How to write Best SOP for MBA Admission Interview? If you are also worried about writing your SOP, then read the expert article.
A Statement of Purpose is the professional medium through which you can extensively showcase and highlight your qualifications, achievements as well as your future motives, goals, and your vision. As the name suggests, a Statement of Purpose or SOP harps upon the purpose of students towards pursuing a particular domain of research or an academic field, and thus proving themselves to be worthy of a seat when they apply to a certain institute or University.
As it is often pointed out, a well-written statement of purpose is extremely critical to MBA admission. Needless to say, there are many aspects of a candidate’s application that are inspected before finalizing a decision. While the academic record and other exam scorecards are essentially objective in nature, an SOP is the only truly subjective aspect of your application. It is, simply put, the only document in your application that gives you the opportunity to prove that you have something unique that makes you stand out from the crowd. As such, it is the document of your application docket that can hugely determine your admission.
There are many elements to a Statement of Purpose or an SOP as it is famously referred to. The B-Schools could ask question-based essays or simply present their statement of purpose. Until and unless categorically asked, an SOP must include your goals, the career path you have taken up so far as well as your academic progress. Other elements that are further important to the SOP are also the personal motivations that have to lead you to choose the Institute/course you have applied to as well as how you intend to use that experience to achieve that goal.
Here are a few guidelines that you must note and follow before you frame your SOP for applying to an MBA institute:
- Be unique:
Statements of Purpose are intrinsically very conventional, and students tend to frame them in a very typically clichéd format. Your SOP should comprise of information, assets, qualities, and liabilities about you that set you apart from the others, and how they reflect your academic performance and professionalism. In addition, always make your SOP an interest and a unique read by embellishing it with your future career goals and aspirations. Present and place your ideas well and project your language and organizational skills through your statement.
- Highlight your academic qualifications and their impact on you:
Naming or listing your educational qualifications does not convey much to the evaluation. There are hundreds of students competing for a seat in the institute who possess similar qualifications. Mentioning your academic qualifications is undoubtedly mandatory, however, you must lay emphasis on the way these degrees and courses have molded and transformed you, and the strengths that they inculcated and germinated in you. Put forth your strengths with an elegant subtlety via your qualifications, brief anecdotes, and other relevant information such as your work experiences.
- Link your past to your future:
As you have already elucidated your strengths and core values, elaborate on how you intend to implement them in the academic domain in terms of time management, respect towards deadlines, diligence, perseverance, and sincerity. Consequently, academic excellence would lead to professional excellence. Link your achievements to what you aim to achieve through the medium of the MBA course. Furthermore, justify how these various strengths and skills that you developed through your education and previous work experiences would place you as an able and competent professional.
- Make it personalized:
The Statement of Purpose is a declaration of your personal purpose and objective of getting enrolled into an institute. Convert your SOP into your unique selling point. Answer the questions “Why MBA?”, “Why this particular institute?”, “Why do you see yourself as a prospective student of the institute?”, “What can you give to the institute?” and so on. Do not copy-paste SOPs from the internet or from your peers. Such SOPs are easy to identify and inevitably create a negative impression about you and your dedication towards a tedious course like MBA. The more customized and personalized your statement, the stronger and more credible it gets. Maintain a professional yet individual tone, avoid boasting and making it sound all about you, duplication, plagiarism, redundancy, and digression.
- Be organized:
Most SOPs are judged on the basis of their organization. Maintain a certain chronology and a steady systematic approach. When your SOP portrays a strategically planned and oriented declaration, it speaks volumes about your focus, and the ability to classify your priorities. Build valid connections as you glide from one point to another. Chaos in an SOP depicts chaos in your thought process and also in your way of functioning. Hence, it is not just what you write that carries significance, but also how to write it. The organization is thus the key to a good Statement of Purpose.
Frame and tactfully amalgamate your proficiency, qualifications, objectives, intentions, future aspirations, career goals, strengths, and your unique selling point into an attractive and ideal Statement of Purpose, which would, in turn, be your ticket into the best MBA schools.
