Well, this is my first post after joining this incredible forum. Following is my SOP for US universities, please don't be nice and be as harsh as you can and kindly let me know of your comments. Thank you
Throughout my academic life I have always believed that learning the required coursework is not enough for success and one has to go beyond that and think outside the box. It is my penchant for research and creativity that compels me to continue my education to obtain a Ph.D. in XX Engineering with an emphasis on Computational mechanics. My graduate and undergraduate background along with my professional experience has given me the capability, the theoretical base, and desire to continue my education in this area.
Being strong in high school math I choose engineering as my major in the hope of applying my mathematical skills to real world problems. My academic life in university began in Civil Eng. Dept. of XX University.
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Hamed, your SOP is too wordy and offers information that is already irrelevant to a Statement of Purpose of Masters studies. In all of the SOP's that I have assisted in reviewing here, I have always reminded the writers that there are only 4 major points you have to discuss in a statement of purpose to make it effective. These points are:
1. What is the masters degree you are applying for?
2. How does it relate to your current work experience?
3. State your relevant work experience that will support the need for higher studies (e.g. job promotion or change of careers within the same field)
4. Your long and short term goals after completing the degree.
It does not matter how extensive your college experience is or what kind of hands on training you got as a student. What matters now is your professional reference. The actual work that you have done, seminars and other training programs you may have attended, and the reason behind your desire for a masters degree. You are no longer in college. It is assumed that you have been working for at least 2 years as a C.E. before applying to graduate school. Nothing you did in college is impressive anymore because those were all academic. A Masters is all about the practical job application in an advanced environment already. Thinking that your college accomplishments matter is wrong to a certain degree. You can mention, skim, and summarize your college experience, but it cannot take up almost 75% of the content of the paper. 75% of the paper should contain your current and immediate past accomplishments in the workplace or in any advanced studies you have taken up so far.
Maybe it pretty obvious that I am driving at a need to revise your essay. You really need to do that in order to present a more professional looking and sounding statement of purpose to the university you are applying to.
I sincerely appreciate your effort for reviewing my SOP. I took your comments into consideration and significantly reduce the volume about my past. I was wondering if you would be kind enough to once again, take a look at it: -for what its worth I have completed my MS and intending to apply for PhD
You don't really need these paragraphs because they are no longer relevant to the advanced studies you are applying to . Why are you insisting on turning this into a college level application essay when you are trying to write a statement of purpose for the PhD level? I asked you to simply summarize your college experience and yet here I see you going all the way back to your high school experience. Those are not necessary for your application. Delete these paragraphs and instead concentrate on the missing aspect of your essay, your professional experience in relation to your masters studies and the need to achieve a PhD level of studies as well. You cannot just mention that you had students who have completed PhD degrees. You need to explain how the PhD will be relevant in your line of work. How will it help your career? What are your plans for after you complete the degree? These are the most important questions that need to be answered in your essay. Deleting the two paragraphs I mentioned and answering these questions in its place should help you fix the content of the essay :-)
Many thanks for your review. I think I got your point and I have minimized irrelevant details.
Would you kindly review my introductory parts:
"Stay hungry, stay foolish" Jobs said addressing Stanford graduates in 2005. Affected by his speech, ever since then this statement has become my life motto, reminding me to always aim high and seek challenges. Having this attitude, I have decided to pursue a dedicated scientific research considering and motivated by the continued challenge and never-ending road to excellence that it offers.
My great perseverance along with my talents has assisted me to successfully move toward my objectives thus far, and in order to continue in this direction I am enthusiastically applying to Civil Engineering PhD program at University of California, Los Angeles. I intend to continue my education in the field of computational mechanics, and the intellectual atmosphere at UCLA is what I believe will help me to have a productive performance in my field. Here, I'm going to express my background and achievements in detail so that my qualifications and objectives would be more sensible. Then I will express my reasons for choosing UCLA for my purpose.
