GradStudio

What's the project all about?

The GradStudio Project provides a way for students to help each other with their essay writing in preparation for graduate applications. Trading essays with others and giving each other feedback can be a valuable way to troubleshoot and improve your writing--plus it’s fast, easy, and free!
The GradStudio Project will not provide expert advice or intensive, in-depth critique, but will be a way to get a few helpful “quick checks” of your writing.

What is a statement of purpose/personal statement/research statement?

While you should consult your individual graduate program application guidelines for specific instructions, there are many excellent general resources available online to help guide your application essay writing.
Example
Professional School Personal Statement
Academic Statement of Intent

I'm not applying to grad school this year, but I’d like to get feedback on an essay for school/work/other. Can I join the project?

While we are excited to consider possibilities for expanding this project in the future, we are currently focused entirely on students applying to graduate programs. You must upload an application essay for a graduate program in the project, however personal statements, statements of purpose, and research statements are all welcome.

I want feedback on my personal statement and my research statement. Can I upload more than one essay in this project?

No, you may only submit one essay for feedback in this project. In the future we hope to be able to coordinate multiple entries for participants, but at this time we are only accepting one entry per participant.

Why am I getting feedback from peers? Why is that helpful?

Peer assessment has been used with great success in massive open online courses where instructors are unable to give individual feedback to massive numbers of students. Research has shown that peer graders give reliable and consistent feedback that compares with grading by instructors.

Who gets to see my essay?

Only the people giving you peer feedback will see your essay. Unfortunately we cannot control how participants may use the materials in the project. All participants in the GradStudio project must agree to abide by our Honor Code. We remind you to never reveal personal information in any material you upload for peer review. You may also replace specific institution names with “school X”, for example instead of “I am applying to UC San Diego Cognitive Science”, say “I am applying to School X Cognitive Science”.

The information that you submit to us in this project such as your email or other personal information, will never be shared with participants in the project and will be kept confidential to the extent allowed by law.

The GradStudio project depends on your help to run successfully! Please be a thoughtful community member and respect others’ work in the project. If participants do not respect these guidelines, the project will not be able to provide help to anyone.
Please report any problems to GradStudioProject@gmail.com.

Who is running GradStudio? Why are you doing this?

GradStudio is an open online peer assessment project from Cat Hicks, Ailie Fraser, Purvi Desai and Scott R. Klemmer. We are researchers in Design, Computer Science and HCI who are passionate about improving access to learning and educational opportunities. The GradStudio Project is a beta test of some of our ideas for how to improve crowdsourced peer feedback for students.

What is PeerStudio?

PeerStudio is a research project at Stanford University and UC San Diego and the software platform that enables the GradStudio Project. The primary contributors are Chinmay Kulkarni, Courtney Noh, Julie Fortuna, Ed Hutchins, Scott R. Klemmer and Michael S. Bernstein. More Info

My file won’t upload to PeerStudio.

From PeerStudio: Your file upload will not work if you are using a browser older than Internet Explorer 10, Chrome 32, Safari 5.3. (No plans to fix, please upgrade)

You can reach the PeerStudio help team at peerstudio@cs.stanford.edu. They will usually respond within one day. They welcome bugs, suggestions for improvement and general comments.

Email us at GradStudioProject@gmail.com.