Statement of Purpose for Graduate School
Criteria for success.
- qualified for their program, and
- a good fit for their program’s focus and goals.
- You show a select group of skills and experiences that concisely convey your scientific accomplishments and interests.
- Your experiences are concrete and quantitative .
- Your personal statement is no more than 2 pages (less if you can, or if it is required by the school).
Structure Diagram
The graduate school Personal Statement (≈ Statement of Purpose ≈ Statement of Intent) is a document that complements your resume and application form, describing your profile in a narrative way and convincing the admission committee that you would be a good match for a particular department or program. Take into account that matching goes both ways: they should be interested in you, and you should be interested in them. Your personal statement should make this match clear.
Analyze Your Audience
Your personal statement will be read by a graduate committee – a handful of faculty from the program. They’re trying to determine if you will be a successful graduate student in their department and a successful scientist after you graduate. They are interested in your qualifications as a researcher, your career goals, and how your personality matches their labs and department.
The graduate committee probably reads hundreds of applications every year. To make it easy for them to figure out that you are a good fit, keep in mind the following suggestions:
- Make direct, concrete statements about your accomplishments and qualifications.
- Create a narrative that serves as a personal brand and helps them remember you.
- Give them some unique examples that describe you and make you stand out, and which will make them remember you as “that candidate that was so passionate about…” or “who has a lot of experience in…”, although they might not remember your name.
- Align your academic goals and motivations with specific research projects or research directions of the target department.
Assessing your match to the target program
A key point on writing your Personal Statement is to demonstrate that you have done previous research about the program to which you’re applying, that you understand its characteristics and objectives, and that you are really interested in joining it and willing to do your best to be successful in it. To do this:
- Read the program’s website. Learn about its faculty members and the projects they are working on. Check what topics and high level goals the department is committed to. Identify the main research areas.
- Get in contact with faculty and students in your target program. Browse recent publications and presentations but remember lab websites can be outdated and a publication may lag a few years behind the active research in a lab so pay attention to the motivation, direction, and methods of the faculty member over specific results. If you have had a positive discussion with someone at the department, you can include in your essay how those interactions confirmed that you would be a good match for the program.
Reflect before you start
To convince a graduate committee that you are ready for and excited about graduate school, first you need to be able to articulate this to yourself. Earnestly reflect on the following types of questions. A lack of authenticity is easy to detect.
- Why do I want to go to graduate school?
- How am I sure?
- Why will I be successful in graduate school?
- What can I do with the help of this degree that I couldn’t do before?
- Where do I want to be in a few years?
- How am I going to get there?
Create a personal narrative
Graduate programs invest in the professional and scientific growth of their students. Get the committee excited about investing in you by opening your essay with a brief portrait of what drives you as a scientist. What research directions are you passionate about, and why? What do you picture yourself doing in 10 years?
- E.g. “Graduate study is the first step towards my goal: I want to improve my ability as a researcher and gain more technical depth and breadth to maximize my impact. In the long term, I hope graduate school will better position me to be a leader in shaping the conversation about what problems can be addressed by mechanical engineers.”
Close your essay with a 2-3 sentence discussion of your long-term career interests. No one will hold you to this; this just helps your committee visualize your potential trajectory.
- E.g. “Above all else, a MIT PhD would help me achieve my long term career goal of becoming a professor, the position in which I can best see myself accomplishing my mission to show others the hidden beauty in everyday life through science.”
Connect your personal narrative to whichever degree you are applying to (be it research-based or course-work-based, or a Master of Science, Master of Engineering, or PhD). Especially in mechanical engineering, each of these degrees will enable different career trajectories and provide different educational opportunities. Articulate clearly why the degree you are applying for helps you achieve your goals. In the same vein, consider mutual benefit: what will you contribute to the academic community over your time at your target school? Remember, it all comes back to “qualified match” , no matter what level of degree you are applying for.
Describe your experiences
Experiences are the “what” of your essay. They are the most efficient and easiest way to prove your capabilities to the admissions committee.
- What experiences led you to develop your skill set and passions ?
- Where have you demonstrated accomplishment, leadership, and collaboration?
- Show your depth with a range of experiences: research, teaching, relevant extracurriculars and leadership positions.
- State concrete achievements and outcomes like awards, discoveries, or publications, or projects completed.
Achievements need not be limited to research projects or publications. Think about all the experiences that demonstrate your ability to conduct research and succeed within the structure of your target program. (Where have you demonstrated creativity? Self sufficiency? Perseverance? What open ended problems have you tackled? What enabled you to succeed at them?)
Quantify your experiences to show concrete impact. How many people were on your team? How many protocols did you develop? How many people were in competition for an award? As a TA, how often did you meet with your students?
For each experience you include, focus on how the experience affected you. Describe your actions, and always direct the message to highlighting your performance and growth (not how important the company was or how well-known the professor you TAed for is). Remember, it is not an essay about science, it is a personal essay—about you and how you have positioned yourself to succeed in graduate school.
