I can do that. Thank you.

[rhivolution]

I do have to warn you that I'm coming at it less from a past-PhD applicant, more of an ex-HR way, but I think it similarly applies--if all of those topics have informed your studies and application in a significant way, they should all come up.

Which doesn't help with hating applications (I hate them myself).

[ajnabieh]

Is the application statement serving as the "statement of purpose" portion of the application? Because then, you need to pitch your dissertation as a part of it. I feel like I've seen things about how to do a proper statement of purpose lately on the blogosphere, but one of the most important things I've heard about is to get someone you're working with in your MA program to go over it, and make sure it seems plausible. It's about pitching your project as much as pitching yourself.

[socultured]

When I was writing up my PhD application and deciding what to put in it, I just tried to ask myself, "Is this is in any way useful for them to know?" as often as I could. So, if you think they might find it odd that you did your MA in two years, an explanation of why that was would be useful for them.
As for your reasons for researching disability history... It would probably be useful if you can skew that into "And this is also why OTHERS will also be interested in it." If you can think of a better way to explain why this research will be of use to other people, than detailing the history of your interest might be less useful.