Writing a Killer Statement of Purpose for Grad School: A Walkthrough of 9 admits at Top 10 unis

Dominating Grad School Applications

The methodology I describe in this article got me into some fantastic schools for Robotics Masters, including Carnegie Mellon (#1 for robotics), CalTech, UPenn, UMich, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Hopkins, UCSD, Purdue…

In this article, I elucidate what I did to write a strong Statement of Purpose using my SOP for robotics master’s programs as an example. While this is written from the perspective of someone who joined an M.S. program, I think it would also be useful for PhD applications.

What is the SOP?

The statement of purpose is pretty self-explanatory — it is a reasoning of why you want to do what you say and what you want to do. Think about the SOP as a written reflection of yourself.

More broadly, it is 500–1500 words in length and is aimed at answering the following questions:

1. Can you think clearly and communicate your thoughts well? (not flamboyance, but the ability to convey and convince someone)
2. What are your long and short-term career goals?
3. Why do you want to pursue higher studies?
4. What have you done so far that makes you qualified/can help you excel in grad school?
5. How well do you fit into the university that you’re applying to? What makes you unique that will enrich the university?

If you answer the above 5 questions in a cohesive manner, you can be sure that your SOP is decent. How do you take it to the next level? Read on….

Overall Structure

The SOP typically has several paragraphs to it, but there are usually 3–4 major sections to it that answer some critical questions.

The most popular structure is as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Why this university
4. Conclusion

However, depending on how well the story flows and the amount of work you have done relevant to the field, it may be worth interchanging paragraphs 2 and 3 and keeping your background more focused on how you’re the perfect fit for the university of interest.

Section 1: The Introduction

This section is one of the most important in your SOP. It sets the tone for the rest of your writing and has the power to make the reader either fall asleep or get intrigued about you. You want it to be the latter!

Let’s tackle this section using a few don’ts:

1. Refrain from starting with a broad generic statement about how tech encompasses everything. This makes it highly impersonal, and anyone can write such comments. Use the intro to talk about why YOU are excited about this field and your motivation for entering and performing higher studies in this field.
2. Do not start with your childhood! Many say they have been interested in computers since they were kids — it’s extremely cliche and makes you look naive. Sure, you were interested when you were a kid, but it wasn’t appropriately formulated unless you understood the field. It would help if you showcased your heightened technical knowledge of your area when applying for graduate school.
3. Do not write empty statements such as “I wish to do a PhD in Neurobiology as it will give me in-depth knowledge of the field.” Grad programs are huge commitments in terms of workload, finances and time. Write about specific things you wish to accomplish through graduate education — perhaps to get a better job/change fields/resolve an intellectual itch/prepare yourself for the next level of education (M.S. ->PhD).

So what should you do?

I approached the introduction by framing a narrative of a personal incident that got me into robotics and the challenges I encountered that set the tone for entering grad school. This can be applied to any field. The story needs to be deeply personal and authentic! Think about one incident that got you highly excited about your area, and think about how that made you feel. Now put those thoughts into words.

Here is mine:

Introduction part 1

But then, this is just what excites you. The obvious question then becomes, why do you want to pursue higher education in the field? i.e., is there something that you do not yet understand? or perhaps something that bothers you and you want to fix it?
Is there something that you know in the field is challenging and has yet to be solved? What is the singular thing that most excites you about your area? I tackled it in the following way:

Introduction part 2

Some examples of similar stories that can be really captivating.

• You were part of a cybersecurity hackathon that got you excited about cybersecurity. But then, as you delved deeper into the field, you realized that resource constraints slow down encryption and you want to figure out a way to make encryption and decryption faster using your background in graph theory.
• You studied chemical engineering in your undergrad degree and were frustrated with how slow fluid simulations are. You took a machine learning class and wondered, is it possible to speed up fluid simulations using ML?

Wrapping up the Intro: The “Statement” of Purpose

At the end of your introduction, write a simple, straightforward line that indicates your ultimate goal of graduate education — your actual singular statement that determines your purpose in grad school. This is important as it wraps up the summary and finishes off strong with why you want to do graduate school while also mentioning the specific areas in which you want to work.

TLDR — find a personal incident in your life and write about why it excited you but yet you do not understand fully. Write what truly motivates you to pursue higher ed. End with a “statement” of purpose

Section 2: Your Background

With the introduction set and your reader engaged with your story, try to build up to the actual details of your work and why it makes sense for you to pursue graduate education, giving the reader the confidence that you are who your CV talks about.

