A statement of purpose is an essay that summarizes your past work and preparation for further studies. It lays out your most important experiences (jobs, internships, apprenticeships, teaching) and accomplishments (publications, presentations, grants, exhibitions, speaking engagements) with the goal of getting you into your first-choice further program.

Whereas strong grades and test scores are the foundation of your application and are necessary to be considered at top programs, your experiences are what set you apart. Therefore, the goal with your statement of purpose is to organize and present your academic journey in a way that convinces the top institutions’ admissions committees that you are perfect for their program.

To expand, your statement of purpose should argue the following:

Why you want to go to graduate school

How you’ve prepared for graduate studies

What field and specific area you intend to study and why (Ph.D. in History with a focus on the Nigeria Revolution).

Why you’ve chosen University of X for your studies (specific offerings, resources, faculty).

We will be considering the difference between the statement of purpose and personal statement next.

How is a personal statement different from a statement of purpose?
Although most graduate programs require a statement of purpose, a few will ask for a personal statement instead, yet some schools will request both.

A statement of purpose places a narrative to your achievements to demonstrate that you have prepared for success in your graduate studies. On the other hand, a personal statement draws from your personal and professional experiences to explain how you have come to the decision to pursue a graduate education in your field of interest. In addition, your personal statement can be used to give admissions committees a sense of who you are as a person, including any obstacles you’ve had to overcome, explanations of your less-than-ideal academic record, and contributions you’ve made to your community.

If you are asked for a statement of purpose and personal statement, you should reserve information about your personal journey and hardships for your personal statement and discuss career-related experiences and academic accomplishments in your statement of purpose.

Note: If you’ve written a statement of purpose, you can easily modify it into a personal statement for programs and fellowships that ask for one and not the other.

What is the admissions committee looking for in a potential graduate student?

Before we get into our step-by-step approach to writing a standout graduate school statement of purpose, let’s discuss what admissions committees are looking for so that you’ll have an easier time writing a compelling essay.

Graduate schools want to admit students who have exhibited a history of determination, self-motivation and passion for their intended field of study. Sound like you? Good!

The key word here is exhibited. In other words, you’ll want to draw from your experiences and accomplishments to highlight the aforementioned attributes through your essay.

Here’s a quick guild on how to demonstrate the qualities graduate programs are looking for:

History of determination: Experiences in your field that have lasted a year or more.

Self-motivation: Internships, funding, and presentations that you independently and successfully pursued

Passion: could be a discussion of how you decided on your field of interest (in your intro) and the specific area you’d like to study during your graduate career (in the conclusion)

In addition, below is a summary of what you’ll be critiqued for:

How clearly you present your experiences and accomplishments to display your fitness for their program.

Whether your statement of purpose makes a coherent and concise argument that you are the kind of graduate student they are looking for.

Your writing skills (formal and respectful in tone, proper grammar and punctuation, and easy-to-follow argument presented through your experiences on how you arrived at the decision to pursue graduate studies in your field of interest).

Before Writing
Firstly, I strongly recommend you to update your CV before you begin writing to ensure that the dates and details you discuss in your statement of purpose are sorted out.

Also understand that a little bit of preparation before you write will make the drafting process a lot easier. Recall that the statement of purpose should put a narrative to the accomplishments on your CV that supports your decision to pursue graduate studies.

To best prepare, first jot down dates and details of each activity (research apprenticeship, job) along with associated accomplishments (publication, presentation), and figure out which qualities of the ideal graduate student are exhibited through your various experiences.

Here are some qualities to consider demonstrating:
Dedicated
Perseverant
Collaborative
Good mentor
Independent
Self-motivated
Audacious
Creative
Strong interpersonal skills
Clearly communicates complex material

However, you should understand not all experiences or details will make it into your statement of purpose (more on which experiences to include in a moment), but having it all in one place can really help you get your brain juices flowing.

What should you use from your CV in your statement of purpose?

Simply put, you want to choose experiences and accomplishments that display you are a determined, self-motivated individual with a passion for their field of interest.

Experiences to consider including:

Research assistantships

Jobs

Volunteering

Internships

Note: The earliest experiences should be from when you were an undergraduate and onward to the present day. You can include pivotal experiences from before college on your CV, but unless they have been incredibly influential (high school internship at a university laboratory), save the space for more recent experiences.)

