by Nazila Shafiei
Writing a good Statement of Purpose (SOP) is one of the most influential factors in getting into a graduate program. Therefore, you should pay extra attention while writing your SOP. Here is how you can write a well-organized and impressive SOP.
First of all, an SOP includes almost 1000 words. Some universities require less than this number of words, and you need to check how long of an SOP your desired university requires.
SOP is like a small biography of you, which starts with a brief introductory paragraph in which you explain why you want to pursue your studies in higher levels.
Then, you go on with explaining your educational background and smoothly come to the point why you have chosen that particular major to apply to. The point is how to do so and what to include. Here are some hints:
1) Do not start with your high school when you talk about your educational background. Start with your university major. You might say why you have chosen this major and what influenced you in choosing that.
2) Include only facts. Avoid talking about your dreams and trying to create an emotional impact on the reader of your SOP. What the application committee looks for is what you have done, your potentialities, your plans, but not your dreams.
3) Include what you have done to empower yourself in that particular field. Talk about the courses, either must or elective, that you have taken in that field. Let them know what conferences you have attended, and what other extra activities you have done. This might take 2-3 paragraphs because you need to include the details here. Here, you can explain that you like Major X, and you have taken X, Y, Z courses to improve yourself in such a field. You can give short explanation about the syllabuses of such courses and why they impacted you.
4) Come to the point. What do you want to do? Keep in mind that your choice must be compatible with what you have explained in the previous step. For instance, imagine that you want to study Literature. Therefore, in the previous step, you should talk about the literature courses you have taken and not the ELT courses.
5) The application committee would like to know how you can contribute to the enhancement of the department. This would be your last paragraph, when you talk about your personal skills, such as being ambitious, hardworking and so on; and assure the application committee that they can trust you.
6) If you have a professor in mind to work with, you can include their names in the last paragraph. It would mean that you have investigated about that particular university in details; and it would create a good image of you in the minds of the application committee.
7) In the end, do not forget to thank them for spending their time on reading your SOP.
In the end, I would like to add that you need to talk honestly, and avoid exaggerating your abilities. Imagine you are granted Teaching Assistantship based on the fact that you have claimed in your SOP that you have teaching experience. But, in fact you have only had a couple of private classes. If this is the case, you would be in real trouble when you go there and you are asked to teach some classes. Therefore, if you want to mention your teaching experience, add that you have only tutored. Do not give a false image of yours to the application committee if you do not want them to lose their trust in you once you are admitted.
Hope this helps.
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