Structure each paragraph that talks about your background as follows:

1. Why did you do what you did? (Motivation)
2. What did you do? (Single line)
3. How you did it? (Methodology, 1–2 lines)
4. What was better after you did it? (Results)
5. What did you learn from it? (Technical ideas / soft skills)
6. Is there anything better in society after you did whatever you did? (Applications)
7. What would you like to do at grad school that is an extension of your experience in that project?

While the overall SOP could follow an arbitrary structure, it makes sense to keep each individual background paragraph structured chronologically (past motivations inspire present work lead to future work at grad school).

To make the SOP engaging to the reader, write content like a story, and not like your resume. Add things to the SOP that are not there in the resume. The SOP and your CV should complement each other and convey different information. The CV is more about the technical aspects of what you did, whereas the SOP should focus more on what you/society gained from what you did.

Here are some examples.

Cohesiveness

It is very likely that there are several projects that you mention in your SOP. Many times, it is difficult to find connections between several projects to make it a compelling narrative as it may have been much more chaotic in real life. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, try not to keep projects and paragraphs independent of each other.

Even if there is no apparent connection between different projects, try to find some remote link. For example, I wrote about hardware projects in the above paragraph (previous section images). Later on, I took some courses on 3D Computer vision, where I did an entirely different project in an other field. However, there was still a connection that made the narrative flow elegantly:

Technical Depth

It is important to note that your audience may not always be in the field that you are applying for. For example, your application could be read by someone in a slightly tangent area and/or your work may be in a field that is not familiar to the reader. Hence, it is essential to limit technical jargon to the extent where the content’s essence is retained but is simple enough to read by anyone with an undergraduate degree.

Maintaining readability

Section 3: Why this University?

This is one of the most critical aspects of your SOP, as this shows the university why you’re interested in them. It’s easy to write something generic that is not tailored to a particular university, but that will hurt your application much more than you imagine.

Since you have already established your credibility and qualifications in the previous section, you can talk about what the university offers you that makes you an ideal candidate. The admissions committee is looking to see if you know what you will do if you are admitted to the program.

Essentially, in this section you need to talk about the following:

1. What can you learn in this university that you cannot learn anywhere else? Perhaps there is a specific course that is being taught there that isn’t taught anywhere (e.g, ethics in nuclear warfare); or maybe there are some professors that work there whose work really interests you and/or want to learn from by taking their courses.
2. You can also talk about your long-term goals (Ph.D.? want to work in the industry?) and talk about how your degree at the university will assist you with that goal.
3. Do you fit in with the research at the university / do your goals align with the program that you are applying for? (very important!)

One approach I took with this section is to take a look at professors whose work interests me, read their recent papers, and figure out ways in which it can be improved/talk about new research directions. If the professor you have indicated reads your application, you want them to know that you have done your due diligence and are capable of thinking abstractly.

This section can take anywhere from a few hours to several days, depending on the type of university and the number of faculty that they have in your area of interest. Put a lot of effort into this section, as it can make or break your application. It is also strongly recommended to contact professors and indicate your interest in working with them. Send them a cold email and ask if you can work with them. Asking never hurts :)

Also, do note that for professional graduate degrees, it is not recommended to indicate professor preferences as it is not expected of students to work with professors. It may be possible to do so, but the degree is expecting its students to learn something else and not do research.

Fit

Demonstrating fit is a very important thing when it comes to SOPs. Since you need to likely find an advisor for research in higher education, you want to match what you have worked on with an advisor so that they can take notice of your application. However, it is very important to not come off as desperate!

Try to rephrase your words such that you bring novel ideas and directions for the work going on in a given lab instead of trying to match your work with theirs. Doing so would make you come off as “this guy is great! we need him!” instead of appearing like someone who’s trying to blend into the crowd.

An example of what I mean:

“Professor X has worked on a mapping the brain to understand memory which is exactly what I worked on last summer! I would love the opportunity to work with Professor X as an extension of my work”

Instead, you should do something like this:

• “ Last summer, I worked on mapping the brain to understand memory. When I was executing this project, I came across a curious phenomenon where people with disabilities had a different reaction to certain kinds of stimuli. I would love to extend this idea with Professor X working on brain mapping to better understand how persons with disabilities process memories.”
• “It would be interesting to study how Professor X’s work on the impact of touch on memory retention extend to people with skin disease.“

Some examples of “Why this university” from my applications:

Why CMU?

