GUIDELINES

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FOR MASTER’S IN SCIENCE PROGRAM

WORD LIMIT: 800-950

General Overview of SOP: The University is asking you to write the SOP to understand what motivates
you to apply to their program and how serious you are to complete your education with them. Hence,
there has to be a seamless synchronization of your past, present and future.

Introduction (about 100 words)

Begin the SOP with the basis of your love for your field. Mention what made you passionate about it.
Was it a parental influence or a strong skill set that you imbibed since childhood?

Example: I can safely say that automation in my genes as my father works in a Japanese automotive
industry named DENSO and my mother was an employee at Maruti Udyog Limited. Till the age of five
years, I used to stay inside the Maruti plant in Gurgaon in the crèche and hence was actually brought up
in a car manufacturing plant. Many times I went inside the said plant thereby I learnt that the
production of a car starts from the press shop then to the weld shop then the paint shop and finally all
the parts are assembled at the assembly line. Before the shipment of the car from the plant, a final
vehicle inspection is conducted. I had observed that at the inspection many tests are performed like
brake test, and water leak test. My father also took me to his company’s plant. Through those visits I
observed that how various parts used for emissions norms are manufactured in the plant, mainly ECU,
Fuel pumps, Injectors, ISCV, VCT, O2 sensor etc. I learnt the fundamentals of automobiles, the way the
cars are manufactured and the visits helped me to discover my true calling.

School Life (about 75 words)

It is important to talk about your achievements in school in the academic realm even though the
university doesn’t require the school marksheets. Mention the name of the school, marks achieved in
grade X and XII and participation in co-curricular activities like Olympiads and NTSE. Also write how
school life motivated your interest in your field.

Example: Over the next few years, especially the years of High School, I was introduced to many more
concepts. And each class encouraged me towards the subject. Soon I realized that Economics is not
merely about heavy terms and policy decisions. Economics is ubiquitous – it is almost impossible to
single out any event that is untouched by the subject. My high scores of 95.6% and 94.4% respectively in
the Board Examinations of classes 10 and 12 made me eligible to pursue my dream in Hansraj College,
one of the most esteemed colleges of the University of Delhi.

Bachelor’s Program
Academics (about 75 words)
Mention the name of the university/ college attended and the full name of the program completed. Do
write the key courses related to your master’s program so that the university knows that you have a
strong foundation. Overall percentage is also important.
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STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FOR MASTER’S IN SCIENCE PROGRAM
WORD LIMIT: 800-950
Example: With my persistent effort and passion to prove myself, I secured 730 All India Rank amongst
600000 students in the AIEEE examination. I elected for Electronics and Communication Engineering at
Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (University of Delhi). Even though hardware was taught in the
college, I delved more into software and often tried to go beyond the scope of the curriculum. The
desire to expand my knowledge in this matter drove me to opt for computer related electives when
given an opportunity in my course program like C programming, data structures and operating systems.
My performance in these subjects reflects my passion for the field overtly. With the help of internet, I
amassed extensive knowledge in C++, Java programming and undertook various programming
challenges and projects related to this domain. The exposure and quality of education I have received at
this prestigious institute has always motivated me towards exploring engineering solutions to scientific
problems, and has infused in me a passion for research in the field of computer science.

Projects (about 100 words)

Complete name of the project and the year it was undertaken along with the name of the faculty under
which it was done. Key features, platform, technologies, output/ outcome. Was it innovative? What was
your role if it was a team project? What were the challenges? What did you learn technically. Be specific.
Any special achievement like project being ranked or awarded or being implemented by college
authorities.

Example: In my junior year, along with my PhD mentor, I built a “Zigbee based Wireless Home-
Automation System using Speech Recognition” to control the electrical appliances at home/office. The
problem statement was to build a reasonably cost effective, easy to configure and a highly precise
module to capture the voice (analog signal) of the speaker, sampling the continuous-time signals to
discrete-time signal, and transmitting it through a wireless channel to receiver controlling the
output/appliances. My focus was to develop a program in MATLAB for frequency analysis for speech
recognition. The challenge was to develop an acoustic model that separates word from ambient noise
and enables the system to distinguish between the same word spoken at a different frequency and vice
versa. Because different sounds can have different frequencies, I examined the Power Spectral Density
(PSD) of various spoken words. After investigating PSD, we were able to integrate the Yule-Walker
algorithm to differentiate between the utterances of words. Developing the algorithm for the
computation was the best part for me in the whole system.