Explain the meaning of your experiences
Your goal in sharing your experiences is to demonstrate that you have the qualifications, qualities, and drive needed to succeed in graduate school. Therefore, you will need to not only choose experiences wisely but also state specifically what they mean within the context of your application.
- Why was this experience important to your growth as a scientist?
- What did you gain from or demonstrate during that experience?
- How will this make you a better grad student?
Even if it feels obvious to you, you need to explicitly answer these questions to your audience. Here are some examples experiences that have been expanded to contain meaning:
Contemplate how disparate activities can be unified into a common narrative about your motivations and achievements. Articulate this clearly to make your statement cohesive.
Demonstrate your match to the target program
Using the research you did to assess your chosen programs, clearly articulate why you are a match . Consider both directions of the match: not only why you want to go to the school, but also why you would fit in well and contribute to the program.
State which professors in the program you would be interested in working with. Demonstrate that you have done your homework regarding the program. Show how their research areas align with your background and your goals. If you have had conversations with students or professors in the program, be sure to include that as well.
Common Pitfalls
Write about you , not your role models. One of the most common pitfalls we see in the Comm Lab is students writing touching Personal Statements about family members or role models who have inspired them. There is nothing wrong with including personal stories about people who have helped you understand yourself better, or positioned you to succeed in graduate school, but it is important to tread very carefully. Don’t leave the reader wondering why they are reading about someone else in a document that is meant to be about you. If you take time to talk about someone who positively affected you, make sure to be very clear about how that experience with that person molded you into a strong graduate school candidate.
Be judicious with childhood stories. A brief mention of some childhood experience that shaped your interests in STEM is probably okay, but if you talk about it at length (more than ~2 sentences), you are taking up space that should probably be used to talk about who you are today, not who you were over a decade ago.
Don’t simply restate your resume. Your Personal Statement should be a technical document (having evidence, numbers, and supporting facts) with personal outcomes (talking about your motivations, ambitions, and ability to succeed as a graduate student). Of course, you will reiterate parts of your resume in your Personal Statement , but what uniquely makes it a “Personal Statement” is the discussion of how those professional experiences affected you , as a researcher and person well-suited to the graduate program at X University.
Insufficient quantification of your experiences. We are all scientists and engineers; our line of work is inherently quantitative. Quantification is a quick and easy way to add context, lend credence to your experiences, and impress the reader. Even little quantifications can help: “I spent two semesters working on a project about…” is much better than “I spent some time working on a project about…”. See more examples in the section on Experiences, above.
Being a great student and having an impressive resume is only half the battle when it comes to graduate school applications. You need to be able to communicate and convince the committee that your personality and particular set of skills and experiences are well-suited to the graduate program you are applying for. This extends beyond graduate school applications: as scientists and engineers, we write papers and technical reports to communicate with our peers and convince them that our work is meaningful.
By reading this article, you have recognized the value of communication and are well on your way to crafting an effective and powerful Personal Statement. This is your opportunity to make yourself shine among all the other candidates, so make it count! You can do it!
Acknowledgements : This content was adapted from the NSE and CEE Communication Labs’ CommKits for graduate applications.
Resources and Annotated Examples
Annotated example 1, annotated example 2.
Sample Personal Statement Mechanical Engineering (USC, Imperial)
by Talha Omer, M.Eng., Cornell Grad
In personal statement samples by field.
An NYU’s senior applied to 7 top Mechanical Engineering grad programs in the US and the UK and got into all but one. He spent nearly a month writing the perfect personal statement that he used to apply to top schools. Variations of this personal statement got accepted to Stanford University, Imperial College London, University of Texas A&M and UCLA. He has graciously shared his personal statement so that prospective applicants can benefit from it.
Sample Personal Statement Mechanical Engineering
I am eager to pursue a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering to deepen my knowledge in engineering design, mechanics, and analysis. My research interests are primarily driven by my life aspirations, dynamic undergraduate experience, and professional mechanical engineering expertise. Given my credentials, I firmly believe that I resonate with core values at [Name of School] and I will make an ideal candidate for this institution.
I cannot agree more with Dorothy Parker’s quote: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity”, as I have always been a curious soul and things that pique my interest stays with me forever. I remember the first time I watched a dense network of nuts and bolts in my dad’s car engine. I could not look away. The tiny moving objects aroused an unquenchable curiosity in me. Logically, I entered college as a major in sciences, eyes widened by the boundless world of science I had just begun to get to know.
I did my undergraduate in mechanical engineering, where I was engaged in research about combustion, machine design, mechanics of materials and computer-aided engineering. Through this coursework, I developed a basic understanding of a breadth of theoretical areas of mechanical engineering and their socioeconomic applications. However, what I enjoyed most about being a mechanical engineer was developing my ideas through coursework and discussing them with my peers outside the classroom.
