The purpose of the ‘Statement of Purpose’- A Point of View

By Saketh Reddy Narahari

Imagine having the opportunity to speak with the admissions committee, persuade them in some way, and secure a spot at the university of your choice! Does that sounds intriguing ?Of course, that’s just our imagination, and all we can hope for is that it’s true. This is my take of what exactly an SOP is.

It is just that the ‘Statement of purpose’ is the written letter- the real-life format of our above imagination. It’s the only way to communicate with the admissions committee in an official capacity. Gosh! You had the opportunity to speak with them, but guess what, thousands of other students around the world are trying to convince AdCom for their chance too!

NOTE: NOT ALL THE PEOPLE IN ADMISSION COMMITTEE HAVE TECHNICAL UNDERSTANDINGS. This is an underrepresented point gone unnoticed by people, so they just fill SOP with their projects and too technical stuff. Chill max, it should be a story that should be understood by anyone.

How important is the SOP ?

On a scale of 10, I would rate the importance of SOP as 10. Consider it as the chance we get to tell our stories, our leanings, our achievements and whatnot! There is no restriction to the type of matter what you can say.

Since it a document of that importance, one must be very careful and very authentic while writing an SOP. Furthermore, candidates with a ‘weak’ academic profile who have a well-written SOP can compensate for their weaknesses and help them achieve their future goals and plans.

What AdCom looks for ?

AdCom looks for points to support their thought that a student can improve the overall prosperity of the class, whether through talent, culture, or diversity, not only in SOP but in all aspects of an application.

AdCom is made up primarily of professors. Professors may prefer students whose interests are similar to their current field of study.Not to mention, SOP can be used to assess your English language proficiency. In any case, if you want to demonstrate your writing ability, you must write an excellent SOP.

My Take: A Blueprint.

Blueprint:

Different people have different styles of storytelling. If we dont have one, we’ll try to develop by using my ‘safe,standard,tried and tested approach’. It’s just a blueprint that we can always modulate and modify. Give it a try if you don’t have any action plan of writing an SOP right away.

Here it goes:

->What is your current long term goal?

->How did you decide that it’s your long-term goal? We can make a good storytelling here.

->So, how are you planning to fulfill your goal ? And in that path, what steps did you already make ?

->How does this application to university help play a part in your long-term goal ?

[ In between the lines: Indirectly make sure that AdCom likes you. How? By indirectly mentioning how useful you are to that university. What are we bringing new to that university? In which space can you contribute more and how our past achievements are proof that we going to achieve somethings great in future too]

It’s safe to use the STAR method while describing something that’s technical and complex. You can google more about this stuff.

Credits: University of Exeter

What you might include an SOP ?

1. The first and foremost: Your Story
2. Career Objective
3. Why do you want to pursue higher education?
4. Academics
5. Acheivements
6. Future aspirations
7. Why that particular university helps in building your aspirations ?
8. What you bring new to the table?
9. Your learnings from failures
10. Your proficiency in projects.
11. Various certifications to show efforts in the field.
12. The topics you love, and why !
13. Trainings and Internships
14. Relevant work experience
15. Extra curricular activities
16. Ways to show you are creative
17. Community of social workings if any !

What you might not include in an SoP ?

1. As we need to supply our CV/Resume with the application, you might not want to waste the limited space in our SOP by repeating the contents in CV/Resume
2. Grammatical mistakes
3. Long and boring lines
4. Others thoughts and lines. Write your own lines.
5. Lies/ Boasting

Structure of the SoP

Definelty, there is no standard structure defined for an SOP. But its our job to make sure that our SOP sounds intriguing and we need to make sure that our SOP is ‘remembered’ by the admission committe.

Coming to length of SOP, some universities have strictly mentions about the length of SOPs, some don't. Before starting to write an SOP, candidates must check the guidelines for the same at the university admission website.Either case, we need to make sure that SOPs are short, crisp and on point. Most people suggest that anywhere near 800–1000 words or a one page essay, would suffice the need.

How to write a great SOP?

1. Research about the university, coursework and about the professors.
2. Write a unique, personal draft.
3. Give enough time to yourself to write an SOP, new ideas emerges as you spend more time on it.
4. Proof read the essay and try to observe from admission committe perspective
5. Get critical feedback. Feedback from different people, irrespective of their knowledge of the application process. Irrespective of their academic background. Maybe you can get reviews from parents, cousins, friends, professors, etc.
6. ALWAYS be specific. Every statement in the essay should relate to you.
7. Use a formal-casual tone. Using more of casual tone might indicate disrespect.
8. Get inputs from seniors or alumni of the university. They could really enhance some parts such as helping find professor name and research accurately matching your purpose of research.

SOP is a story. That is nothing different than maybe a movie story. You might have heard of stories where story writers sit on beaches, roads, and parks to get fresh ideas for perfect pitching. If you have time, this is a phase that you should consider, too, and always note in mind that building an SOP has a law of diminishing effect.

It takes a lot of time to build the last part where we connect the flow of different paragraphs. There is a saying that more the time, if we look at our best picture, the more flaws we notice. Similarly, as we spend time developing this SOP story, we always find room to enhance it, crisp it, and beautify it.

Summary: Statement of purpose is a piece of story that you tell AdCom. Learn the skill of bragging without you actually bragging. This is typically achieved with the line ‘We shouldn’t speak. Let the actions speak for themselves’. We need to properly define those actions cohesively.

All the best:

Saketh Reddy Narahari.

MS Computer Science

University of Southern California

Los Angeles