Internships (about 100 words)

Internships are as significant as projects. Mention the company name, briefly describe what the
company does. Under which department you worked and what role you played. Again talk about the
hardcore technical work you did. What technologies were learnt/ skills gained. Any achievement – like
you suggested something new or the company recruited you as a full time employee.

Example: I have completed trainings and internships across public and private sectors in areas of
electrical engineering. I was one of only two students selected by Tata Steel from the whole batch for
highly prestigious INSPIRE program. While working on a problem in Tata Steel, I was asked to look into a
GUIDELINES
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FOR MASTER’S IN SCIENCE PROGRAM
WORD LIMIT: 800-950
nuisance tripping issue at the Fire Fighting Pump House in the Jamshedpur plant. The external
consultants asserted that the breakers installed were underrated. However, upon independent
investigation, I opined that the breakers were being restarted before adequate ‘cooling time’. The
switching logic, if adjusted properly, could mitigate the problem. This observation was appreciated by
my supervising manager because this saved them a cost of one million rupees they would have invested
in replacing the breakers and restacking the panel. Consequent to my performance, I was offered a Pre-
Placement Offer for a permanent full-time position.

Co-curricular Activities (about 75 words)

Participation in technical fests, member of any technical society (like IEEE), conferences attended, and/
or publications.

Example: Besides acing my academics, I have also participated in a number of technical events like an off
road buggy racing competition in my second year organized by Society of Automobile Engineers called
SAE-BAJA, where we had to design and fabricate our own vehicle accustomed to rough terrain and race
it on an endurance track. I was part of the team responsible for designing and building the power train
and transmission of power throughout. In addition, I participated in Technex (my university’s technical
fest) in a simulation model presentation where my team won the best innovation award for “Preventing
Asteroid impact with Earth”. I am also an owner of a Garuda license (India’s high performance
computing grid) for my computing needs in college.

Extra-curricular Activities & Volunteer Work (about 75 words)

Participated in – sports, cultural event, painting, dance, music…and/ or member of NGO, NSS camps,
Blood donation camps, Literacy Mission…key skills gained through these initiatives.

Example: Due to my natural leadership and team work skills I was nominated as the Secretary of the
college’s science club, ASTHA and I refined it in my final year when I represented my college as the
Public Relations Manager for the annual tech fest, ‘ANOKHA’. I led a team of more than 200 students,
and we set a record in terms of footfall, which was 70 percent more than the previous year. I also have
experience of managing events, organizing competitions, conducting workshops and interacting with my
peers and juniors. Moreover, I dedicated my time volunteering for annual cleanup drives, blood
donation camps as well as helping needy and poor children at orphanages. I believe that my
exceptionally solid background (both technical and soft skills) leaves me well prepared to make useful
contributions to my graduate class and your esteemed institution.

Work Experience (100 words)

Joined at which position, year, company and under which Dept. What have been your key roles and
responsibilities? What has been your career path like – outstanding projects or quick promotions. Any
special contributions to the organization.
GUIDELINES
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FOR MASTER’S IN SCIENCE PROGRAM
WORD LIMIT: 800-950
Example: Currently, I am heading a project that will provide a secure and unified linkage of Indian
citizen’s unique identification card (Aadhaar card: world’s largest ID platform) with all his/her
transactions to avail government/private sector services. I am designated as a software consultant with
Intellect Design Arena Ltd., a global leader in financial technology for banking, primarily involved with
web-application development together with developing web-based hybrid mobile applications for
mobile-oriented operating system platforms. I have hands-on experience with J2EE, JavaScript, Java,
CSS, Apache Cordova, MySQL and Android development. My work-routine qualified me to establish an
in-depth understanding and practicality of Model-View-Controller (M-V-C) framework for web
development to create scalable and extensible projects. By working on web-development, I am able to
comprehend the architectural pattern that separates a web-application into its main logical
components: developing business logic in application servers to initiate and acknowledge client-server
interaction, employing programming language into static web-pages to provide dynamic interactivity on
a web application for the client, and creating Java web application constituting a collection of resources
(such as Servlets, JavaServer Pages, Java classes and jars) that is deployed as a WAR (Web ARchive) file
on an application server. Apart from desktop-oriented operating system clients, I am involved in
engineering a web-application in accordance to cross-platform mobile development. At an abstraction
level, a Hybrid Mobile Web-Application is wrapped inside a thin native container that provides access to
native platform features. To achieve this purpose, I employ Apache Cordova to create cordova-based
projects for different mobile-platforms. Additionally, to enhance the power of application, I write
cordova-plugins (JavaScript and Java code specific to the hardware) to access the device features (such
as fingerprint scanner).

