A winning Statement of Purpose!!

A winning Statement of Purpose!

- Rituparna Roy Chowdhury

You often wonder what is it that wins students seats at reputed universities abroad.
Here is one such essay that could help you understand application strategies better.
This is the essay of Sheela Kulkarni*, who was accepted at Wharton Business School. They show how she outgrew her circumstances and how she was motivated towards improving the lot of others through her innovation and leadership skills.

Is your academic performance to date an accurate predictor of your potential for success at WBS? Why or why not? (50 words)

Although my academic parameters indicate brilliance, it is only one of the benchmarks of measuring my deemed success at WBS. What defines me is my motivation towards accomplishment, which has enabled me to dramatically outgrow my stiff hurdles and reach the pinnacle of professional excellence from a modest rural background.

Describe an impact you have had on an individual, group or an organisation. What did you do? How has this experience been valuable to you or others? (500 words)
The spirit of growth has been the cornerstone of my success, which has enabled me to dramatically outgrow my stiff hurdles and reach the pinnacle of professional excellence from a modest rural background.

Quintessentially, I had to weather through the bondage of paternalistic rural India mindset, where women are not encouraged for higher education, or for that matter even school education. Even today, the birth of a girl child is treated with contempt. The girl to boy ratio in the federal state of Punjab is as low as 774:1000. The nearest school was 6 km away from my village. Education especially that of a girl was never encouraged.

I had in my childhood itself decided to break free from this traditional mould. I studied hard and secured admission in a good engineering college. I then braved the emotional blackmail of my family, who never wanted me to stay in a hostel. I became an engineer and started earning. My intermittent visits to my village when I was doing extremely well on the career front, inspired many girls and opened up before the village community the virtues of education.

Thus I emerged as a role model in the village, and numerous others started following my footsteps who would have otherwise remained uneducated, carrying on the family chores in their post-marital lives. Today my village boasts of a number of medical, law and engineering girl students. The whole village has started taking the education more seriously and looks forwards to me for advice.

While I would not like to take complete credit for the same since the wheels of change had already started in Modern India, someone in the female community needed to take the plunge…I took that plunge and then assisted others around me in doing so.
I got married to the guy of my own choice and without any dowry, something unheard of in our remote village. I built up a group of young married couples who have taken the initiative of educating people on female infanticide. Our efforts have certainly resulted in lesser number of infanticides.

I took advantage of the fact that now I was the highest educated person in the village and people wanted my company. I have become a natural leader of these people. I started motivating the village panchayat (the rural democratic government at the grass root level in India)to get at least a primary school opened within the village and that exists now. I educated the village farmers on water harvesting and its benefits. I also introduced the concept of contract farming to the farmers and now they earn more than they used to and get timely payments. Now we intend to create our village as a model village by introducing the solar energy.

I keep on growing the seeds of new ideas in the minds of village youth who keep on nurturing them by their sheer hard work and faith in me. What has helped me is the simplicity of my villagers and the like-minded new generation youth.


The Statement of Purpose/Intent/Reasons for Graduate Study

You have various reasons for wanting to apply to graduate school. The programs to which you are applying want to know what those reasons are. So they ask you to write a statement, variously known as a Statement of Purpose, Statement of Intent, Statement of Reasons for Graduate Study, etc.

The statement also serves other purposes. It is an example of your ability to express yourself clearly in writing. It helps the program faculty to determine whether or not your goals and interests fit with theirs. And it can be expanded to include additional information which can affect your admissibility.

The statement is usually the only opportunity you as an applicant have to present yourself as a person distinct from your gradepoint average or test scores.

What Information Should I Include?

The instructions which come with the application form should be your first guide as to what to include in your statement. The instructions should give you a good idea as to what information the program needs from you: your area of interest in the field (both what it is and why you are interested in studying it), your background preparation (education, training, work experience), and other relevant information. Often applicants are asked to list notable academic or work accomplishments that relate to the field of study.

You may also be asked to indicate possible thesis or dissertation topics or to indicate the names of faculty members with whom you would like to work. If you don’t have a general idea of possible topics, you should at least mention about the area of concentration with in the field that you wish to pursue.

If there is additional information that you feel ought to be taken into consideration in the evaluation of your application, you can include it, either as part of the statement itself, or by attaching a supplementary statement. (Click here for some additional thoughts about discussing a “low” GPA in a reasons statement.)

How Long Should My Statement Be?

Check the application instructions to see whether a minimum and/or maximum length is specified. If no guidelines are given, you need to balance two concerns:
• Providing your proposed program with the information sought, and
• Keeping your statement concise enough to be readable.

How long a statement is does not seem to matter nearly as much, in my experience, as how well it is written. Every day I see statements of varying lengths come in with applications. Most of them are one to two pages in length. I have also seen statemen ts that were only a few sentences long and multipage statements. In my experience there isn’t a strong correlation between statement length and acceptance rate. Common sense would suggest that if you are applying to a highly competitive program, and if your statement is going to be long, you need to write it especially well so as to hold your rea ders’ attention.

Is There a Preferred Format or Style?

All the rules of good writing apply to the writing of your statement. Unless you write final-draft quality prose on the first attempt, be prepared to revise your statement. It may be helpful to have other people read and critique a draft of your s tatement.

Format
Check the application instructions. In most cases, the specific format is left to the applicant. I use the term “statement” in these pages only because that’s what we call it where I work. Unless you are instructed to the contrary, you can use a letter format if that helps you to write better. (It may help you to think of the statement as being similar in purpose to a cover letter that you would send with your resume to a prospective employer.) The best hint I can give is this: use the format that allows you to organize your thoughts to communicate to your best advantage.

The vast majority of statements which I see are at least typed, if not written with a word-processor. The wide availability of such technology means that it is easy to produce a statement that is free of typographical errors and easy to read. Even if you have very legible handwriting, it is probably better not to submit a hand-written statement.

Style
The application instructions may or may not specify how the statement is to be written. As with any writing, it is important to consider your audience, but it is also important to write in your own voice. Affectation in word choice or syntax usually shows up very clearly. Your chosen field of study will have a lot to do with what constitutes appropriate style. An applicant to a literature program will be expected to write in a different style than will an applicant to an engineering program. Another factor is whether or not you are required to submit work samples as part of your application. If you are not required to submit separate samples of academic w ork you have done, then it is more important that your statement be well written, as it will be your sole opportunity to demonstrate your writing proficiency.

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