A Statement of Purpose is a brief and focused essay about one’s career, goals, identified means to achieve them and accomplishments so far towards those goals. It is a required document when applying for admission to most professional programs in almost all country. Statement of Purpose is also called Motivational Letter. In SOP you need to mention all the details like your personal and family information, about your education background, course details and not only that you need to write why you are choosing the specific country and course for your goal. It plays a vital role in attainment of a visa.
BEFORE YOU START TO WRITE
- Prepare a list of what you wish to include
- Express your journey of life and your career aspirations
- Your life events that have shaped you to become who you are now.
- List of short term and long term goals
- Think of a theme for your SOP
- finding a theme and sticking to it will make your SOP focused and stand out
- Theme can be anything from a particular story of incident to a dream course in top ranked university
- Theme of SOP must progress towards your goal and aspirations
- Research about the course, institution and country
- Research more on the learning outcome of course and relate to your goals
- Compare the factors such as curriculum, fees, infrastructure, exposure
- Compare the unique aspects of course, institution and country
- Write, Edit and Rewrite
- Write, review and rewrite
- Rewrite to improve and make it perfect
- Give it to review to someone who knows you and whom you can trust.
HOW TO WRITE SOP?
While writing the Sop you need to include the following points.
- Personal Information (family information and interests, motivation to pursue the program)
- Please be limited with your basic information, primary intent, passion and other information
- Academic Qualification
- Limit your transcript information rather focus on learning and interests that you developed during this time
- Training, Internship and relevant job experience
- Focus on learning and outcomes such as development of social skills and leadership.
- Why that particular country, why not home country
- Include the limitations of the education system in home country
- Include similar courses offered by institution in home country
- Include the factors such as cost, exposure, recognition
- Why that particular course
- include details and unique features of this course
- compare similar courses and curriculum and mention why specific course stands out
- how this course is aligned to your aspirations
- Why that particular university
- include the details of the university such as location, faculty student ratio and offerings
- compare with other similar universities and include why did you chose this university using factors such as Cost, Location, Curriculum, Co-op option, recognition
- Career Plan after completion of program ( Short term and Long term goals)
- This is the main theme of your SOP so emphasize on this
- Include the future prospects of becoming a professional in the relevant field
- Details of career establishment in home country
- names of potential employers, job and roles
- Explain what exactly will you be doing being a professional and how the specific study program from specific university will add value to your professional profile
- include the prospects and undertaking of private and public sector in similar field and link it with your career aspirations
- Include how will you stand out from the crowd after completing the study and returning to Nepal?
- Motivation to return after the completion of the program
- include family ties and property ties alongside future prospects that will compel you to return to home country
- Financial Status and Support to cover the study and living expense
- include the details of source of fund and expected expenses that will incur in your study
- convince that your family are willing and able to fund your expenses over the study time
- Last Convincing Paragraph to sum it up
- Include you are genuine and dedicated student, you are goal oriented to converge passion and career, you have adequate finance and you have prospects back in home country to return.