How to write an SOP within 300 words

The World of International Education is rapidly changing and so is the way that Immigration Department evaluates visa applications to ensure faster, smoother and streamlined processing. Recently, The Department of Home Affairs (DHA), Australia announced that they would require a Statement of Purpose (SOP) that is concise and only limited to 300 words. Ever since then, the big question has been – ‘How to write an SOP within 300 words?’

Having been in the International Education industry for well over 15 years, I thought I will share my quick advice on how this may be successfully achieved.

300 words is indeed very little to summarize your life and future plan but if you approach this challenge in a logical manner, then it can be fairly simple to accomplish the task.

I have divided the article in two parts – Items to Exclude Vs Items to Include

1.????Items to Exclude:

My golden rule for a 300 words SOP is to first break your entire profile into Past, Present and Future. Most of your past and present will be already known and validated via bunch of documents/certificates that you will attach in your visa application anyway.

This means don’t waste words writing anything about your English score, Academic history and past work experience.

What you should instead focus on are things that have not occurred in your life or for which you have no evidence in form of certificates and letters, i.e. The Future.

2.????Items to Include:

Introduction/Opener:

To start with, introduce yourself (in about 50 words) to create that strong first impression Talk about your interests, passion, ideologies or anything that helps introduce you best. Here’s a real example “Following my Bachelor of Commerce degree in 2020, I joined Marriott Hotel as a Junior Sales executive. After about 2 years of working in Hospitality, I knew this was a field I would like to explore further and thought no better way to advance my career than by gaining a PG degree in Hospitality from Australia. So basically, if there has been that turning point in your life, state how it has influenced your choice of program or Country to start off with.

Why Australia and why the chosen University:

Before you try to justify?why Australia?for your studies, you may explain?why not?your home country. Your reasons for not studying in your home country may be anything from poor infrastructure in local colleges, lack of desired majors etc. The key here is to validate those claims by attaching proof (screenshots) of your online research. It may include pictures, data, comparison tables for Universities in your home country. Note your points on SOP, then validate them on your Documentary Evidence PDF (This is nothing but a PDF of screenshots you should create to support your research. Make sure to reference each document to points in your SOP.??

There are usually a set of reasons for our choices. Stick to those rather than pasting everything on your SOP. Let’s say you mainly liked the Central location of Campus, Tuition fee and Ranking of the University. You should then highlight how these are advantageous to you. So link up the location with reduced travel time, cost and convenience for example. Doing this extra bit adds the crucial ‘Unique Factor’ on your SOP. I recommend students to visit?www.qilt.edu.au?for conducting research on Australian Universities and adding screenshots to your Documentary Evidence PDF.???

Why the particular program:

In this section state how completion of this program will join the dots in your career plan. In other words, you must demonstrate the cost benefit analysis you have made. Is the program going to enable you to obtain better jobs and how? Will this program help in promoting you from your current position? I recall a Bio-Tech background student showing a staff notice from her company. The notice advertised a Managerial position and one of the mandatory requirements was “Must have an MBA qualification”. She attached this notice as Documentary Evidence. This was an excellent initiative that worked.?This type of data adds the crucial evidence and ‘Unique Factor’ to your SOP

Universities usually list their lecturing staff names on the website. You must learn to make use of such type of information while writing the SOP. Let’s say you are going for an MIT program. You may then research the IT lecturers’ names by going on the University website, check their qualifications or achievements in IT and add screenshots of such links to your Documentary Evidence PDF. There you go, you have earned another evidence backed ‘Unique Factor’ for your SOP.

Career plans:

Finally, you need to focus on career plans. What will you do after you complete your studies. If returning to home country then state the pay packages expected with evidence in the form of websites, link or other documented evidence. Share names of companies you would target for jobs. If you have plan A and plan B, even better, share it - that would indicate you have researched well and have done thorough preparation before investing in your study.

In this section it would be advantageous to state the duties and responsibilities of the role you intend to have in an organisation. If you can link this bit up with what you said you in earlier sections, then that’s a perfect ending to your 300 words SOP!

Lastly, when you collate your Screenshots/Documentary Evidence into a PDF, make sure you provide some numbering so the reader can easily corelate each SOP point back to your PDF. And ofcourse don’t forget to attach this PDF to the visa application under ‘other documents’.

You are done!

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