How to write a successful SOP

Eight Ps that make a statement of purpose special.

Students who want to pursue higher studies abroad in the next academic session will soon be busy applying for colleges and universities of their choice to secure admission. A number of students who decide to study overseas approach me with requests to get their statements of purpose (SOPs) edited, to offer them tips on how to write a good SOP, and, sometimes, to ghostwrite their SOPs. I say ‘yes’ to the first two categories of requests but a firm ‘no’ to the third category as it is unethical to write an SOP for another person.

When such students approach me, even before looking at their SOPs or offering them any tips, I ask them a few questions such as: Why do you have to write an SOP? Why have you chosen a particular country? Why have you chosen a specific university? In which field do you want to specialise in? Why have you chosen it? When did you develop your interest in it? How passionate are you about the field you are going to specialise in? What is your career goal? After the informal interview, I tell the applicant to write in a coherent manner whatever they shared with me during the interview. I also tell them that their SOP should be between 500 and 700 words. The informal interview breaks the ice and prepares the applicant to write it well.

What is a statement of purpose? It is an application essay a student applying for a graduate programme at a foreign university is required to write in order to be admitted to the programme. This important document is also called ‘personal statement’ in the U.K. Though it is not common in most institutions of higher education in India to require students to submit an SOP, it may be required to attend a personal interview to secure admission.

Why do universities ask for an SOP? Applicants are required to prepare and submit it along with other forms while applying. It helps colleges and universities to test whether the applicants are really interested in the programme that they have applied for, whether they are capable of pursuing the programme and completing it successfully and whether they will be able to contribute significantly to the institute.

Just like a good job application letter helps candidates project themselves successfully in the job market, a good SOP helps applicants to highlight their strengths during admission. There are over a hundred different products in the market but consumers choose a particular product because they think it is better than others for various reasons. Similarly, a good SOP stands out and attracts the admissions committee which wades through hundreds of applications. The 8 Ps that make an SOP special are personal touch, purpose, passion, preparedness, potential, planning, plain English and positivity.

Personal touch is the quality of being personal. An SOP is rightly called a personal statement because it is a statement prepared by the applicants to give an indication to the admissions committee what type of a person they are and to express their suitability for a particular programme that they wish to apply. An SOP, being a personal account of the applicant’s academic performances and wishes, reveals the applicant’s attitude.

If the statement is ghostwritten by someone, the candidate’s personal touch may not be reflected in the application essay. This is why it is considered unethical on the part of the applicant to ask someone to prepare the document. The personal document can be given to someone for editing.

Purpose is the keyword in the statement of purpose. The applicants should state why they wish to specialise in a specific field, why they have chosen a particular university/college, what their career goal is and so on. The applicants should demonstrate their clarity of thought and clarity of expression in the personal statement.

Passion is an important characteristic of a great SOP. The applicants should show their aptitude for the academic programme they have chosen. Only those who have a passion for something can excel in it, and, therefore, it is important to express it in an interesting and convincing manner.

In the extract of an SOP below, an applicant explains how passionate he is about in the field he has chosen:

“Ever since I started watching Fast and Furious movie series, I developed an interest in automobiles. I decided to opt for the mechanical engineering branch even when I was a pre-university student. I developed my interest in automotive engineering after I joined the college in many different ways…”

Potential is one’s capacity to excel in something. The applicants should state clearly whether they have the potential to pursue the programme they have chosen, in a successful manner. The applicants should list some of their achievements that will make their SOP stand out. In the extract of an SOP below, an applicant highlights one of his achievements.

“During my third-year undergraduate programme, I was involved in a project “SAE BAJA 2015” organised by the Society of Automotive Engineers, India. This project involved a complete fabrication of an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV). Our team cleared the virtual round by making innovative designs as per the rules framed by SAE. Then we started the fabrication process that is followed by many automobile manufacturers. It was a great experience for me as I was involved in the complete fabrication process. It enhanced my passion for manufacturing technology…”

Preparedness is the state of being ready to take off. It is not sufficient to have passion alone. Willingness to translate passion into action is important. Preparedness indicates how the applicants sustained their passion for the field they intend to specialise in. The applicants should demonstrate their preparedness for the academic programme by listing what they have done and how they have prepared.

