If you are applying to an international university for a study program, there are high chances that you are required to send across essays or an SOP. It really depends on the course you are wanting to pursue if you are in for an essay or SOP. Usually, MS and PhD aspirants are asked to outline their objectives, goals and achievements in an SOP while an undergraduate or MBA aspirant is asked to prepare essays. There of course may be exceptions, but this is how it works by and large. Having come across numerous students and parents who mistake SOP for an essay and vice versa, we thought it a great idea to come up with an article that talks about the fundamental differences between the two and how to go about it. Here we go.
SOP vs Essay
- The basic difference between an essay and SOP is that an essay topic is much broader than your SOP. While your SOP just talks about you and your career goals along with your academic and professional achievements, an essay may entail you to write about you and your interest in let’s say politics or women empowerment. Through an essay, the admission panel tries to judge your awareness and acumen for various aspects of the world, while an SOP is a straight forward document defining your career plans.
- You may be required to prepare essays on diverse topics which may be situational as well. For example, topics covering ethical dilemma, a situation that requires difficult decisions, and the likes are commonly found. Whereas, an SOP is pretty simple to write as it has a defined structure and content flow.
- An SOP provides superficial information like your academic and professional backgrounds, projects, subject awareness, etc., while an essay on the other hand, brings out various facets of you as a person – the challenges you faced, hardships you overcame, your family background, your likes and dislikes, your temperament etc.
Three Tips to Write a Powerful SOP
- Write your SOP in the form of a story. Given a choice, wouldn’t all of us pick an interesting novel over a newspaper? Ever wondered why? This is because an interesting story keeps our interest going and newspapers become matters of fact after a few minutes. That’s exactly why you must write your SOP in a story format to keep the interest of the reader intact right till the end.
- Always quantify instances in your SOP. For example, if you are talking about a growth story where you played an instrumental role, talk about the % by which the growth happened. It will add authenticity and trust in your document.
- Always try customizing your SOP according to the course you are going to pursue. So let’s say you are applying for a BBA and International Merchandising programs. Now the situation calls for different SOPs for these two courses. A great thing to do is to make one base SOP and customize specific parts of course specific content.
Three Tips to Write a Winning Essay
- Read the prompt extremely carefully and understand it fully before attempting it. Many a times, essays have different parts to be covered. So keep a close watch on that as well.
- Always create an outline before actually starting to write it. Doing this will help you to cover all the important points in your essay which you may just skip while writing if you do not have an outline handy.
- Proofreading is the key. Always go through your essay a couple of times before calling it a final draft. Check for errors and flow.
SOPs and essays are very important elements of your study abroad application, which means you have to pay careful attention to what’s going in your drafts and if there is anything important that is missing from your documents. And we must remind you again, you always have Study Destination as your friend… always!
