The 5 Step Process on How to Write A Statement of Purpose for Masters

This is a transcript of podcast episode 11 from The Power Punch Club. You can listen to this episode here!

Your statement of purpose is an important aspect of your application — the most significant in terms of communicating who you are, the path you’re on, and what you want to achieve to your audience — the admission committee. 

You only get one chance of doing this right every year — let’s make sure this year is for you!

Follow this detailed and practical step by step process and you’ll have a statement of purpose that stands out from the crowd.

First Step: Story

The first step in this process is to write down five adjectives that define you. So, what we do is, we tell the student to close their eyes and meditate over the 5 best adjectives that describe themselves. The statement of purpose should essentially point towards those five adjectives, so once they identify these five adjectives that best represent the candidate, then we go deeper into the story that would best portray each of these five adjectives. But, essentially looking for one story that can portray all of these five adjectives in the best possible way.  

That's how you define your story. 

Second Step: Outline

Once you identify the adjectives and the story, then you create an outline of your statement of purpose. So, now you're taking your story and you're breaking it down into different paragraphs that shows how your essay is going to flow.  

Two main things that we're looking for in an outline: Readability or flow and Interest.

One is the flow of the outline, the flow of the words that are in the outline, you want to make sure that when the person is reading this essay — it’s called readability — you want to make sure that when anyone reads this essay it comes off as flowy smooth with no harsh transitions.

It's kind of like you see those two movies; in one movie the transitions are smooth and your audience can understand what's going on in the story. In the other type of movie, they’re all over the place. They're doing flashback this and that and while they may be cool, it's really tough for the audience to follow. So it’s important to have good transitions that improve the readability of that essay.

The second one is that it has to be interesting. You have to be able to have the reader step into your shoes so that they feel and they can empathize with you. So they can be in your shoes and feel how you felt about your story. This causes a sense of action.

Going with that movie analogy, it's like a movie, where you want to sit in your seat and watch the whole movie in one sitting like you can't let go because you want to know what happens next.

But you also want to root for that character, right? So, in a movie, there's always the main character and when you empathize with the main character, that's when you want the character to win the game in the movie, right? So that's how you want them to feel as well.

It's kind of like Breaking Bad, the guy is such a bad character; he's killing people, he's cooking meth in his lab and he's making all these people drug addicts. But, yet the story is written in such a way, that you empathize with the characters so much, but that even though this guy is so bad and such a crook at the end of it, we all are like “Oh! please don't get caught!”

Third Step: Delivery

We're looking at the tone as in, we want to make sure that you don't come off as too academic - that your words are not too technical, and you want to avoid using these really, really big words. Your sentences have to be short and succinct, you don't want it to be too windy and long. You want to make sure the language is positive, is constructive and you sound confident — but also not overconfident! 

Part of delivery is also the voice, as in you want to make sure you always portray an active voice and not a passive voice. You want to be a hands-on person, not one of the spectators. Your language should always show that you're the one doing the action.

I was reading an article the other day and it said the best qualities of the way leaders speak, write and communicate is in an active voice as opposed to a passive voice. In an active voice, you’re more direct and you get straight to the point so that the reader understands what you're talking about early on. In a passive voice, the reader reaches the end of the whole sentence and then understands the point of the sentence. This also kills the readability and the flow of your statement of purpose.

Fourth step: Grammar

Part of the grammar is the vocabulary i.e. the words that you use. You want to keep it simple and easy to understand. In the same article, they also mention that the best ability leaders have is to explain complicated things in easy words.

Avoid technical mumbo jumbo because you have to remember that on the Admission Committee, there are members that are not part of your degree and they don't completely understand the specifics of your field. Lots of people use technical industrial jargon only to hide the fact they can’t break down something in simple words.  

Also, they not only using the technical industrial jargon, but lots of students think of putting in all those GRE words they just learned to use in their essay. Avoid that. Always use words that completely fit the sentence. Always use an easier, more accurate word versus a tougher word because what happens is when your reader is going through your essay, the tougher words makes them think more and then the more they think about the word, the more they forget the character in the story. You really want them to be focused on the character, the central figure in the story, which is you.

Fifth Step: Beta Test

For all you Engineers out there, this step is a beta test, where before you do the real launch, you’re just sending the product out there, seeing how people like it and then incorporating that into your essay.

Remember how in step one, we came up with five different adjectives that portray this particular candidate? So, step 5 is to go back to those five adjectives and ensure that the statement of purpose reflects those five adjectives. 

Here’s what we do: we step back from this essay, we let the candidate take the essay, hand it over to family members, friends or anyone who can help them out with this. Their task is to read the statement of purpose and summarize the adjective they thought was portrayed in this statement.

You essentially ask them one question: If you had to describe this candidate with five adjectives, what would those five adjectives be?

If those five adjectives are different from the ones that you identified or they're not as clear then that means there's something lacking in that essay and they have to go back and change it a little bit. 

By focusing on these five adjectives, you're not even focused on the story. Those five adjectives are the underlying message that you're portraying through the story. The story is not what you should be focused on at the end of the day. You’re focused on the message that's underlying that story.  

So, if you go back to that Breaking Bad example, what are the five adjectives that you would use to describe Walter? Don't describe to me what the whole Breaking Bad story is about, what are those five adjectives, after listening to the whole story? 

And, that's what the focus of the whole SOP should be on.

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This originally appeared on The Power Punch Club Podcast. This podcast is featured on iTunes and Google Play.

The Power Punch Club podcast features Dr. Varun Gandhi, who has a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Vineet Jain, who has an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech. They have 18 years of combined experience in attending various top universities in America. They have both T.A. (teaching assistant) and R.A. (research assistant) experience. They have mentored numerous students during their grad school programs. They have worked at top firms in their respective fields with 10 years of combined experience working in the industry. They have 20 years of combined experience in university admissions.

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