Indians in top colleges | Don’t forget the ‘purpose’ of Statement of Purpose: Stanford students gives tips for admission | Education News

I graduated from IIT Gandhinagar in 2020 where I pursued a major in material science and engineering with a minor in management. During my course of education, I realised I am inclined towards the management side. So I worked for a while at an edtech startup, which helped me realise that I love building products and taking them out to the market. I decided to combine this with my lifelong dream of pursuing higher education at some top institute, and that is how I landed at Stanford University where I am pursuing MS in Management Science and Engineering.

‘Tasted the environment of top universities during my IIT days’

Studying at IIT Gandhinagar brought a lot of opportunities for me. The institute ensures it provides us with several types of internships, workshops and work experiences, including international experiences. Due to this, during my undergraduate days, I got the opportunity to pursue a fully funded fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which is one of the top five universities in the world. I spent three months there and quickly realised that I loved the study abroad experience.

I, therefore, started eyeing the top five or top 10 universities. After my work experience, I gained more clarity about my inclinations, and then last year I quit my job to take some time off and plan my study abroad experience — selecting universities, application process, and other things.

Why Stanford University?

Firstly, my chosen field in management — science and engineering; this university has the best and oldest programme in the world. This was established long before the other programmes, and so it has a good reputation on an overall level. Moreover, Stanford University has the strongest entrepreneurial ecosystem. And since one of my long-term goals is to start something of my own, I knew that with the kind of resources that this school will provide me, I will be able to do that and I will have a strong base to run on.

Additionally, only this institute was offering me specialisation options in my chosen interest areas. I will be pursuing a specialisation in technology, engineering management. Along with this, I will be able to take entrepreneurship and product management courses, because I plan to work for some time after my graduation.

There are a lot of funding opportunities as well at Stanford as compared to the other universities, which I got to know by talking to the alumni network.

Admissions in top universities — ‘tiring but exciting’

I started my research on top universities of the world in October 2022, which included going through their official websites and checking their programme details. This is a slow process, but it is important to ensure we know what programme we want to pursue and what facilities, faculty and curriculum each university offers.

Once I shortlisted a few universities, I decided to start working on my applications to five universities — Stanford University, ETH Zurich, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Cornell University and Dartmouth College. The deadlines for all these institutes were mainly around December, so it gave me a good few months to finalise my applications.

While I started writing my Statement of Purpose (SoP) and started collecting other documents from October, I was done with almost all of my submissions by the end of the year. However, I started hearing back from colleges in March. I got admitted to Stanford, ETH Zurich and CMU.

Many Indian students believe that it is important to consult a study abroad agent, but I did not seek help from any agent and I would recommend other aspirants the same too.

‘Take Statement of Purpose seriously’

While a lot of Indian schools don’t teach the basics of writing an essay — personal statement of SoP — I was lucky enough to have a writing course at IIT Gandhinagar where we were taught how to write an SoP.

While applying I realised that there are indeed a lot of differences within the universities. One of the strategies that I used was to create a master SoP which was very long. It was three to four pages long and it had everything I wanted to talk about, but could not use everywhere.

Then use that to build an SoP for every university. Try to see which one should come at the top, which one should go next and remember that every paragraph should be interesting. Then start interlinking all the paragraphs and make sure it’s a complete flow; try to have a rough flow in your master SoP.

Depending on the specific prompt of each university, I decided to pick the parts that felt more relevant and most useful. I wanted to just do it in a way that it appears in a state of flow, and is interesting enough for somebody to read and pay attention. One thing that every candidate should remember is that all universities will have different requirements when it comes to this. But students should also remember that the ‘purpose’ in your SoP should be clear.

Once all of this is done, make sure you send it to at least two people for review — one of them should know you well, and one of them should have an understanding of how to write good SoPs. I received a lot of feedback and suggestions, and I started implementing them as another draft, and quickly realised that writing a good SoP takes at least 4-5 drafts and can be tedious.

After finalising my master’s SoP, I visited each official website and dissected their prompt to tailor-fit my SoP for that particular university. Then after that, I worked on formatting, grammar, punctuation, and everything else. Aspirants should remember that there is no scope for errors in SoPs because the university expects you to put in the time. Another important point to remember is to always respect the word limit.

Moreover, ensure that you have a few months to perfect your SoP. At first, I assumed that writing an SoP might not take this long, but quickly realised that I should have taken the time constraint in consideration. My advice to aspirants would be to dedicate at least 2-3 months to perfecting your SoP.

Documents required

— GRE (if needed)

— TOEFL/ IELTS

— Statement of Purpose

— Recommendation letters

— Resume or CV, depending on what the institute has demanded

— High school passing certificates

— Graduation certificate and transcript (if you are applying for Masters)

Reach out to alumni network

The first thing to do while researching for admission is to search and analyse the top programmes that align with your interests. Select the programmes that you think would be the right fit for you and then start researching the universities that are offering these programmes. Now once you have made the two lists of relevant courses and colleges, then start comparing which university is providing you with more resources, better curriculum, faculty and stuff.

The next important step is to reach out to the alumni network. First, do your research about the alumni of the shortlisted colleges and see how and where they are employed. Accordingly, reach out to some alumnus and request a review of their time at the university (in general and specific to the programme), and also their experience after graduating from the university.

For example, some universities such as Stanford have a list of students who have graduated from my chosen programme, and I could reach out to them. This helped me a lot. I am very active on LinkedIn and that is how I got to know about a lot of applications and other things related to top universities of the world daily. I also connected with the alumni network through LinkedIn and asked them about their experiences and insider information.