Customizing SOPs: Why it is Required and What Challenges you might Face

If you are planning to apply for your Masters’ (or PhD) degree abroad, you would know that you would need to write your SOP, get your LORs made, and also create an academic CV for yourself. That’s what most seniors, and in fact, even consultants would tell you during the start of your application process. Now LORs and resume would mostly be pretty straight-forward (except maybe a few universities that would require your recommenders to upload their respective recommendations in a ‘Question and Answer’ format.

However, a surprise might welcome you when you expect to upload your SOP and end up discovering some tricky requirements instead. The purpose of this article is to forewarn you so that you can stay prepared and plan your application time-line accordingly.

To illustrate what we are telling you, what we have done is added actual screenshots from inside the application forms of different universities.

Shortened SOPs

When you first create your SOP, it will typically land anywhere between 900-1200 words depending on how strong your profile is. And that full-length SOP could work for quite a few universities. However, if you are applying for 10 universities, there are chances that at least 2-3 of them will have limits on how long your SOP can be.

These constraints could be in the form of:

·         Word count

·         Character count

·         Page count

·         Formatting (font type, font size, margins, line-spacing)

And some of the constraints can be quite drastic. For example, for several programs, University of Maryland, College Park has a 300-word limit on its SOP as you can see in the screenshot below:

Another University which called for a drastically small SOP was Baruch College for its MS in Finance program, the screenshot of which is attached below:

You may be able to notice the specific formatting requirements (double-spaced, 12-point font) mentioned by the college.

Then there is University of Manchester, again with a considerably small SOP (labeled as 'Personal Statement') requirement but asking you to limit it within a certain range, so you have a minimum and a maximum word count:

Then there’s University of California, Riverside which specifies its constraints in characters as follows:

Depending on the programs and universities you are applying to, you may also encounter several limits such as (but not limited to):

• 800 words

• 1000 words

• 1-2 pages

• 120 lines of 80 characters

• 4000 characters

Some limits can be hard limits while some could be soft limits where you may typically exceed the stated limit by 8-10%.

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Using AI to Write your SOP?

With the growing availability of AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), you might be tempted to use them to write your SOP. Is that a wise approach? How low should your AI Detection score be? What do Universities have to say regarding this issue? Click the button to know more

Risks Involved in Using AI for Writing University Application Essays

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SOP Titled Differently

Like we have seen before in the case of University of Manchester, some universities may ask for your SOP while not titling it as SOP at all. In this regard, one of the vaguest labels universities use is ‘Personal Statement’. Personal Statement may mean the SOP or some completely different essay. In the instance below, we see University of Pittsburgh, as part of its MS in Management Information Systems application, use the term ‘Personal Statement’ (just like in the previous instance) to mean the same as SOP (pay attention to the prompt that they have provided for the essay).

You would also easily notice the strict word-count limit of 250 words.

Some universities may not give a title to the SOP at all. Case in point in this regard is New York University, which had the following essay prompt for its Management of Technology graduate program:

No SOP Requirement

This can be surprising at times, but occasionally, you may encounter a university that does not require an SOP as part of its application process. Remember the 300-word SOP that UMCP had asked for, whose screenshot we have attached earlier? The same university, for certain programs, does not ask for an SOP and instead, asks applicants to do what is mentioned in the screenshot below:

Added Requirements

Some universities may ask you to submit some added essays along with the SOP. For example, University of California, San Diego for its Masters in Data Science program application required applicants to submit along with a normal SOP, the following additional information:

In this case, UCSD had asked students to elaborate specifically on certain targeted areas that are usually part of the SOP.

Then there is the example of TU Delft, which specifically asks students to mention possible hypothetical projects they may work on during their degree, as we can see in the following screenshot:

Several other universities have far more diverse essay requirements when it comes to seeking the information that is usually covered in an SOP. It would not be obviously possible to cover every such variation in this article, but surely by now, you would have got familiarity with how the different aspects that are usually covered within an SOP can be asked in various formats by different universities.

This, however, is not all.

Some universities also ask applicants to write essays which require content that is not typically covered in a standard SOP. At InkStudio, we call such essays as ‘Additional Essays’, as they require effort from scratch, right from brainstorming. For more information on the same, you may refer to our article on Additional Essays.

Now remember, the screenshots that we have attached here are from among the ones that students applying through us have shared with us. These requirements are subject to change, and during any one application season, you can expect around 5-10% universities to have changed their essay requirements from the previous year. To avoid such last minute surprises, it is essential that you start your application process well in advance of the deadlines.

A lot of counselors only help with the basic SOP and then let students handle the customization bit themselves. At InkStudio however, we help applicants right through the process till the end, which includes customizing the SOP content as per different university requirements. If you wish to avail of our services to ensure that your application essays are exactly in line with the expectations of Admissions Committees, you can let us know below:

Let Us Know your Requirements