Around this time last year, I started preparing my graduate applications for universities in the US to pursue a Master’s program involving AI. Graduating from the first cohort of a brand new Bachelor’s program in France, having little research or industry experience, and no publications, I was more determined than ever to produce a statement of purpose (SoP) that will help me stand out from the pool of brilliant applicants.
Few months later, I was delighted to receive admission from all my top choices! Though at first, I had no idea what an SoP was, I must have done something right to have convinced people from all these prestigious universities. To give back to the community, I thought I’d share a few tips I learned or found useful during my SoP writing :)
For those interested, I’ll also include my stats during the time of application, my full essay, programs I was accepted to, programs I was rejected from, and which program I chose at the end of this post.
Disclaimer: I am just a recent graduate who likes machine learning and blogging and blogging about machine learning, I am by no means qualified to teach how to write essays. The following tips merely reflect my personal experience applying to US Master’s degrees in CS and may not always be generalizable.
1. Don’t procrastinate this essay
Yes, I am well aware of a student’s superhuman productivity in producing pages of an essay they left to do last-minute. But trust me, I strongly encourage you to start thinking about your SoP well before your application deadlines.
Here is what my timeline looked like:
Start September— I googled “how to write statement of purpose” and created my SoP.docx file
**Start October **— I had my first draft ready to ask others to proofread
**Start November **— I revised my first draft to ask others to proofread a second time
**End November **— I had a “general” SoP ready, which I still had to “fine-tune” for each program I was considering
**December-January **— For each program, I finalized each SoP before submitting my application
February 3 — I received my first response: accepted to my dream program!
For me, it took 3 months of planning and writing my SoP. Some might need more time or less. My point is, it’s not an essay that can or should be rushed, it’s good to give yourself time to think about what you want to say, get feedback from others, and re-write it several times.
If you feel lost on how to get started, my advice is to create that document anyways and jot down any ideas you have, even the silly ones. From there, you’ll be able to start stringing these ideas into a flow of text, or come up with new ideas when you didn’t expect it.
#graduate-school #artificial-intelligence #essay #university #masters-degree