No Hamed, that still does not work. Do not waste the time of the admissions officer by placing so many word fillers at the start of your essay.He or she does nto have the time to wade through a wordy essay just to find out what your purpose for study is. He or she has more essays to read and finish analyzing during his or her work day. Go directly to the point. What field of interest are you applying for a PhD degree in? Why are you interested in it? What is the purpose of your higher studies? Those are the questions that you must provide overview answers to within your introductory paragraph. Steve Jobs and your dreams and aspirations from earlier in life have nothing to do with it. This course and all its elements are all about your views for your future and your future in your chosen profession. So look forward instead of backward. Inspiring quotes from other people are good in high school and college applications but do not really work at the PhD level where your only inspiration should be your personal desire to compete, achieve, and lead in your current profession :-) That is what you need to reflect in your essay. Nothing more nothing less, most specially for the introductory paragraphs.
Thank you again. But I am considering making good impression to the Professors for assistance poistions as well as admission committee.I am not so concerned about the latter as I have strong resume/scores/recoms. I am trying to write a good letter for the professor, who I assume will read SOP of each one of his/her not so many candidates. Do you still think I should only write about the questions more directly? I will address all the questions you mentioned but along with them I intend to add some information about my qualifications.
Hamed, an SOP specifically states that you talk about the "Purpose" of your application. That discussion is based solely upon your professional qualifications at present. Answer only the required questions, provide only definite answers in relation to it. Answer only the 4 questions I provided to you. That is all that is required of you at this point. You can talk about your other qualifications in another prompt. Possibly your personal statement or any prompt better suited to a qualifications discussion. If you are looking to find work at the university while you are a student there, the statement of purpose is NOT the place to offer your credentials. Wait till you are already a student at the university and look at the work employment or apprenticeship positions that will be posted in the student bulletin board and see what you qualify for. Present all of your relevant credentials during that application process. Do not muddle the issue by trying to make yourself a viable candidate for a job with a professor who does not require an assistant at this point. Just state the purpose of your application. Don't present anything else that is not required or will only make the essay boring and confusing to read. Keep it short and your application will be better off for it.
At this point,YOUR ONLY CONCERN is to MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION ON THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER AND COMMITTEE. Work on getting into the school first and do not rely solely on the credentials you have already submitted. Each document you submit for their consideration is a part of the evaluation process. Don't rest your laurels on what you think is a strong application. The admissions officer and committee may have other ideas about what constitutes a strong and worthy student application. In other words, what you think is strong may be weak in their point of view. Any student assistant application can wait until you actually are a student in the school already. Don't jump too far ahead because these assistant positions will open up during the school year and you will have to apply for the position then. Ask yourself this, are you applying for admission to PhD school at this university or are you applying for a job at the university? If you are applying for a job then write a job application letter. If you want to attend PhD school, then write a statement of purpose to get into the school, not to get a job at the school. The choice is yours. This is all I can advice you.
Well, I was working on my SOP, and I have improved it. Again, I highly appreciate your specific comments:
"Stay hungry, stay foolish" Jobs said addressing Stanford graduates in 2005. Affected by his speech, ever since then this statement has become my life motto, reminding me to always aim high and seek challenges. Having this attitude, I have decided to pursue an academic career considering and motivated by the continued challenge and never-ending road to excellence that it offers. My great perseverance along with my talents has assisted me to successfully move toward this objective thus far, and in order to continue in this direction I am enthusiastically applying to Civil Engineering PhD program at EPFL.
My research interests are centered around numerical modeling of real world problems. Developing numerical methods to solve geomechanical problems involving fully or partially saturated soils, computational fracture and damage mechanics are areas that are in line with my interests and expertise; I found research projects of LMS and LSMS laboratories very fascinating. Moreover, as a structural engineer I have always been interested in advanced construction materials, developing constitutive models for them and implementation of these models in numerical tools for computer simulation. EPFL, with plenty of relevant ongoing researches, is perfect place that matches my interests and abilities. Reading research topics of the faculty and laboratories, I have become very keen to join, learn from and collaborate with its great scholars. Below, I'm going to briefly describe my educational background, achievements and objectives.
