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What is Statement of Purpose (SOP) ? Why is it so Important?

Statement of Purpose  SOP importance US graduate Schools Application If you are considering applying to US Universities for Graduate school either MS or MBA, one of the most important components of your application packet is Statement of Purpose. Many refer to it as SOP. There are thousands of articles on web about this and websites about this topic…I would like to share my thoughts on SOP and stress the importance SOP.

What is Statement of Purpose?

As the name says, “it is a statement or essay about your main purpose of applying to graduate school”. The reality is, not many people apply to Graduate school in US, because it is a lot of time commitment and it takes away so much of your life… Also, there is no point in applying to Graduate school without a proper purpose.  So, US Graduate schools ask students to write an essay with explaining their main reason for graduate school.  What is the purpose of going back to school for Graduate program. The universities typically give all the guidelines for SOP, like how long it should be and how many pages, etc. Your goal is to write it up precisely within the length they specify.

Why is the importance of Statement of Purpose?

Let me tell you an example. Think of a situation “where you set off to sail in a boat in the ocean, imagine you do not have a compass and you do not have a map corresponding to the ocean or anything…you just jumped into the boat and kept sailing…thinking eventually you will get to other coast .”  How would you define that journey ?  You would think of that person who puts himself into this kind of situation as stupid, because he does not know where he is going or what he is doing…  It is the same thing with higher education. You should have a goal and you should know how you are going to get to your goal and why do you want to get to your goal too.   Universities treat SOP very seriously and they read your SOP. It is very important you write a good Statement of purpose interweaving your goals, your achievements, how will you achieve your goals and what do you really want to accomplish in life, etc.  SOP gives the admission committee to judge your goals and make sure they are in line with the schools’ ethics, capabilities, and standards and provide you all the support to let you reach your goal.  Statement of purpose gives the admission committee to judge your perspective of life, your career aspirations, your ethics, your technical aptitude, your vision for life, etc. The key point is, it is your chance to explain to admission committee why you are going for higher education and what is your main purpose…Universities give utmost importance to SOP.

Read this as continuation : Why NOT to copy Statement of Purpose(SOP)

Over the next few weeks, I will write some articles on Statement of purpose like how to write SOP, how to think, etc and provide you all with samples that I collected over the years. Stay tuned !

Image Credit : http://mirrorcracked.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/sop.jpg

   

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4 Comments

  1. I truly admire the way it is written. I agree that SoP writing is certainly a big task. And one has to really hire one of the experts in SoP content development.

    Reply
  2. It is certainly an amazing post. I really admire the author who has presented the concept in an effective way. I agree that SoP Writing is a difficult task. And getting a statement from an expert writer is always the best thing.

    Reply
  3. The writing of the statement of purpose is rather important nowadays. The reasons for writing the best sop are rather simple.

    First of all, everything starts with the necessity of sop writing and the exact purpose of it. Surely, people can search a lot of companies on the Internet offering different sops writing with the help of the most professional writers. But will it be so? The second reason is the quality of the provided work itself. There are several factors that can influence the paper from the very beginning:

    the urgency of providing the paper;

    area of the necessary writing;

    the volume of the paper (not all the companies demand several pages or even dozens of sops, sometimes it must be only 1 page and it also influences the impression greatly);

    the professionalism of the writer who will do the paper.

    In other words, the best solution while searching the website that can help you with the sop or simply the independent writers is to read or look through the examples that were already done here. The following website has even a separate section with the samples that can show the high level of the writers working here. Moreover, if the person is satisfied with the sample, it is necessary to describe the exact structure of sop, what must be done and in what way. Surely, not every resource can reassure you that your paper will be great and you will reach the goal with the help of it anyway.

    Reply
  4. Hi,
    I am still waiting for the format and ex of SOP.
    Request you to post few sample asap.
    It would be of grt help to students like us who wld be applying this year.
    Thanks,
    Praya

    Reply

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