Planning is the process of making plans for achieving something. The applicants should mention briefly why they have chosen a particular university. Recently, an applicant asked me whether she should mention in her SOP that she contacted a professor in the university she is planning to apply for admission and enquired about her field, research facilities and so on.

Yes, it is good to mention whether the applicant visited the website of the university and went through the profiles of the professors of a department to contact them and know more about the programme, research opportunities and so on.

Plain English is characterised by easy-to-understand language, clarity, brevity and avoidance of flowery words and phrases. The language should be simple, direct and free from clichés. Some applicants think they should use pompous words and phrases to show that their English is good. No. Use of flowery language in an SOP will have a negative rather than positive impact on those who go through it.

Positivity is the sign of showing hope and being optimistic. It is important to end an SOP with a positive note as in the example below:

“I feel that TU Dortmund’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering with its rich blend of competent faculty, intense curriculum and the cherished history of success, would be an ideal place to shape my career.”

A great SOP speaks to the members of the admissions committee and makes them smile and say, “Here is the guy I am looking for.”

The author is professor of English and head, higher education at KCG College of Technology, Chennai. Email: rayanal@yahoo.co.uk

Keywords: statements of purpose, study abroad, overseas education, personal statement

Source: The Hindu, 11-01-2016

HRD Ministry to provide 12,000 free e-books on mobile app

The Union human resource development (HRD) ministry is set to provide 12,000 books in e-format for higher education in the next month under its prestigious e-Pathshala initiative.

According to HRD minister Smriti Irani, this study material in the form of books will be available free on a mobile app.

Irani was visiting the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU) here to lay the foundation stone of a women’s hostel. Addressing the gathering, she said, “The study material would be related to various subjects and topics for higher education.”

The ministry has already made available all NCERT textbooks, from class 1 to 12, in e-format for students.

Irani also said that under the ministry’s ‘Unnat Bharat Abhiyan’, all higher educational institutions would now have to adopt 10 villages, instead of five, in their vicinity.

Under the scheme, institutes like the IITs, IIMs and central universities have to adopt villages to educate children who do not have access to education.

“The institutions must make sure that they mention in the academic record of every student about his or her participation in the abhiyan,” Irani said.

She also assured all financial aid to BBAU and other institutions in implementing the scheme.

Irani also appealed to students to help one needy person each after passing out from their institutions. “After getting their degrees, students are busy searching for a job. This is justified as they have to secure their future and serve their parents. But they must also make sure to help at least one needy person each,” she said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 11-01-2016

Girls emerge as preferred choice for adoption

NEW DELHI PTI





Girls are the preferred choice for people opting for adoption in comparison to male children in the country, even as the government struggles to improve skewed sex-ratio.In the past three years, 7,439 girls were taken up for adoption as against 5,167 boys. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2,846 girls were adopted in 2012-13 against 1,848 boys. In 2013-14, it was 2,293 girls and 1,631 boys. Year 2014-15 saw 2,300 girls finding home, while 1,688 boys were adopted. “There has been an increase in the demand for girl child for adoptions. It is very encouraging to know that more and more people are coming to adopt girls,” a senior official of Central Adoption Resource Authority said.
The number of children with disabilities or special needs placed in inter-country adoption was 170, 242 and 214 during 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively.
According to the revised adoption guidelines that came into effect from August 1, 2015, the process was brought under a new system called `CARINGS', bringing all child-care institutions of the country on one platform.
The Ministry also recently relaxed rules for adoption for certain categories of parents including those who have lost their child to sickness or accident and those want to adopt children with special needs.
However, child sex ratio, which shows the number of girls per 1000 boys between the ages 0-6, is 918 according to 2011 census. Officials said the Centre's Beti Bacho Beti Padhao initiative has shown significant improvement in many states.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 11-01-2016

