范文一：
As a double major in Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Rhode Island, I have gained a strong background in both fields. My background is especially strong in physical anthropology, my primary field of interest. Physical anthropology consumes my life; I do not study it because I find it somewhat interesting but because I am devoted to it; I want to make it my life. In addition to maintaining a high GPA throughout my college career, and making the Dean's list several times, I have also worked hard as a supervisor at Brooks Pharmacy for the past five years. Working my own way through college not only demonstrates my determination to gaining a high quality education and the seriousness with which I treat academics, but also attests to my leadership ability, maturity, and responsibility, both as a supervisor and as a student at the University of Rhode Island.
My primary goal in applying to your graduate program is to prepare myself for a career in forensic anthropology. Interested in furthering the current body of research and in improving techniques used in the identification of human remains, I am very committed to pursuing forensic anthropology and believe your graduate program in anthropology will provide me with an excellent foundation in the area of physical and forensic anthropology. With a Master's degree and Ph.D., I will be well prepared to lead a very promising career. While I have no doubt that the program will push me to my limits, I am confident that I can face the rigorous challenges posed by graduate study and thrive under the demanding environment that advanced studies entail.
From my transcripts, you will see that not only am I a well-balanced student, I actually thrive in rigorous, upper level courses, courses akin to graduate-level courses. Armed with the confidence that I can excel at difficult courses, I believe I can achieve the highest level of success and satisfaction by taking the most demanding graduate program available.
In addition to my ability to excel in the classroom, I have demonstrated a proficiency in all aspects of conducting research. Research has become a fundamental part of my college career, and I hope it will become the primary component of my future. As a sophomore at the University of Rhode Island, I designed a research project entitled "Grooming and Affiliative Behavior in Three Species of Non-Human Primates" under the guidance of Dr. Su Boatright Horowitz in the Psychology Department at URI. My research proposal gained approval from the Institutional Care and Use Committee at URI and at the Roger William Park and Zoo where the three species of non-human primates (Gibbons, Sakis, and Lemurs) included in my study are kept. In addition to writing a successful research proposal, I also wrote and received a small funds grant from the University of Rhode Island in order to conduct my research. By being intimately involved in every aspect of research, from proposal and grant writing to data collection and analysis, I have learned what it takes to be a researcher, but more than that, I have learned how fulfilling and interesting research can be.
In the spring of 2005, I will be presenting my results at a poster presentation at the University of Rhode Island, and am planning to eventually publish my findings. Not only has this experience shown me that I am capable of excelling in conducting research, but it has also allowed me to develop a love for the hands on learning that is so crucial to successful research. In my final semester at URI, I will be participating in an ongoing research project concerning brain function and attention span under the direction of Dr. Dominic Valentino, a professor in the psychology department at URI. This project will undoubtedly further advance my academic skills and reinforce my passion for research.
Physical anthropology is more than just my primary area of education; it has also become my hobby and lifestyle. The questions posed and answered via the study of physical anthropology have fascinated me for a very long time and have stimulated me to ask and seek to answer further questions. With my mind set on the very specific goal of preparing myself as excellently as possible for a future in the field of forensic anthropology, I am fully confident that, with the ability to pursue my education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I will not only be able to fulfill my dream, but to contribute substantially to the university as well.
范文二：
申请专业：sociology/anthropology
I was the only sixteen-year-old in my first university classroom. It was one of those defining moments where I was painfully aware of how different I was from the people around me. I had not yet graduated from high school, and yet there I sat in a class on personal and social adjustment, feeling an odd combination of excitement and anxiety. I distinctly recall my heart pounding and my irrational fear that, at any moment, someone would inform me that I did not belong there. I was considered an oddity at my high school as the only student in the history of the school to attend secondary and postsecondary institutions simultaneously as a fulltime student. I was reminded of the fact not through vast support from my school's faculty, but through blatant vocal discouragement.
In an environment where a large majority of residents live below the poverty level, it must have seemed strange that I would attend university early instead of applying for employment. The initial hardships of my first year in college did anything but deter me from wanting to study anthropology. Indeed, the adversity I experienced only succeeded in intensifying it. My high school classes were rather cold and clinical in their teachings, maintaining a firm adherence to stating and memorizing facts with little or no attempt to have students engage with the material. My interest in culture and my natural response to analyze, question, and participate was stifled behind state standards. In contrast, my fascination with culture was able to proliferate in postsecondary schooling as a result of a liberal arts education and my own proposed course of study.
My early education in anthropology started with a historical glance at cultural theory through works of influential pioneers like Malinowski and Mead. I became fascinated by the theoretical framework involved in cultural exploration, especially how cultural beliefs and values play a role in the every day lives of individuals. During a class on ritual and spectacle, I drove headlong and enthusiastically into ideas of ritual importance and its impact on societies. The subjects ranged from the roles of wedding rites to funerals, and I analyzed certain ceremonies and assessed the meaning of their various components. Another class taught by the same professor took ritual metaphor and applied it to narrative. The course addressed European stories from an analytical perspective, and I examined well-known folktales to yield their ritual symbology. I found myself impassioned by the idea of exploring beyond the superficial guise of narrative and seeing it as a meaningful way of expressing a society's basic beliefs and ideologies. Immersing myself in the works of other inspiring anthropologists, I examined texts on narrative form and nature, ritual metaphor and the importance of storytelling in culture.
