How to Write a Diversity Statement for Graduate School Applications
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this comprehensive and engaging course, you will be able to:
- Discuss the 3 primary goals of a diversity statement
- Strategically analyze ambiguous diversity statement prompts
- Review formatting best practices for diversity statements
- Identify characteristics about yourself which represent “diversity”
- Effectively address the special circumstance of not having a “diverse” background
- Conduct background research on university-, department-, and program-level DEI initiatives at your target graduate schools
- Identify the 3-part structure of a perfect diversity statement
- Write each part of your diversity statement step-by-step
- Include key DEI-related “buzzwords” into your diversity statement
- Incorporate an effective anecdote as part of your diversity statement
- Use bias-free language when discussing race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, and ability
- Modify your diversity statement to meet maximum word or page count requirements
- Avoid the 6 most common mistakes made when writing a diversity statement
Instructor
Jay Phoenix Singh, PhD, PhD is a Fulbright Scholar and the internationally award-winning Executive Director of Publication Academy. Author of over 90 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters (average 400+ citations/year since 2010) as well as 4 books (published by Routledge, Wiley, Sage, and Oxford University Press), he completed his graduate doctoral studies in psychiatry at the University of Oxford and clinical psychology at Universität Konstanz. He was named the youngest tenured Full Professor in Norway in 2014 before accepting faculty appointments at the University of Cambridge as well as the University of Pennsylvania. Since this time, he has become the only psychology professor to have lectured for all eight Ivy League universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, UPenn) as well as both Oxford and Cambridge. Dr. Singh has provided keynote speeches at leading academic conferences on six continents, and his work has been featured in leading newspapers such as The Washington Post and magazines such as People. He has been the recipient of awards from organizations including the American Psychological Association, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for Research in Adolescence, the American Board of Forensic Psychology, the American Psychology-Law Society, and the European Congress on Violence in Clinical Psychiatry.
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