Career Objectives & Why Masters (about 75 words)

This is the most important part of your SOP. The university can know your past accomplishments but
where and how you want to take your vision forward is what they are keen to understand. Spend good
amount of time in developing your career goals for short term (3-5 years) and long term (8-10 years).
Write what you want to do…work as academician, pursue PhD, be an entrepreneur, Process Engineer,
Software Developer, Project Manager…be clear and credible.

Example: I aim to become an engineering entrepreneur in the field of advanced software engineering
and programming. I want to establish a technological conglomerate enterprise delivering programming
solutions to enable the future of advanced computers, providing software technologies to ease the e-
business in a digital world and to work with educational/engineering institutions and scientists to
explore the answers to many of the hard problems witnessed in hardware-software engineering
paradigm. I want to contribute to the goal of achieving enthralling visions for the future of computing
including foldable screens, augmented reality, perceptual computing and of course turning smartphones
into a PC. The increasing dependence of world on technology makes it a prime focus for computer
engineers/scientists to develop, innovate, and engineer digital computing (or favorably optical
computing) to live the reality of high-tech world running with futuristic information processing machines
that help us realize it. Because I myself have that vision of future of modern computers/technology, I
GUIDELINES
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FOR MASTER’S IN SCIENCE PROGRAM
WORD LIMIT: 800-950
would like to be a valuable part in the quest of making technology greatly available and easy to adapt to
for people, particularly in rural areas.

About the University (about 75 words)

Why you are choosing this university – recommended by seniors, teachers…or you are impressed with
the ranking and reputation…say you have done a thorough research about the university. Mention
about the university’s faculty. Write names of the professors in your dept and also the kind of research
work they are involved in. Any special seminars/ conferences held on the campus vis-à-vis your program.
Infrastructure of the university. Any other factor that attracts you – diversity of the student body,
location. For these too, please read about the specific university and then write.

Example: In order to pursue my desire for a better world, I have been closely following the research
initiatives in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Human Computer Interaction and Real-World Computing
of the Computer Science Department at the Stanford University. Projects such as 'Make3d', which adds
depth and a range of points of view to 2D images, and ‘Total Scene Understanding’ which proposes a
hierarchical generative model for automatically classifying, segmenting and annotating images have
greatly impressed me by their innovative approach. Professor Oussama Khatib's path breaking work
about human friendly design, humanoid control and dynamic interaction simulation in the field of
Advanced Robotics has inspired me to pursue my goals. His co-authored publication, 'SupraPeds:
Humanoid Contact-Supported Locomotion for 3D Unstructured Environments’ has intrigued me as to
the prospects of improving real-time reaction of biped robots and their interactions (humanoid) in our
lives. Another inspiring figure is Professor Andrew Ng with his famous 'Google Brain' project that used
deep-learning algorithms for training large scale Artificial Intelligence networks. It was his online class on
Machine Learning on Coursera, which motivated me to explore this area of research in detail. Moreover,
undertakings such as 'Voice-Based Social Media in Developing Regions', especially the 'Avaaj Otalo'
service aiding illiterate and lesser privileged farmers in Gujarat, India to access relevant and timely
agricultural information - fit perfectly with my goals. Such emphasis on interdisciplinary focus in
research with high societal impact is extremely relevant to what I intend to do.

Conclusion (about 50 words)

Conclude by referring back to the beginning of your SOP. Bring back the same thought with which you
began. Rather than a generic ending, make a full circle by completing your story.

Example (beginning): As a child, I would go to drop my mother at the airport and would keep staring at
the planes. Seeing such humungous things fly in the air intrigued me. My mother works as a Deputy
Manager in Air India and she has made sure that I interact with the pilots, whenever I fly. During my
frequent visits to Air India's Airbus A-320 hangar, I would constantly interact with the engineers working
there and ask them questions regarding the principles behind the flight of an aircraft.
Example (end): My dream of being associated with the field of aviation started with my frequent trips to
the airport to drop my mother for her work and now this dream is on the verge of being a reality.
GUIDELINES
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FOR MASTER’S IN SCIENCE PROGRAM
WORD LIMIT: 800-950
Nothing in life would make me happier than to bring improvements and innovations that would amount
to something considerable in the field of aviation.