Simplicity and Depth

ARUP MITRA





Simplicity brings one closer to the truth. But lack of simplicity introduces deviations because the biases of a complicated mind are too many , blocking progress towards truth. Simplicity enables one to acquire knowledge easily; but depth of understanding and realisation is required. Otherwise, the knowledge remains superfluous.We often look at phenomena with a preconceived view or add imaginative components instead of observing them as they are. Such distortions influence our next thought process, taking us away from reality .Also, we tend to add something to our observations to make it sound more interesting.
Ultimate knowledge is so simple; it is there everywhere. But it has been made so complex unnecessarily . In order to retain this natural simplicity in us, we need to avoid absorbing unnecessary details revolving around us. We need to observe silence in order to enhance depth. Too many words only create confusion and produce vibrations that disturb both the speaker and the listener.
Solitude, quietness and introspection enhance our depth and take us away from complexity towards simplicity . On a daily basis, one can start practising by moving away to a corner, keeping silence. Slowly , the duration can be stretched and a time will come when eternal silence will start echoing in the midst of thundering sounds all around. That is when one has acquired the ability to cut oneself off from all distractions. The understanding that then develops comes from the depth of one's existence.

True Dharma Transcends All Things Material

Acharya Mahapragya





The sky keeps changing hues.Some changes are perceptible and others are smaller changes. A cloud moves a bit, the wind blows, the sun's rays get sharper, and then dark clouds fill the sky, it rains, it shines, it stands dark against twinkling stars and a bright moon. In a single day we see the sky changing so much.
Man too changes so many forms from morning to night ... now happy , now hopeful, now low, now depressed, now loud, now quiet, now overcome by emotion, now lost in thought and so on.If one could maintain a diary of every emotion, thought process, one diary would easily fill up.
Everything is constantly changing.Not just our moods and manner but look at fortunes ­ Lakshmi as we call it.Fortune is now here, now somewhere else. Youth is ephemeral ... someone who was very beautiful and young once may be haggard and old today . Every thing about life is constantly changing; it is chanchal. What is nischal or eternal?
Dharma is eternal. I will not try translating dharma; it is more than religion, it defines your being. Now if we ask which dharma, we get into a fix. And then if we start naming it as Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Islam, Christian, Jewish and so on, we will get stuck.
That which cannot be got from matter or from money , that is called dharma. That is also veetaragatha or detachment. In fact, veetaragatha is more than detachment. It is healthy disinterest in the material world, not shunning it. Veetaragatha cannot be bought. When this attitude of disinterest in the material world increases, attachments will reduce and we can start living truly . We will then not be measuring our world through desire.
Once, a couple, deeply into meditation and spiritual pursuits, was walking from village to village when the husband found a heap of gold coins and ornaments on the road. How did it come there, he wondered.He quickly threw some mud on it so that his wife, who was following at some distance, did not see it and get attracted to it.
The wife caught up with him and asked, “What is that heap?“ He mumbled something inaudible. “I know it is gold. Why do you hide it? It is you who has to evolve, not me.If you did not value it, you would not have covered it or feared that I would be tempted,“ said the wife.
So the first step towards veetaragatha is to know what to value and how much value to ascribe to what. How much value to ascribe to people, to material things and how to differentiate between them? Only the one who has the right attitude can pass by a heap of gems without being tempted. At this point we can venture to understand dharma. Once we know the value of consciousness, matter will cease to matter.
This understanding comes with an awakened chetna or consciousness.
An evolved philosopher said there are only three precious gems. They are water, grain and sweet speech. The first maintains life, the second sustains it and the third is essential to keep relationships. I wish to add a fourth: the breath. But for the breath, we would not be here to talk of values.
They make dharma which is nischal and leads you towards healthy disinterest in the material and towards purity of soul and therefore automatically towards nonviolence. Let us think along these lines to bring balance between consumption and restraint, between nomenclatures and true dharma.

