Assistance writing SOP, that is a good convincing SOP.

[farooqaz]

Hi

I know that statement of purpose is the most crucial part of the application for admission in any graduate university. Yet it is the most difficult part for people, like me, who didn't planned on doing masters and didn't had their goal in front of them during their high school. Result, their accomplishments and volunteer work ,though noteworthy, are not co-related and can't focus on the question: "Why do you intend to do masters?" To make it worse just just try justifying why especially in a particular field. Internet is full of guidelines and information on writing SOPs, but they are too general and only relate basic things.

I think most of us (it means me ) are not good writers or story makers and can not write a convincing statement of purpose by ourself without assistance. It will be a great help if someone can give real professional advice to writing convincing statement of purpose.

I am asking for advance advice the basic things are on the internet I have wrote a nice statement of purpose following them. They were really neccessary to get me started on writing a statement of purpose on the first place. But now as I read and re read my statement of purpose it sounds not so convincing. I thing the real problem is that I can not get my accomplishments on focusing on one platform they vary too much in their nature.

For example I founded a soccer club handled leadership roles. I volunteered for Programming Competition Organizing team, did technical stuff. My FYP was business oriented. My JOB is focused on UI development. I was a IEEE member. Participated in AFACT 2006. How do I say why I want to do a thesis Masters? Need Help?

[shihab]

Your motivation toward MS should be inline and should follow your past achievements and experience. It will be a strong statement of purpose if you can plausibly relate the area of your motivation in MS with your achievements and experiences.

So the motivation part may be written with this flow:
1) Describe any of your past work experiences/achievements on the related to the area on which you want to do your MS.
2) Mention any particular incidents that made you interested to further your research on the mentioned area. ( Like you faced any erratic and unexpected behavior from something that you were experimenting with)
3) You can write that, that unexpected and erratic behavior is now motivating you to do extensive research the same area.

I did as following:
I have a research work in Bioinformatics( a problem of Bioinformatics was implemented on GRID environment) at my Under Graduate thesis and have published a paper and took some courses on parallel and distributed computing. Very briefly i described that work of mine (strictly focusing on the GRID part [unexpected part: The software that we were using behaved unexpectedly, was weak in fault tolerance ]) and and also mentioned those courses on parallel and distributed computing where i gained sufficient knowledge and in turn interests that is currently motivating me to do extensive research on that area(fault tolerance) of Distributed Computing.

I think this is a good way to build the motivation part.
Hope this will help.
Good Luck.

shihab

[dirtman]

also relate " your motivation" with the university you have selected.For example , if you plan on doing computer science for your masters in the field of software, make sure you mention the good facilities available in the software field in the particular university you have selected. Also how the research in the university you have selected interests you . This is usually the last paragraph in the statement of purpose-explaining why you like this university , and why you chose it.

[farooqaz]

Thnx it really helped.
After I wrote my statement of purpose I went to my uncle who fortunately happens to be a PHD and in education.
The we he reviewed, critiqued and gave suggestions and advice to what I wrote was totally amazing and I finally came up with a good convincing statement of purpose.

I think that after writing and doing your homework on the statement of purpose its better to get it reviewed from person who is in education and academia