How to write the perfect Statement of Purpose in 10 steps

Writing a Statement of Purpose (SoP) or a Personal Statement for university applications can be as laborious as it can be confounding. Where do you start and how do you end? Do you indulge gently in self-celebration or find a way to account for all your shortcomings? How do you foreground your past and show it in sync with your present as well as your aims for the future?

Here is an attempt to resolve such queries and shatter misconceptions around crafting this most essential of documents, by demonstrating how you can write the perfect SoP in 10 neat steps.

1) UNDERSTAND YOURSELF

Building a story about yourself is the key to writing a good SoP. So, ask yourself, what is it that gets you out of bed every morning, motivated to plough through life? Then, locate your interests and attribute a word or a phrase to it in order to give yourself a compact identity. If you are a journalist interested in challenging conventional wisdom, are you not primarily a storyteller? If economics is your subject of interest, how do you view the current trajectory of capitalism? If political science is your preferred domain, do you see yourself as a political theorist, a potential diplomat or as an international activist? You need not have foolproof answers, but you must be asking the right questions so as to convey the impression that you have a basic grip over knowing who you really are and who you really want to be.

2) DESCRIBE YOUR BACKGROUND

This step does not merely entail enlisting every course you have ever taken or detailing your parents’ occupation. It involves you showing the reader the factors that have gone into your making as an individual. If studying literature led you to combine creativity with critical thinking, mention how. If you made a switch from one stream to another in the middle of your higher secondary at school, say what made you change tracks. If your parents have influenced you in pursuing a particular profession, underline the importance of their inspiration. No story you tell can be appealing without context, and this step is about laying down the foundations in your background that contextualise your identity.

3) SUBSTANTIATE YOUR SKILLS

Anyone applying to any reputable institution will have a bunch of degrees, certificates and skills to project in their resume. What matters is how that projection comes across. Do not simply mention that you were the president of your school’s debating society. Explain what you learnt from managing a group of debaters or summarise the impact a big debate victory had on you. You may be an excellent photographer, but what are your specialities in terms of shooting; what is your distinctive style? Even if you are someone with a range of skills, you must find a way to express how each of your skills has been harnessed during specific life events or experiences and how they relate to what you ultimately aspire to do.

4) ESTABLISH YOUR PERSONALITY

In an SoP, it is best not to pretend to be someone else. If you are naturally very confident, let it shine through in what you write (as long as you do not resort to grandstanding). If you are inherently sceptical and indecisive, be honest about it, but also show how your scepticism has prevented you from being impulsive in the past. Remember that an SoP is not just about showcasing a great achiever, it is also about documenting a good person that others would like to know and work with.

5) ARTICULATE YOUR AMBITIONS

Do not be perturbed if you do not have an exact blueprint ready for your career. At the same time, an SoP is about purpose (it’s in the name, after all!), and you must exhibit a basic comprehension of where you see yourself after completing your desired course. SoP readers will search for your vision in your application, and this is the step where you paint the potential paths you see yourself taking, even if none of them is set in stone. Do not be worried if your ambitions seem idealistic, perceptive readers will be able to tell if you genuinely mean what you write.

6) SHOWCASE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR COURSE AND CAMPUS

Nothing catches the attention of university faculty quite like a line or two about their own university. Do not parrot cliched praise (“an exemplary institution whose legacy I wish to take forward” and similar stuff) here. Instead, unearth what makes a particular university and the place it is based in, unique. If you have admired a particular professor from the institution or have gathered information about how the university’s alumni have been placed in your dream company, this is where you need to bring all of that up.

7) INCORPORATE HUMOUR

There is no need to leave your reader in splits, for that is not the aim of an SoP. But a bit of humour, whether in self-deprecation or in a pithy comment about the nature of politics, economy or society, is always appreciated. Do not force humour if you do not have it, and by all means avoid culturally sensitive jokes. But also keep in mind that a good piece of humour can provoke a smile as readily as it can generate laughter. Usually, an SoP is a loaded piece of writing, with most of the content carrying a lot of gravity. One or two light phrases or sentences will only complement the weight of the rest of your words.

8) BE SUCCINCT

Conventionally, SoPs are no longer than 1,000 words. Therefore, there is no room for purple passages that make the same point in three different ways. Be economical with your words, but not with your truth. Do not let the word count dilute the authenticity of your story. One good way to ensure this is to divide your SoP into multiple paragraphs -- each attributed to a particular section like background, skills and campus knowledge. Most satisfactory SoPs require a handful of drafts, so do not expect to strike gold at the first time of asking. Avoid compulsive editing, but do not hesitate from making little changes as long as they make the writing crisper and more compact.

9) CONNECT TO LARGER THEMES AND ISSUES

Does global inequality or systemic racism keep you up at night? Do you feel liberalism has lost its intellectual essence? Are you intent on joining the dots in the incipient world of artificial intelligence to forge something pathbreaking? In other words, how do your goals relate to the bigger talking points in the world? While you are not writing a dissertation abstract in an SoP or presenting your personal manifesto on how to change the world, it helps if you can take your micro plans and show how they fit in the macro picture of the planet. Once again, things must be organic in this regard. Do not wax eloquent about surveillance capitalism if you are applying for Victorian literature, but do ask yourself how you can zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Invariably, no matter your field, there tends to be one.

10) ADMIT YOUR FAILURES

Undoubtedly the hardest thing to do in an SoP is to admit that your otherwise perfect presentation of yourself also involves papering over a few cracks. As long as you do not descend into writing an apologia for your mistakes or come across as whining about your lows, feel free to mention instances where you came up short, for the simple reason that everyone has them, and often, they serve as bigger life lessons than the most dizzying of successes. The bottomline, when it comes to an SoP, is that it must be a mirror into your world and your mind, and neither of those can be truly persuasive if they have not been touched by some form of failure.