THE AGE OF EMAIL STRESS

If

its followers were a country, it would be twice as populous as China. These 2.5 billion people give an hour every day to their faith—email. As with all things Internet related, email gained adherents at a prodigious rate. The first email message was sent in 1971, but widespread use began only by 1995.

In 30 years, email went from being a revolutionary replacement for the postal department—what we now call snail mail—to being a replacement, sometimes, for speech.

“Now we know that emails are often exchanged between people sitting in the same building—or even in the same room!” says a new study called “You’ve Got Mail!” from the Future Work Centre, a UK research institute. After surveying 2,000 users in the UK—the findings are not likely to be particularly different elsewhere—they have some disquieting explanations as to what email is doing to its users.

The problem is the “bad habits” that email users develop: leaving email on all day (62%) and sending emails automatically to inboxes (50%), which is what most people I know do—oh, yes, myself included.

This unceasing deluge is sparked by a desire to be in control. You know, to avoid the shock when your phone tells you 50 emails are pending. To avoid such stressful situations, you check your email—in the morning and late at night—and believe you are staying ahead. But the Future Work Centre study showed that these habits instead cause more stress and make your life more difficult.

This is primarily about work. Of the 196.3 billion emails sent every day in 2014, 55% were work-related, according to a 2014 study from the Radicati group, a US technology market-research firm.

“Email remains the most pervasive form of communication in the business world, while other technologies such as social networking, instant messaging (IM), mobile IM, and others are also taking hold, email remains the most ubiquitous form of business communication,” the Radicati study said.

However, consumer—or non-business—email traffic is slowing, presumably moving to social networking sites, instant messaging, mobile IM, and SMS/ text messaging.

With its ubiquity in the lives of the globalized business elite, email has become different things for different people, acknowledges the UK study, pointing to other research that has thrown up conflicting results. So, email volume is a predictor of stress and, sometimes, it isn’t. Frequently checking your email can reduce stress, but it can also spark it. Filing your email in neat folders is linked to higher productivity— and lower efficiency.

What this adds up to is that the effects of email use on people is likely to vary.

“Our research shows that email is a double-edged sword,” said Richard McKinnon, a Future of Work researcher, quoted on the website Eurekalert.org, while addressing the British Psychological Society this week. “Whilst it can be a valuable communication tool, it’s clear that it’s a source of stress, of frustration for many of us. The people who reported it being most useful to them also reported the highest levels of email pressure! But the habits we develop, the emotional reactions we have to messages and the unwritten organizational etiquette around email, combine into a toxic source of stress which could be negatively impacting our productivity and well-being.”

Here are some of the stressors. Email has no clear norms with regard to language, familiarity and speed of response, and no “non-verbal” cues, such as body language, so the potential for misunderstandings, misinterpretations—and stress—abounds.

Unlike face-to-face communication or phone calls, email does not allow selfcorrection “in the moment”, which means another email must be sent. The feeling of email overload, as some studies have noted, can result in physical stress and emotional exhaustion.

Finally, email can be a distraction, taking away time from other important activities, from eating to intimacy.

A sidelight that McKinnon and his team stumbled on during their research was that the feeling of being pressured by email was significantly higher among users of Mac operating systems, when compared to Windows; more among iOS (iPhone) users when compared to Android, Windows or BlackBerry.

Users of Windows smartphones reported the lowest levels of perceived email pressure. Why? “At this stage, we don’t know,” said the study.

So, what can you do about email stress? The researchers recommend:

* To the early morning/late night checkers—put your phone away; do you really need to check your email?

* How about planning your day and prioritizing your work, before the priorities of others flood your inbox?

* Consider turning off ‘push notifications’ and/or turning off your email app for portions of the day, and take control of when you receive email.

There’s no harm trying. You have nothing to lose but your stress.

Samar Halarnkar is editor of Indiaspend.org, a data-driven, publicinterest journalism, non-profit organization. He also writes the column Our Daily Bread in Mint Lounge.

