Analyzing Statement Of Purpose

Statement of Purpose or SOP is a Personal Statement of an applicant aspiring for admissions to higher studies in any academic course. Students are required to talk about their past personal and academic background, along with professional experiences, if any, and spell out the goals and ambitions of life. In this document, candidates have to justify, why this particular course at this juncture of his career is necessary and how can this education enable him to reach closer to his career goals. Universities worldwide usually ask for a 500 – 1500-word SOP. IMPORTANCE OF STATEMENT OF PURPOSE Statement of Purpose gives admissions committees of universities a fair idea about an applicant’s potential and his drive for success. In fact, Statement of Purpose is the most important tool for evaluation of a candidate as students literally draw a psycho-analytical sketch of themselves. Therefore, universities roughly give 50% importance to it in the acceptance or rejection of an application. UNDERSTANDING THE APPLICATION EVALUATION PROCESS It is absolutely imperative for candidates to understand the parameters that determine the admission decisions before starting to work on their applications. They need to keep in mind acceptance to the best of universities is not easy to get even with good GRE/GMAT/SAT scores. Test marks are not the only determining factor in securing one a seat in graduate, post-graduate and doctoral level studies of different disciplines. Applicants are screened by admissions committees after making overall analyses of mandatory test scores and personal attributes of the candidates as reflected through their Statement of Purpose, Essays, Letters of Recommendations and Curriculum Vitae. Therefore, ignoring any of these would be a grave error, and may prove to be costly. LOW TEST SCORES It has often been noticed that students with GRE/GMAT/SAT scores lower than the University cut-off ranges make it through by presenting themselves very strongly through the Statements of Purpose, Essays and Letter of Recommendation. In short, the secret of a winning application is how convincingly you are able to portray yourself before the university’s admissions committee.