Outside the classroom, my advocacy for innovative ideas was well rewarded when the Student Section Enterprise Team (SSET) in ASME International, based in New York, elected me as the Student Regional Chair (SRC) – a prized position among mechanical engineers’ community all around the globe. So naturally, I was also the Chairperson for my own Campus’s ASME chapter, which I had laid the ground for in my sophomore year. I was elated to know that ASME International and my department showed trust in me, which I fulfilled in its true spirit. As a chairperson, I managed high-powered university-level competitions and conferences to induce collective synergies of mechanical engineers from all over the country. I also took the self-initiative of developing my juniors’ interpersonal skills and arranged several professional development competitions.
Based on my performance in class and leadership abilities as an ASME chair, I was selected by my university to work with the national defence authorities in designing a mechanically simple yet multipurpose unmanned ground vehicle for my final year project. I was mainly selected because I had a firm grip over software packages involving calibrations and simulations.
The simple thought of working for the defence authorities excited me as it was an honour to work on such a classified project.
This assignment was my first formal parametric study in mechanical engineering, which was a thorough scientific investigation. As I became proficient in many programs and databases, notably through these packages, the calibrations I proposed for the vehicle were well received by my professors. Later, the defence authorities developed an actual model on those parameters. My final year project was the catalyst that sparked a passion for studying vehicles and vehicle designs, and I actively looked for careers in top automobile firms in my country.
I found an ideal opportunity to start my career as a management trainee in the Development and Quality Assurance Department at Tesla Inc. During my brief stint of three months at Tesla Inc., I was introduced to the vast world of manufacturing techniques employed in the automotive sector. As a trainee engineer, I optimized methods to get the least number of defective parts per million. The more I was involved in optimization, the more I developed a desire to understand design mechanics, which could be engineered to reduce energy consumption. As luck would have it, during one of the events organized by ASME, I was a keynote speaker at a panel involving energy consumption. In the same panel, the CEO of Chevron Corporation took notice of my ideas. After the event, he encouraged me to work at Chevron and work on my proposed fluid design and mechanics ideas to reduce energy consumption.
It was an honor to be offered a job at Chevron, which I duly accepted. As an associate manager for the past 18 months at Chevron, I’ve developed a dynamic skill set around supply chain, projects and maintenance departments. Through my work in these departments, I have honed my data analytics and the ability to draw meaningful inferences from raw data. I have also become adept at management related to engineering practices. I have strived to increase my knowledge base at Chevron by constantly exploring Maintenance & Operation manuals. Through these manuals, I have bolstered my knowledge of Turbo-machinery, Engineering Materials, Machine Design and Fluid Mechanics.
Although my professional trajectory is burgeoning, while working hand to hand with the Engineering Design department, I strongly resonated with celebrated sportscaster Vin Scully when he famously said: “Good is not good enough when better is expected.” I felt that although my four-year undergraduate coursework provided a baseline theoretical knowledge, I needed to hone my learning and practical exposure to further my passion in the area. During my work with this department, I was commissioning a new gas processing facility and felt way behind in design and problem-solving scenarios. I particularly struggled with interpreting compressor and prime mover big data. I realized that if I had a more advanced knowledge base in mechanical design and engineering information modelling, I would have been able to give better theoretically sound solutions and help with process optimization. Given these technical handicaps, I strongly feel the need to upgrade my current knowledge base through a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.
While searching for programs that match my research interests and professional experience, the Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from [Name of School] tops my list for its numerous attractions. Firstly, the prospects of studying at [Name of School] are fascinating because of its location in California, the hub of tech-based research in the U.S., like driverless vehicles etc., and numerous opportunities for internships in world-leading firms. Secondly, [Name of School] satiates my desire to study in schools with top-notch faculty specializing in areas where I want to further my research. I am particularly excited about working with Ivan Bermejo Moreno and Julian A. Domaradzki on crucial research areas such as computational fluid mechanics and high-performance computing.
Thirdly, by taking courses related to engineering analysis and engineering design modules at [Name of School] , I am looking forward to gleaning more information on methods of Finite Element Analysis coupled with Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics. I want to learn more about mechanical system design concerning tribology. Ideally, I would like to further my current tribological research of skid vehicles by calibrating it to be adaptive to the implications of environmental, cost and safety issues.
Lastly, having been a chairperson of an elite group of mechanical engineers, I am looking forward to enhancing my leadership capabilities. I genuinely believe that [Name of School] student-led design teams make this program stand out among other programs as they are an ideal platform where I can test and enhance the capabilities of my prototype vehicle and put it for wide-scale use. I am confident that the above-outlined graduate degree plan and vibrant opportunities at [Name of School] will accelerate my career growth after my master’s degree.
After completing my master’s program, I want to start my career as a mechanical design engineer in a top engineering design company such as Stantec. As a design engineer, I want to work on different global projects and provide design engineering solutions to a portfolio of industries for their needs. Various projects for other industries would give me new challenges each time and thus help me gain experience to evolve my skills. Leading design firms worldwide will help me get up-to-date with the latest tools with their training programs focusing on continuous professional development. I am confident that [Name of School] brand image, dynamic coursework grounded in its state-of-the-art research facilities and renowned faculty will be an ideal conduit for achieving my career goals. I will continue to work in the field of mechanical engineering with the same curiosity that was sparked in me when I first saw the engine parts of my dad’s car.
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