Source: www.livemint.com/frontiermail

The problem with smart cities

Urban administrations and the private sector must join hands for the Special Purpose Vehicle model to work

By 15 December, 85 cities out of the total 98 included under the Smart Cities Mission had submitted their respective Smart City Plans to the ministry of urban development. Hopefully, the remaining cities will follow suit shortly. The stage is ready for this ambitious mission that aims to make Indian cities sustainable and competitive.

The journey so far has a few lessons and concerns that need attention. Apart from criticism on the quality of proposals and public participation, there were indications of a few cities hesitant to submit their proposals. One of the main reasons for the apathy of urban local bodies of some cities pertains to the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which is to be mandatorily constituted for the implementation of their respective Smart City Plans. SPVs with private investments have been increasingly encouraged as an efficient mechanism for infrastructure projects. This would be ideally seen as an attractive option for urban local bodies struggling to meet investment requirement. Then why have these local bodies been so disapproving of the smart city SPVs? According to media reports, the local bodies of Greater Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Kochi and Nashik have indicated that the essence of ‘local self-governance’ will be defeated with specific focus on private sector driven SPVs.

An SPV is a legal entity created for a specific purpose, which can theoretically be shut down after the specified purpose has been achieved. The major advantage of an SPV is that it allows investors to limit their risks and maximize profits, and bypass cumbersome legal and regulatory issues. In India, SPVs have come to dominate the infrastructure landscape. A prominent example of this would be road construction, operations and maintenance. In certain other cases, like metro rail projects, the private-public partnership efficiencies are yet to be realized.

One of the reasons for setting up SPVs in smart cities is to ensure objective and efficient decision making, independent of municipal councils, which are subject to local politics. The Smart Cities Mission (SCM) guidelines mandate an equal share of equity contribution by the state government and urban local body, thereby making them the majority shareholders. Nevertheless, urban local bodies are disturbed by the idea of an SPV bypassing the elected municipal council as proposed in the SCM guidelines (4.1.1 and 4.1.2). It threatens to chip away at the notion of decentralized and democratic decision making. A demonstration of this contestation was noted when the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation mandated that there would be no private sector participation, and the mayor would have veto power over the SPV’s decisions. Although the central government may not honour this resolution, it signals that empowering an SPV will not be easy.

Currently, according to the SCM guidelines, cities are required to create an SPV once they have been selected. However, in the absence of clarity on specific projects and assured revenue streams, it would be very difficult for private companies to participate. This, combined with a lack of management control, may reduce the attractiveness of SPVs for private investors.

The SCM guidelines also stipulate that government funding can only be used for projects that have public benefit outcomes. What are the criteria to decide the degree of public benefit of projects? Such distinction could lead to a tiered hierarchy of projects based on a user’s ability and willingness to pay in the context of cities with a significant percentage of urban poor.

Finally, there is the issue of convergence at city level. There are cities that are covered under more than one such flagship programme. For example, Varanasi is included under both SCM and the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY). The manner in which a smart city SPV interacts with the implementing agency for HRIDAY, and how two projects under the two separate programmes complement each other, is yet to be seen.

Clearly, there are issues regarding SPVs which need to be clarified. An important first step would be to build safeguards to protect the democratic nature of governance structures. There is merit in understanding the mindset behind some of the caveats voiced by unhappy urban local bodies. A robust governance structure, which allows for sharing of power and financial resources between urban local bodies and the private sector stakeholders, would go a long way towards assuaging fears.

The second important aspect would be for the government to clarify the financial nature of SPVs and how the private sector can contribute effectively. The nature of the asset and price sensitivity of citizens towards that asset could be used as a factor in deciding issues of charging user-fee.

Critical issues of capacity and skill building for local bodies need to be addressed in parallel. Matters related to intellectual property rights, open standards and technology transfer should be enshrined at the highest level of government since it is difficult for individual urban local bodies to negotiate with private parties. The current SCM guidelines do not cover these aspects.

Only when these issues are addressed can SPVs be truly successful.

Source: http://epaper.livemint.com/epaper/viewer.aspx