My first draft of SOP for graduate school. If you have any suggestions on how to make it better, I gladly welcome your advice. (eg... Does it make sense? Does it flow?)
Instructions:
A SOP that describes your personal, academic and professional reasons for pursuing a master's degree, and for choosing USF's program. The statement should relate your workplace experiences and sports background to your goals.
Over 100 million Americans watch the Super Bowl every year compared to only 62 million who do volunteer work. As a community activist, this captures my concern. Over the past two years, I continuously use my passion for sports as a vehicle to impact youth development. The intense level of satisfaction I feel convinces me to encourage others to find the same passion. My motivation to work in the sports industry is to promote community awareness and action. A graduate study in sport management will allow me to acquire industry specific knowledge and skills to be used in pursuit of my goals.
Sports and I crossed paths at a very early age. Whether it was badminton, basketball, rock climbing, running, swimming, or tennis, I commit to be the best. However, I am a successful athlete because I have the right mentors. My coaches were community activists in disguise. Winning and losing was secondary, but their drive was to create a more positive group of young people. I idolize them because they built a foundation that took pride in leadership, commitment, and being proactive. These values are being pushed closer to extinction as youth sports programs vanish from community budgets. I realize my passion for sports is to prevent this very foundation from disappearing.
My work as a recreational specialist allows me to be in a position to better the community. However, at the beginning I saw it only as a job. I now hold a higher value for my work when I saw firsthand, the impact I have while working with families. After researching and analyzing the need for a youth sports programs, I created a curriculum class with a parent/child participation strategy that utilize sports to unite fun and family. To see the joy in a child's face while receiving high fives from their parents after making a golf ball fly through the air is priceless. Although my program became a success, the community benefit of youth sports is hard to measure at the individual program level. I want to do more.
I took an opportunity to influence a larger audience when I worked on my first community bowling event. Accepting the challenge as the event director, my team produced a memorable moment shared by sets of mother-son duos while bringing together a community for one common purpose: an active participation in the community is a healthy community. An experience such as this creates vivid memories, and I believe the children are more likely to participate in community events with their own children in the future. This creates a cycle for a proactive mindset for generations to come.
Aside from sports, I have volunteered to work in city-wide events including Earth Day and Picnic in the Park. At the Earth Day event, I was in charge of the Parks and Recreation booth by promoting the department's programs and activities. I also assisted the "plant-switch" booth where we provided a new plant to those who traded in a plant of their own. During Picnic in the Park, I guided many families to different activity booths where they were able to enjoy family fun time together. To witness a great turnout of both events, I feel privileged to be a part of a community who cares about social responsibility and community cohesiveness.
I excelled in high school and I am on the verge of completing my undergraduate studies. I decided to concentrate on the human resources management aspect of a business because I experienced success by working with the right people. I want to find the same culture fit for others. Through a recruiting internship, I was able to enhance the career of others by placing qualified job seekers in positions to succeed. I took part in interviewing potential candidates to understand their needs to determine a cultural fit with the company I was hiring for. The internship helped me realize my own cultural fit which belongs to working outside a desk. Working with people is my passion and the hands-on effort of community work will satisfy my heart.
I took a more challenging route to prepare for graduate school. Balancing a job and school can be difficult for some, but I have managed to balance three jobs and a full-time school schedule.
Currently, I post a 3.42 GPA and I have to credit my success to the very foundation I learn from my coaches. For my most challenging class during my undergraduate studies, I utilized the values of leadership, commitment, and being proactive to perform well in the classroom. The class, employment law, was taught with a similar standard and structure of a graduate course. I took the initiative to engage myself in many class discussions, and committed a large amount of time to the class to truly understand the material. The weekly assignment of dissecting legal cases to a detailed focus requires the development of critical thinking and research skills. Most importantly, I learned to communicate information by following a strict standard of directness, clarity and simplicity. In our final assignment, I wrote a legal research paper that demonstrates my creativeness through developing a fictional employment issue that I was required to resolve and provide consultation through research and results of actual case law. The combination of an entire semester's work plays a significant part in my development of skills that surpasses the undergraduate level I need to succeed in the Master's Program.
My direct focus in the program is to improve the utilization of sport marketing for community outreach. There are negative connotations associated with community outreach. As a society, we associate time with money. Community outreach requires a commitment of time. Many correlate their involvement as a waste of money or a form of punishment. I believe this is the reason why many sport fans are unwilling to spend their time. The ultimate goal of marketing is to use a variety of channels to promote action from those being marketed to. My interest is to research the effectiveness of an outreach program such as the NBA CARES campaign relative to the response of sport fans. For example, when an athlete tells you to buy their shoes, the fans respond with a purchase, thus, achieving the ultimate goal of marketing. However, when an athlete performs community work, many fans show acknowledgment but turn their heads away from personal action. I speculate why the course of actions pushed by the two messages are not received equally.
After completing The Master's Program in Sport Management, I foresee a career in community relations in sports. Targeting the continuous growth around today's sport industry, it is the perfect environment to promote the importance of proactive participation in the community. The Master's Program will contribute to my career success by providing an integrative experience that develops my skills in deploying sport marketing at the strategic level. A sport professional by the name of Lewis Howes illustrates the backbone of my career goals in this equation: Sport Marketing + Charity Work + Branding = Community ROI. By changing the perception of community outreach, I will be able to use the enormous grasp of sports to reach the large community of sport fans. Their participation is vital to as they are most likely to become influencers for other members of the community.
Narrowing down the many reasons for my choice to join USF's program was difficult. Four reasons shines through the brightest for me - the cohort experience, the distinguished faculty, the non-traditional classroom schedule, and the internship program. I often contact my classmates to assist my understanding of a lecture. My experience with group learning positively contributes my success in the undergraduate level. To be able to surround myself with a support network that is focus on similar goals in graduate school is vital to my educational experience. Learning from leaders of the sports industry is just as crucial. My goal is to be able to work with Dr. Campbell in conjunction with Dr. Choi and Professor Shana Daum to understand the relationship between the behavior and response of sports fans relative to the community outreach marketing campaign. Coming from a classroom schedule that requires multiple school days, I feel limited to the amount of time spent to gain industry experience. The ability to take one course at a time will allow for more time to gain extensive industry experience. I will be able to work on multiple internships at a time; gaining experience to clarity of my professional goals. The prestige network of the internship program is the guide for me to relate my in-class lectures with real world experience. To have access to this world-wide network will allow me to grow as a professional while developing hands-on experience and establish a network of contacts.
Right here, the end of this sentence should be simplified and clarified:
...have an effect on my eagerness to finish school . (Just say something simple and clear)
My work as a recreational specialist reinforces my future career route. ---I think you mean it reinforces your confidence in your decision... not the route, the confidence.
In my recruiting internship, learning to enhance the careers of others made me realize
many fans show acknowledgment but turn their heads away from personal action.
Branding of a message with the same athlete, why is the course of actions pushed by the two messages not received equally?---This part is not so clear!
Well, you have a very impressive background (and writing style). I think the reason you are worried about the 'flow' is that you do not use the paragraph topic sentences to reinforce the main idea of the essay. I think the main idea is something about the message you mentioned in that first paragraph. If the first sentence of every paragraph expresses the topic of the paragraph in a way that supports the thesis statement, it will be very strong.
How about putting an adjective before the word message and then using that as a memorable phrase that appears in both the intro and conclusion?
:-)
