SOP-Statement Of Purpose

SOP stands for Statement Of Purpose.

When applying for Masters in the US , along with the application form you are expected to submit a Statement Of Purpose which indicates why you are applying for an MS or MBA in that University. It is usually a one page essay that tells the Professor of the college why you want to do your M.S. or MBA under him.

SOP carries a lot of value. You should not apply blindly to all the Universities. When choosing a University, you should know the professors available in your stream and what is their area of research. Every Professor has a super specialization. If your application goes into the hands of a professor who does not specialize in your chosen area of research, he will immediately reject your application.

Evaluate your options very carefully. Every branch of Engineering civil, eee, ece etc have many sub-areas of research. If you are uncertain about which specialization to chose, please talk to your HOD. Once you choose a specialization, search for the most recently published papers in that area in all the known journals. Every international paper published will have a Professor and some of his students as its authors. Therefore, prepare a table. Author name, weather he is a professor or a student, name of the University, names of other students, title of the paper, area of specialization, and summary of the paper. Go to the Unversity/Department/Professor's websites for more information. When you start filling the table you will get an idea about which university/professor to choose and why.

After you read some abstracts (or summaries) of the papers published, you will get an idea about the line of research of the professor. Then start writing your SOP. Discuss with your HOD and see if they can suggest improvements on your SOP. Make sure that your SOP looks focused. Within the SOP, you should not waver on what research you plan to do while you are at the University. Make sure, your SOP tells the professor, why you want to do research in this area and your short-term or long-term goals.

You can prepare 2, 3 or 4 different types of SOP’s and send them to different professors. Make sure you do not send 2 different SOPs to the same professor. Make sure you leave a copy of the SOP with your HOD for future reference by your juniors. Your SOP should not exceed one page. Professors in US get several applications and they will not show interest in your SOP if it looks longer than one page. Try to make sure your SOP is correct grammatically.

If you can get hold of mail id’s of some of the student authors they will be very helpful. If you get some Indian students, that is even better. You can send them a mail asking them to throw some light on the areas of the research. If they give a good response to your mail enquiry, you can even mail your SOP to those students and ask them to give you suggestions on it. You may even ask them for prospects of getting funding or getting off-campus jobs to support your education. If you find students from AP you can even ask them to recommend your name to the professor.

Some graduate students are really helpful and they will even take care of you when you reach there and get you adjusted to the new atmosphere.

Good luck to all of you who are preparing SOPs.

Author
B Ramesh Raju
Central Training and Placement Officer
Chaitanya Educational Group
(GIET, CEC, CIST, CIET, Chaitanya-PG Center)
N H 5, Chaitanya Knowledge City, Rajahmundry 533 294
Phones : 0883-2484828,29,30,31 Ext - 119
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