Does Your Statement of Purpose Format Fit? The Difference between PhD, MS and MBA SoP

Each year the grad schools, universities, and colleges require from students personal statements get written, those definitely give the youngsters the hard time when applying for admission. It is not only the statement of purpose the one should develop swiftly but rather the full bunch of documents that needs to be prepared and carefully edited before the actual submitting to the destination place, just to mention a few: an essay and the cover letter both of which require the elaborate and mundane work as well. The majority of students after getting accustomed with the general writing rules and easily reachable online sources filled with tips and recommendations will most certainly get it wrong and given advice will mislead them instead of providing the helping hand. There’s no chance to save time for that kind of task because for the Department Heads, Program Chairs, and Admissions Committee members the statement of purpose is the most important document your need in the whole application process. There’s a chance, of course, to save time and nerves in case you know all the ropes and how to get statement of purpose writing effortlessly.

Are the Sop Requirements Different?

image credit: igmur.com

Lots of students get flunked with their personal statements each year using different tips only because they didn’t care to check the main feature everything should start with – the official requirements of their institutions that provide quite a comprehensive look at how their paper should look like, what formatting it should be tuned to and how long it should be. If you just the follower of “whatever-goes-to-my-head” approach the news are even worse, let’s assume you’ve already written your document when you need it to be filled with 300 words. Now we bet you have a lengthy opening that spoiled at least 15% of the most important text lines in your life and ended up with nothing! That is exactly why you need to structure the information impeccably to make sure nothing is left out.

Statement of Purpose Format

The statements of purpose are generally accepted in the particular formats adopted by the university or college you’re applying to. In the most cases they are very close or equal to the following ones:

• The desirable statement of purpose word count varies from 1 to 2 pages.
• The full name and the proposed field of study are required to be indicated at the top of each page.
• An essay should conclude the main ideas briefly.
• Approximately 500 to 1000 well-selected words (1-2 single space pages in 12 point font) is better than more words with less clarity and poor organization.

The mentioned formatting is not universal, it will vary according to the institution you’re studying at and the particular course you’ve picked.Let’s have look on general formatting tips and requirements from different universities.

Let’s have look on general formatting tips and requirements from different universities.

The Universal Structure of a Statement of Purpose

The requirements and demands considering crafting SoPs vary from university to university, from college to college but still never fail to miss the underline universal structure that can be applied to each and every document, make sure our paper has those too:

Past. Your past characterizes you better than anything else, that’s why include in this block your undergraduate level and graduate level academic experiences.

The Proposed Course Of Study. There should be shown the step by step logical path moving you from the studies to the desirable career. Describe your present activities that you spend your time on, thise that contribute to your future academic purposes.

Future Career. There you should outline your future career intentions and relate those in context to the preceding steps that were taken by you. Try to explain what you planning to implement in the most laconic and concize form.

MBA vs MS vs PHD SoPs | Feel the Differences

There are 3 widely known statements of purpose: – MBA, MS and PhD. In spite of having the same name those 3 are completely different if we take a look at the contents.

Statement of purpose for MBA

The Masters of Science (MS) students are freshers whereas MBA participants are way more experienced and older, they had time to work 3-4 years in the industry so they have lots more to tell in their sops as do have PhD students.

Just purely technically oriented MS Sops make contrast with MBA ones that need to be filled also with business managerial potential information drawing them to the international MBA universities.

The main common 10 mistakes that you should avoid in MS and MBA statements of purpose:

image credit: usgraduatesblog.com

Statement of purpose for MS

For MS degree you need to focus solely on the coursework and goals you set for the long run of your career. Get the deep research and find out how the particular college and university can contribute the goals you’re pursuing, analyze the program the university is suggesting and point out what specific things are offered by each program so that they can be useful for your career in the future.

Also, you can add up to the general information your personal assessment of how the university can be beneficial for the aims you want to achieve after all, universities are all searching for the candidates who will have the great desire to implement gained knowledge in the real world and strive for valuable innovations. Position and market yourself exactly at the same light, with this you will keep your Master statement of purpose individualized and adjusted to particular university.

When writing your statement of purpose for Masters with research you need to focus on slightly different things, because sop requirements are different too. As you might have already guessed this side is research. In the context of research you need to focus on the distant future goals but also describe how this particular professor’s research group can contribute to these goals. It will help to stand out if you take the research idea and convert it so that it can reach a target research group idea like a bullet. The hardships of picking up the research topic will be paid off generously if you manage to do the thing, even if the initial idea seems unpractical, in this case you’re showing your creativity and ability to become a great researcher that thinks outside the boundaries.

image credit: graduateadvisor.net

Statement of purpose for PhD

The same line is covering the statements of purpose for PhD and demands even more profound research to be able to target the certain research group. Analyze your professor’s research and move forward to developing own idea to contribute to the chosen research group. Creativity is also highly valuable in this type of work, read through the published work of your professor and try to look at things from the unpredicted angle. Once you come up with your own interpretation or a hypothesis you can fund and enrich the existing work. So why don’t mention this one in your SoP? This kind of approach will surely bring attention to your work and the professor will appreciate the efforts and in-deep analysis of your work.

Here are some examples of how it’s done:

Evidence of your familiarity with the educational research currently under way at the GSE is probably a good thing to see in any statement of purpose, even at the master’s level. But in a doctoral application, it is extremely important to show that your interests converge closely with the current research of faculty who work in the
program to which you are applying.

For the Phd SoP it is expected that you’re already on the pinnacle of your research abilities, this statement of purpose will include much more of showing that skill off. PhD generally demands the deepest study of the subject matter, accompanied by the through literature review, hypothesis and findings, outcomes, suggestions and recommendations for future researches and investigations. For the MS SoP there’re fewer steps, featuring the topic selection and research critique, that is the common procedure followed by the majority of graduate schools in the US.

The best advice you can stick to is to check and double check your personals statement, keep revising your document, improve and update it even after the submitting to the institution with the earlier deadlines. Due to the special mind working algorithm the real epiphany of what it was that you wanted to say about your purpose, motives, skills and professional background comes to the mind when you least expect it. Keep thinking of what was this initial impulse that pushed you to direct your attention to the particular educational institution. Keep the work on and you’ll get the perfect statement of purpose earlier than you expected.

We know all the ways to pick right statement of purpose format for your university!