Firstly, I received prestigious silver medal of the National Mathematics Olympiad. This accomplishment not only equipped me with strong mathematical background, but also provided me with a great sense of confidence. Afterwards, considering my skills in math I choose engineering as my major field of study and began my academic life at the Civil Eng. Dept. of University of ... . I transferred to ... after two semesters. I participated in another national Olympiad while studying at ,,,, : Civil Eng. Olympiad for university students. In this contest I was ranked ... and awarded admission at ... for MSc program waiving the university entrance exam (MSc Konkur); however, in order to evaluate myself with the other students in the country, I took the MSc entrance exam achieving the ... rank among more than .... civil engineers. I completed my undergraduate studies in ... after 9 semesters of study with total GPA of .... (the average of the department was ...) and I was ranked ... among the graduate students of 2012.
During BSc, my most important research project was with two graduate students. The title was ".... " and the results were accepted in 2nd National Conference on ... .
I chose Structural Eng. as my major in .. with the intention of studying under supervision of ... ; his research areas were perfect match as I was interested in programming and Finite Element Modeling. My first influential experience in ... was participating in the .... seismic workshop in fall 2012 where I met prominent scientists such as,.... and found the opportunity to speak with them. Being introduced to ... and having conversation with him greatly encouraged me to do my best in my studies. Since then, he became my role model; a person who has started from the same university as I was studying and became one of the most internationally revered figures in his field. I decided to achieve excellence in my academic career that one day I could encourage young scholars through my seminars as well. My MSc record is proof of this, where I managed to get "A" mark in all of my major courses and be among the top three students in most of them.
Finite Elements II, taught by ... was the most demanding course among all I had during MSc which required heavy MATLAB programming for assignments. It covered wide variety of topics in nonlinear finite elements including large deformation analysis in Total and Updated Lagrangian formulation, Elasto-Plastic behavior of materials in both small and large deformation, dynamic and quasi-static contact problems using Penalty, Lagrange multipliers and Augmented Lagrange methods. My final score in this course was ... , second score in the class.
I started my thesis on numerical simulation of composite materials and have been implementing my ideas by developing my own code from the scratch. This code has the capability to model crack intersection or termination at material interfaces in composite materials and simulation of LEFM-based crack propagation path in layered media. I have prepared my first paper on the former subject, investigating stress singularities arising at multimaterial corners and crack tips and proposing new method of modeling these singularities in the framework of XFEM. It is now under review by my supervisor to be submitted soon. Also, I am expecting to prepare another paper on the latter subject in the following months. I have enjoyed every minute of working on my thesis especially our regular weekly group meetings, where everyone is supposed to present a report of their progress; apart from participating in group discussions, which helped me to widen my knowledge in other fields and improved my teamwork, it significantly strengthened my communication skills. Now I can deliver my thoughts and ideas well organized and more clearly in a presentation than before, and through these presentations I have become a more confident speaker.
Since the beginning of my MSc education, fortunately I have had the opportunity to work as a part-time researcher in a high-profile research organization, .... . I have started my work under direction of ... and I have worked on two projects so far (refer to my resume). This experience and doing research outside my main discipline not only diversified my skills, but also enhanced my time management as I learned how to balance between my studies and work. Moreover, it made me even more determined towards higher education. It enabled me to compare pursuing a career in the industry or one in academia. I find the academic environment more appealing because of the high level of intellectual challenge and creativity associated with it.
I feel a deep need of belonging in a society of colleagues, researchers and people with the same enthusiasm and interests as I do. I believe that the intellectual atmosphere in EPFL is the place which would help me to flourish in my field and to successfully attain my goal of becoming an experienced scientist, researcher and a faculty member of a top university. I am confident that my great diligence, talent and passion alongside your renowned faculty and program will enable me to have a successful experience at EPFL.
Sincerely,
Thank youuu