Discussing Tutoring Experience in Statement of Purpose?

[xdrgnh]

Can it ever be harmful to discuss what tutoring experience you had as a undergraduate in your statement of purpose. I wrote 250 word paragraph how I was hired by a department at my university to tutor upper level undergraduate physics classes and what I got out of the experience. Do you feel some committee might just see it as a way to compensate for having weak research? I'm not saying that I do have weak research but I heard from others (who are outside of physics) that it can be harmful because it can argued that instead of spending time tutoring that I should of spent that time doing even more research.

 

[Khashishi]

I don't see why it would be harmful to include.

 

[Dishsoap]

Do you feel some committee might just see it as a way to compensate for having weak research?

The only way it would possibly hurt you is if you left out research experience in favor of mentioning tutoring. If that's not the case, I don't see why it would hurt?

However I'm also an undergrad, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

 

[Vanadium 50]

You are essentially asking us what the admissions committee will think about a document we haven't seem, and to compare that to their response to potential other documents that don't exist. It's really not possible to do anything more than guess.

Let me repeat something I said on October 30th.

And this is maybe the fourth or fifth thread you've posted that's stressing for no good reason. If stress bothers you that much, I think you might want to consider whether science is really the right career for you. You can wait two years for telescope time - and then have it rain. You can work on a detector for a decade, only to have the accelerator blow up. Or the detector catch fire. You can be on the verge of making an important calculation - only to find someone beat you to it. You can have a grant application or a paper in limbo for months, with nobody at the agency or journal having any explanation. This is all part of the job. If you find the application process this stressful, will you be happy with a career with an order of magnitude more stress?