Accomplishments to consider including:

Publications

Presentations

Funding (fellowship, grants, travel grants, scholarships)

Exhibitions

Fundraising

Invited speaker or panelist

Ideally, your listed experiences should be multi-year and within your field of interest. Still, you can boost the importance of shorter experiences like a summer internship by discussing achievements you made during that short period of time, such as particularly strong results, a resulting presentation, or pitching a novel idea that was used by the institution/company.

For each experience you include in your statement of purpose, you’ll have to discuss the following:

A short description of what you did

How long you did it

Why you did it (not always necessary but can be used as a transition in between experiences)

What you learned from it

Any accomplishments that came out of it, such as results, publications, exhibitions, grants, presentations, fundraising, etc.

The accomplishments you present within each experience will not only validate your experience and make it seem more impressive, but can also be used to display your fit for further studies.

What shouldn’t you include in your statement of purpose?

1. Unnecessary personal details
What do I mean by personal? Don’t share that you’ve been interested in history since you were born and now you want to study Mass Communication. Moreover, you should probably exclude sharing an overwhelming hardship that led you to want to pursue graduate studies in, for example, Chemical Biology. These details would be more appropriate for a personal statement, and are neither professional enough nor necessary for a statement of purpose.

There is, however, one exception: If you have changed careers to pursue your field of interest, you should discuss this. For example, let’s say your first undergraduate degree is in Education, and you discovered your interest in science while working as a teacher. Hence, you went back to school for a second undergraduate degree in Physics. This is a personal detail you’ll want to include because the admissions committee will wonder why you have two undergraduate degrees. You can do so subtly by explaining what you learned from your previous degree and how you’ve applied it to your current work.

Note: some schools will offer an additional section to explain personal circumstances. If you’re given the opportunity to discuss personal details elsewhere, use it, making sure to focus your statement of purpose on why you want to go to graduate school.

Hobbies and inapplicable extracurricular activities
Your hobbies
(e.g, art, cooking, skiing, biking) should most certainly not be included in your statement of purpose. A few schools ask additional questions regarding your hobbies on the application. Feel free to include them there.

On the other hand, extracurricular activities such as volunteering or mentoring can be included if they are associated with your field of interest. For example, if you’re applying to a Ph.D. program in Education and you’ve volunteered in a classroom or served as a mentor for a high school student, then definitely include that, especially if you’ve been doing it for a while and it has contributed to your decision to pursue graduate studies. If a school is asking for both a personal statement and a statement of purpose, then such an experience can be included in either of the two.

The ultimate outline for your statement of purpose

Once you are done with your CV and picked out the experiences and accomplishments to highlight, the most tedious part is done. The one final step to complete before you begin writing is putting together an outline.

The skeleton of a strong statement of purpose is straightforward, as follows:

Introduction: State intention to pursue graduate education.

The undergraduate experience that initially sparked your interest in the field and how you got into conducting research, creating, etc.

Experience 1: Include description, mention accomplishments A, B, and C, and any insights or lessons learned.

Experience 2: Include description, mention accomplishments D and E, and any insights or lessons learned.

Experience 3: Include description, mention accomplishments F, G, H, and I, and any insights or lessons learned

Mention area within field of interest you will focus on during graduate school.
Why University of Canada? What programs and which faculty’s mentorship interests you?

What will you do with your graduate degree?
Describe the research question, technique, and any findings.
Mention presentation at annual meeting
Mention publication.
Any insights or lessons learned (example: Enjoyed independence in designing my own experiments)
Internship.
Describe the research question, technique, and any of your findings.
Mention publications.

WRITING YOUR STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Although there are multiple ways to demonstrate passion throughout your statement of purpose, it helps to always take an enthusiastic tone when writing about your experiences. Don’t mention anything negative in your statement of purpose, such as a poor mentor, a graduate student who mistreated you, or a nasty grant application reviewer. In addition, don’t speak badly of any collaborators, as it reflects poorly on you and the collaborator may even have a relationship with the individuals reviewing your application. You also shouldn’t complain about applying a faulty method to your experiments or creations. And of course, you don’t want to complain about difficulties with your work that might show you are not committed and easily give up. Just stay positive and share your excitement for the journey that led you to graduate school.

Conclusion

Now it’s time to convince the admissions committee to accept you into their specific program.

The conclusion of your statement of purpose should contain two paragraphs:

A discussion of your academic interests and specific professors and programs that draw you to a particular institution.

A discussion of what you intend to do beyond graduate school.

The second-to-last paragraph should specifically state what you are interested in working on during your graduate studies. You’ll need to do some research about departmental or program-associated professors at a given university with whom you do like to work, as well as mention some areas the program excels in and how those fit with your educational goals.

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