Here are tips to learn how to write a great and compelling statement of purpose.
What is the point of a statement of purpose? Like, why the heck is that even necessary? Why? Okay, here’s why it’s necessary. So, a statement of purpose defines your motivations, your skills, and your career goals. It tells the Graduate Admissions Committee, hey, this is what I’m interested in.
This is what I can do.
This is why you should admit me.
This is why I’m important to you.
This is what I want to do in five years and in 10 years from now.
How to write a statement of purpose?
How to write a statement of purpose?
This is interesting. So, let me give you some background about my qualifications and why you should trust what I say.
So, I was the graduate coordinator for my department as a professor for one year, like one and a half years. And so, every admission decision that we made for graduate school went through me, like I had to sign off. And I have served on the Graduate Committee for my department for several years.
And so, yeah, so I have a very good idea of what your statement of purpose should read like, should sound like. And many of my colleagues would agree that your statement of purpose is very integral to whether you get admitted into graduate school. So, your statement of purpose, you generally have five paragraphs.
You do not want to write too long, right? Because I personally do not read long statement of purposes. I don’t. And you don’t need to.
Like, you don’t need to write too, you don’t need to make it too long. There’s no point. And the purpose must capture the reader for at least five minutes.
So, you want to make sure that those first five minutes, when I pick up your statement of purpose, it’s short, it’s concise, it’s strong, it’s well-written, and it conveys the message. The first paragraph of your statement of purpose should introduce who you are, okay? So, when I start reading any statement of purpose, right, I want to say, who’s this person? Obviously, I have your CV, I have your transcripts, right? I have all that stuff. But your statement of purpose is kind of a semi-informal way.
Okay. So, yeah, we were talking about the first paragraph. The first paragraph should introduce who you are.
I want to say, tell a short story of who you are, of what inspires you, of what motivates you. Just in general, don’t make it too long. Remember, this is one paragraph.
So, just a short, quick anecdote of maybe an experience or something that motivates you. So, you want to connect who you are to the course of study you’re interested in. Okay.
So, this is your first paragraph. Short, sweet. You want to draw in whoever’s reading your statement of purpose.
Introduce yourself. Talk a little bit about your background. So, if you’re in Nigeria, for example, talk about you being from Nigeria.
You can talk about Nigeria’s poor, all that stuff. Feel free to do that. And then you want to connect that to the course of study.
So, don’t forget that. Don’t make your first paragraph just about yourself. You want to make sure that every paragraph connects back to your course of study, to why you’re even writing a statement of purpose at all.
Does this make sense? Let me know in the comments. All right. So, first paragraph, who you are.
Second paragraph, you want to go into detail about your academic and technical interests. Okay. So, for me, for example, whenever I was writing my statement of purpose, I’m very interested in women’s health.
I’m very interested in black women’s health. I’m very interested in chronic disease prevention, chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes. Right.
So, my second paragraph now is going to focus heavily on these interests. Okay. So, for you, your second paragraph, after talking about yourself and your motivations and how that connects to your course of study, now you talk about technical interests, like what really interests you and why you’re interested in these things.
Okay. So, this is what your second paragraph should be about. Okay.
So, all right. So, your third paragraph should connect your academic and technical interests to your future goals. Okay.
So, you want to make sure that all of your interests that you’ve blabbed about in the second paragraph, you want to make sure that in your third paragraph, you talk about your future academic goals. So, by future, I mean that your future in the department you’re applying to. You know, you can say, oh, you know, so for me, for example, if I were writing this, I would say, oh, well, you know, I’m interested in black women’s health in the United States.
I’m interested in immigrant health in the United States. I see myself working with Dr. this, this, this, who has also done such research. Okay.
So, you want to make sure that in your third paragraph, you connect your interests that you’ve talked about in your second paragraph. You connect that interest to your future academic goals. And part of your future academic goals include prospective advisors, prospective professors.
Okay. So, for example, you want to make sure that wherever you’re going, there’s a professor there doing research that you are interested in. Okay.
So, that’s very important. So, you want to, you want to research professors currently working on stuff you’re interested in, and then include them in your statement of purpose. Guys, if there’s anything you take away from this conversation is that you want to include professors, research professors.
If I, whenever I’m reading a statement of purpose and I’m like, and I see my name in the statement of purpose, like, oh, I would like to work with Dr. Muda on blah, blah, blah. My heart is like, oh, wow. Yeah.
Tell me more. Tell me more. Interesting.
You know, because it shows two things. It shows that they have done their research and they know they’re smart people. And number two, that they’re actually really serious about this stuff.