Why UCSD?

Section 4: Conclude

In this section, you should basically wrap up everything you’ve talked about so far. If you started with a story, allude to it, talk about your experiences in your undergrad degree/work experience, and project yourself in the best light possible. Write a few lines about how your experiences will help you in grad school, and that you’re excited to join! You can also mention your long-term goals here if you haven’t already mentioned them in previous sections.

And that’s it! The SOP is done! (although probably just a draft, it needs a lot of working and reworking).

Adjusting to the Limit

Since different universities have different word limits, it is very easy to write more than what is required. However, it is absolutely important to keep things within the word limit — exceeding it may mean that your application is immediately rejected!

1. Keep the wording as simple as possible. Complex sentences don’t help anyone.
2. Don’t write too much prose. Too much flamboyance can make it your writing seem pretentious. Also, you have your GRE and TOEFL scores to show that you have a good mastery of the language.
3. Don’t write everything and anything that you have done. Mention the most critical things that are important for a person to know if they ask about you. One way to go about this is — to imagine that you meet the person who will review your application; what can you cover in 10 minutes to impress them? Mention your grandest and best work!

If you are struggling with a highly stringent limit, feel free to cut the crap out —simpler, the better :)

Example:

Original Introduction

Compressed version

Template

Nothing fancy here. Keep it simple; use a standard font. Something like Times New Roman at a font size of 12 is good. Don’t have extremely tiny fonts that make the text unreadable.

If you want to show professionalism, typeset it in LaTeX, with a simple header.

You can play around with margins to adjust to the word limit. But don’t keep the margins super small! 0.5 inch is the least you should do.

Useful Tools

Learning to write with clarity takes a lot of time. However, there are some tools that can help you improve, and also polish your writing rapidly. Below are some tools that I used to write my SOP.

1. Quillbot: Best tool ever. It's a general-purpose paraphraser that can give a facelift to your writing instantly. The premium subscription is definitely worth it, and I found it very useful for removing those annoying 20–30 words to fit stuff within a word limit.
2. Grammarly: Well-known writing tool. It fixes your grammar and gives suggestions on how to improve your writing. A useful tip to judge your writing is to check the tone detector in Grammarly — target a formal, and confident tone for the best impact.
3. Hemingway app: Quickly lets you know which sentences are hard to read. The lower the grade, the simpler your writing. A good target would be Grade 10, but for more technical SOPs, even Grade 13 is acceptable. Don’t make it too complex, otherwise, it will be very hard to read.
4. Peers and Seniors: Get as many perspectives as you can (max of 5 people please! too many cooks spoil the broth). You don't have to incorporate all suggestions, but you’ll get a better idea of what impact various people are left with after reading your SOP in case someone else is reading it. Debatable: You can show your SOP to people who aren't in your field. If they can follow most of it and not follow some parts, you’ve probably done a good job combining technical and non-technical stuff.

General Tips

1. Start writing early, and finish one draft quickly. Writing a polished statement of purpose takes time, and it’s easy to procrastinate and push things to the end, but this is never a good idea. Finishing 1 draft will give you some peace of mind, knowing that one part is almost complete.
2. Get help early. It’s very likely that your first SOP draft is terrible. It is hence very important that you get quick feedback, and make changes rapidly. Show it to seniors, peers, professors etc.
3. Tailor the application to oblivion: Make sure you research about the program of interest and make sure you answer any prompts that are given for the SOP.
4. Elegance comes with experience: The best writing comes from that which is simple yet showcases technical depth.
5. Support every statement you make with examples: For each claim you make, ensure that there is a statement that backs up that claim.
6. Keep it to the point, and don’t add unnecessary information
7. Talk about specifics: Institutes love to see that you have the technical depth to talk about your field at the graduate level of study.
8. Be the star that everyone wants: It is often quite easy to write words that make it scream “I fit in your university”. However, you want the reader to think that they need you, and not the other way around. Be the star of your own story!
9. Love the process. The entire application process is long drawn and takes time to perfect. If you are truly excited about your field, you should have no problem spending hours researching professors, reading their papers and gaining knowledge to write the “Why this university” part of your SOP.

Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn if you want help! All the best!

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are my own, influenced by many people over several months. While I have tried to keep it as objective as possible, there may be some opinions that others may not agree with.