The University of Regina’s online application form includes a personal statement section where applicants are asked to answer the following four questions:
- Please describe your specific area of academic interest, and explain what motivated you to choose this area.
- Describe how your past education, professional and other experiences have prepared you to be successful in this graduate program.
- Describe what you hope to achieve in this graduate program.
- Describe why this particular graduate program at University of Regina may help you fulfill your long term aspirations/objectives.
As you answer these questions, please keep in mind the Admissions Committee is assessing your ability to write in a clear, coherent and professional manner. You should make every effort to ensure your personal statement is free of spelling and grammatical errors, is properly referenced (if applicable), and concise. Please limit your response to each of the questions to no more than 200 words.
The PhD is a research degree and is the highest degree awarded in Public Policy. It denotes an advanced level of competence in scholarly research and communication. Your personal statement offers you the opportunity to describe to the Admissions Committee your interests and to clearly detail your background and preparation, the ideas and methods that you bring to public policy, and to indicate the particular areas of public policy that interest you. In your responses to the application questions listed above, please make sure to address the following points: describe your research background, including any relevant scholarly and practical experience; identify one or more general areas within public policy in which you would like to do research; provide examples of specific topics, and any particular theories, ideas or methods you are interested in exploring, and describe how your research interests fit within one of our School’s three concentration areas (Governance, Social Policy and Inequality, and Innovation, Science and Technology).
You will also be asked to provide a research statement as part of your application to the PhD program. The research statement should have a well-defined problem statement, a review of the appropriate literature, and an initial methodology. While you will not be held to the research program that you outline, the document will demonstrate your ability to define a topic, to apply theoretical concepts to it, to cite existing key literature, and to propose ways to create new scholarly knowledge on that topic. This statement is an opportunity to show your personality, critical thinking ability, and interest in public policy research. It will also assist the Admissions Committee in determining whether there is a match among the faculty to supervise you in one of your proposed areas of research. Please limit the statement to no more than 1,500 words.