Okay. So, so include professor’s names in the department that are doing stuff you’re interested in. Okay.
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So your fourth paragraph, you want to connect your future academic goals that you’ve talked about in your third paragraph. You want to connect that to your short and long-term goals after you graduate. So you want to talk about what you want to do five years after graduation.
That’s very good because any professor, any admissions committee reading your statement of purpose is going to be like, oh, interesting. This candidate is thinking long-term. This person is talking about five years from now, 10 years from now.
Oh yeah. Wow. Interesting.
You know, so you want to include that. You want to make sure your fourth paragraph is about the future, like the future after graduation. So your third paragraph is the future from where you are now, like your future in the program.
Your fourth paragraph is the future after the program, after you graduate. And so you can talk about possibly curing, creating a cure for coronavirus, which has made all of us quarantined right now. But you want to talk about those things, like the future, your big dreams, your big goals.
You want to entice the professors, right? Because who doesn’t want a student who is ambitious? Like I want a student who’s ambitious. I don’t know. I tweeted about one of my students who is pretty much a millionaire right now.
And she, she’s my student and I’m so proud of her, right? She’s very ambitious and I love that. So you want to make sure that the admissions committee sees you, like you come across as ambitious to the admissions committee. And that’s great.
That’s great for you. Okay. So your fifth paragraph should conclude.
You want to start to conclude. You want to, um, I, I call this anticipatory things. So you’re saying things in anticipation.
I look forward to, you know, being admitted into your prestigious program. So this is the paragraph where you, where you like praise the program, praise the school as a whole. You, you praise the city.
So that’s something a lot of people forget, right? So you want to, you, you, you, you should remember that your school is in a city, right? So if you’re applying to university of Texas, right? You’re applying to university of Texas, university of Texas. The main campus is in Austin, Texas. So you want to talk about the city of Austin, how you look forward to Austin.
You want to maybe research the weather in Austin and talk about like, Oh, I look forward to being, um, to becoming part of, you know, the community in Austin and giving, you know, so you want to talk about the city at large, right? So you talk about the department, the school, the city, the school is in, and that just, you just come across as so knowledgeable and so, so, um, hardworking, right? Because it shows that you’ve done your research and that’s, you, you, you can buy that, right? So that’s really, really important. Okay. So a statement of purpose, it’s all about fit.
Okay. It’s all about fit. When I was a graduate, um, coordinator, um, and I had to look through several, several applications, it was all about fit for me.
Like when I read a student’s application, I always thought, would put this student fit with this graduate student, master’s PhD student fit in our university? Um, is this a good fit for us? You know? Um, so that, that’s something I always, always thought about, right? So I want you guys to remember that it is about what fits, do you fit? So your statement of purpose needs to, needs to, um, convince, convince the committee, the graduate committee that you fit into their program, that what they, what the school, what the program is offering is best for you. Like there’s nowhere else you can go except that school. And that is going to help a ton.
All right. So the last thing now is that you want to edit vigorously, edit your work. No, absolutely no typos, no grammatical errors, please.
Okay. You want to make sure your work is edited to the gods. Okay.
Edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, like crazy. So that you’re, so that, because imagine, imagine like for me, when I’m trying to decide on who gets into the graduate program and I see, I read a statement of purpose that has so many grammatical errors, what does it tell me? It tells me one, this student, this prospective student is so lazy because really you couldn’t edit your work. Come on, come on now.
Two, what does it tell me? It told, it tells me that this student is careless because maybe you edited, but you missed some stuff, right? Three, it tells me that you’re not ready for graduate school and I don’t want you. Okay. So you want to make sure that your statement of purpose is beautifully edited.
Ask someone else to read your, read it and make edits. In fact, invest in a professional editor, ask someone professional, maybe somebody who read English or something to read over your work and provide edits for you. And that is going to be your, that’s going to be your, it make a break for you because if you, if you submit a statement of purpose that has so many errors, nobody’s going to, people are going to look down on you and look down on your application.
Even if you have a first class, nobody cares really. Honestly, this is me now telling you guys because I’ve been, I’ve been there. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve made decisions on who gets into graduate school or not.
And I’m telling you, try not to submit a statement of purpose that is not compelling and full of grammatical errors. It does, you don’t look good doing that. Do you see how passionate I am talking about this? Because, because I’ve seen some students who I felt were, had good prospects but their statement of purpose was just full of errors, full of so many errors that I felt like this is not a good candidate.
This is not a good student. If they can’t fix errors, if they can’t edit their work, I don’t want them because that says so much about who you are as a person. Okay.
And I hope you took notes and I will catch you back in the next time
Bye-bye.
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