My interest in storytelling resulted in the subject of my undergraduate thesis. I decided to focus on American narration, specifically concentrating on expressions of masculinity in men's magazines. It discussed dialogue in magazines as well as in teen male group settings, focusing on the conceptualization and presentation of gender in both circumstances. My overarching approach examined how masculine identity in the media has evolved over the last century. I further presented how manly behavior was glamorized in the text from three contemporary men's magazines, and juxtaposed it with an ethnographic work about how young men communicate and assert their gender roles.
My thesis topic is slightly removed from what I would like to study in graduate school, but the process familiarized me with the prerequisites required for social research. These included a delay in progress by routine realities, such as gaining IRB approval to interview and observe minors, as well as being forced to dig through the vast sea of material on women's magazines just to yield the limited data done on men's publications. The college that I attended also emphasized the importance of organizing one's own curriculum during junior and senior years. It was an unrestricted program in which the student consults with sponsors and plans his or her own course of study. This program approached the undergraduate thesis with the same level of intensity and professionalism as a graduate dissertation.
For my thesis, I assessed my topic and its requirements, efficiently planning my eventual course of study. I organized tutorials with my sponsors and established necessary reading lists that would contribute to my progress. Tutorial discussions allowed me to gain a broad scope of the research process and solidify my thesis into working theoretical, cultural and ethnographic papers. I earned permission to conduct fieldwork at a local Boys and Girl's club, and was approved to interview and observe the interaction between teenage males at the club. For six months, I listened to the things they considered to be important aspects of masculinity and used my time there as one example of teenage suburban expression of larger societal gender roles. I was able to further gain a taste of the graduate dissertation process when I successfully defended my undergraduate thesis during an oral presentation to my sponsors and an outside examiner.
The liberal arts education I received has given me the means to approach social anthropology in a perceptive manner and to consider the various intricacies that influence and shape certain aspects of culture. These were abilities that grew and thrived in an educational environment that allowed me to think critically about topics in anthropology and choose my own course of study. I emerged from college not with textbook facts floating around in my psyche, but with questions, thoughts and theories. I believe it is my undergraduate liberal arts background that provides me with an aberrant and perceptive approach to cultural anthropology.
During my hiatus between undergraduate and graduate education, I was able to step back from the research that captivated me for two years in order to reevaluate my goals in anthropology. While my break did not include leaving school for an extended period, I used the time to once again study broadly in the social sciences. By taking courses in psychology and other areas of anthropology separate from my undergraduate focus, I challenged myself further through exposure to different material and contrasting teaching styles, thereby gaining an educated and informed understanding of my intended course of study for graduate school. My extensive consideration of anthropology and the combination of both my undergraduate and post-baccalaureate education has given me the means to approach graduate school in a thoughtful and perceptive manner. Additionally, this hiatus gave me the ability to devote necessary attention to choosing graduate schools that will both challenge my views of cultural identity and allow me to excel in anthropology.
范文三：
申请专业：anthropology
For me the appeal of anthropology is that it draws on a wide range of disciplines, and that it combines theory with empirical study. Anthropology is a useful discipline in the world, where, for example, its use in developing countries is needed to give appropriate consideration as to how to successfully aid development without harming or diluting the country’s indigenous cultures. In my A level courses I have enjoyed the juxtaposition of scientific enquiry with the imaginative scope allowed me by my other subjects. The precision of chemistry, the polemic nature of history and the perceptiveness and observational powers fostered by my classics studies have created a dynamic I’ve enjoyed.
Part of my family lives in Denmark and I feel as though I have been brought up between two worlds; while I consider myself as belonging to both, this has meant that I constantly compare the two, conscious of them each. One of my cousins in Copenhagen gave me ‘Soul Hunters’ by Rane Willerslev, which ignited my passion for anthropology because it combines exploration and adventure with observation and contemplation. It made me see the beauty of the discipline as Willerslev writes so tenderly and I could see that one doesn’t have to completely eliminate any trace of one’s personal self in order to achieve an objective view, but simply be aware of one’s own subjectivity.
Last summer I spent six weeks in the Andes teaching English to primary school children. I was living with a family which accepted me as a surrogate daughter while I was there, even taking me on their family holiday during the ‘fiestas patrias’. This gave me an invaluable chance to experience daily life in Peru. I enjoyed watching the rate at which my Spanish improved during my stay. I also tried to learn some Quechua. It was good to get a feel for the language as it is very central to the identity of the indigenous Peruvians of that area. The experience in highland Peru drew my attention to the wide and apparently unbridgeable gaps in wealth and existences of people that are living side by side but almost unaware of each other. Even with my host family it was strikingly evident that their friendship groups were almost exclusively held with other people of the same kind of economic and ethnic background. I am now reading ‘Linking Separate Worlds, urban migrants and rural lives in Peru’ by Karsten Paerregaard, which is a study of the social identity that urban migrants carry with them.
One afternoon a week I help archive in the small local history museum where amongst other things I am learning about the history of indexing and also about the way that museums and exhibits are arranged. I have just started a course in a circus school and work on Saturdays at an arts bar in London. I am excited about going to University and being in an environment where no one is afraid to think, or is constrained by boundaries created by learning just for exams. Having been involved in the Amnesty International team at school and in starting up the fledgling ecology group and school magazine I would like to continue to seek out and get involved in things that inspire, challenge and stimulate me.
