Candidate should describe succinctly your reasons for applying to the programme, your preparation for the field of study, future career plans, and other aspects of your background and interests that may help in the evaluation of your aptitude and motivation for graduate studies.
- A Guide from MIT
- A Sample from Christopher's Blog
- A Five-Minute Guide to Ph.D. Program Applications
- How to Write a Bad Statement for a Computer Science Ph.D. Admissions Application, CMU
- An Example from MIT CSAIL
- An Example from Eugenie Y.Lai
- Jiayi Weng's PS
This statement should include your goals and background as it relates to the field of computer science. It is good to include any past work history, your interests, and reasons for pursuing a graduate degree. Your statement will be evaluated for your conciseness, reasons for pursuing a graduate degree, leadership skills, and eloquence.
- Writing the Statement of Purpose, UCB
- How to Write a Statement of Purpose for Grad School, Swapneel Mehta (NYU)
- Example from Anant Bhardwaj, MIT
- Sample from Eugenie Y. Lai, MIT
- A very useful tutorial for me, Eugenie's Blog
- Writing a Statement of Purpose, Swapneel’s Blog
- Official Example from MIT
To me, the major difference between PS and SOP is that Personal Statement (PS) requires a frameworked story about your life which illustrates your future career goal, your social awareness and your potential to contribute to a community. A Academic Statement of Purpose (SOP), on the other hand focus more on your research interest and past research experience. Read each program’s prompts and formatting requirements carefully. The point above is about the content, while this one is about the format and separation of the content. Some programs don't differentiate SOP and PS, but require you to submit one document that illustrate both your personal side and academic side. However, programs like Berkeley EECS require an SoP and a PS so the separation depends on the prompts.
Research Statements from professors/research scientists/Ph.D. Students often yield insight into not only their goals, but also areas of active research in general which is why I’m including some samples for candidates to read in order to ‘get a better idea of their field’ before writing their Statement of Purpose.