What is a Statement of Purpose and how to write it?

SOPs are your perfect platform to showcase the best of your abilities, achievements and ambitions. But, the writing must be distinct from the million others with similar expertise. Well, that’s the tricky part.

SOP is how the universities find about you. Make it exciting and personal, compelling and only way it can be all things is if the Statement of Purpose is written with days of dedicated effort in the right direction. You guessed it – it’s not an easy task – far from it. 

Be prepared to write with patience. First few drafts are going to be passable and sometimes really bad. But don’t be deterred by it. It’s absolutely normal.

An original, out-of-the-box opening sentence works like a charm. If the opening is great then you have the reader’s attention much more than when the opening is derived. It’s a fine art to master and each new instance is a new challenge.

This is where years of experience of our writers come to the fore. And they deliver each time without fail.

We focus on keeping the writing to the point and make it flow like a short story. We stay clear of hollow adjectives and clichéd prose. Write something that you would like to read – something that reads like an original script, not hackneyed and filled with platitudes.

Tell them how & why you want to enroll in the program and why you deserve the place more than the other person applying in the same program with similar skills. An SOP must justify your love for the field that you want to spend the rest of your life. May be you don’t have the answer but we will dig in and help you discover it.

Let’s take an example and say you’re applying to a film school. The film school’s SOP will ask you the reason you want this field as a career and what will you bring to the table.

If you write “I was inspired after watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond and now I want to become a filmmaker and change the world.’ Does that sound convincing to you? It doesn’t tell us anything about you or why you liked the film or how will you change the world.

But if you wrote “Few years ago, watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond made me realize how people in Africa are still made to live as slaves. On instinct, I joined an amateur filmmaking group and started making short films and telling my stories through this amazing medium. Now that I’ve been directing and writing for a few years, I’ve seen initial interest in films mature into full-fledged love. It’s now a natural choice for me to study filmmaking professionally to be able to make diverse films and reach to a larger audience.”

See the marked difference between the two reasons for taking up filmmaking. Similarly the professors will unfailingly notice the difference.

In today’s age, when the competition is cut-throat and seats are limited, a striking SOP can make a world of difference in your life.