Your statement of academic purpose can be considered one of the most important components of your application for graduate study at LSE. It is meant to showcase important achievements in your professional and academic career, your career goals and reasons for applying to your programme of choice. For all those reasons, your statement of academic purpose should be something you spend a considerable amount of time on, perhaps most of your preparation time.

Often everyone decides to write a single standard statement of academic purpose that they plan to use for every university they apply to. However, this isn’t something that I would recommend doing. While the structure and framework of your statement can be standard for every university, you should tailor it further to your programme and the larger requirements set forth by the university.

Before I began writing my statement, I read up thoroughly on the programme I wanted to apply to. I read the programme information page and researched on the specific modules I wanted to undertake during my studies. This allowed me to show that I had done my research on what I wanted to do with my time at LSE and tie it in to my career plans after graduating. I also made use of the vast resources on the internet to ensure my statement was well structured and concise.

When starting to write your statement, it can be easy to dwell on each sentence you write and try to make it perfect on the first try, but that generally doesn’t work out. As countless other students will recommend, write a very rough first draft in one go and then improve on it later. Once you have a loose outline in mind, start writing. It can also help to have a list of important points that you want to include in the statement, this can be your achievements, learnings, your future goals, specific modules you want to study or professors you want to learn from.

Once you have a first draft ready, take a break. It’s important to have a fresh mind when working on the statement. Take a few days off and then come back to the statement to begin editing. Now, really focus on the narrative you’re building. Your statement should not be a long story, but neither should it be just pointed statements. It’s supposed to make the admissions selectors interested in you as a candidate and see the potential you have. You should convey why studying at LSE is important to you and how you will contribute to LSE during your time here.

Once you’re done editing and feel like you have a good statement, take another break. Come back to the statement a third time and edit it to be the final version of the document. Now it’s when you share it with others to get their thoughts and feedback. An important tip that I would keep in mind, you don’t want to share your statement with too many people. Multiple opinions can leave you more confused than confident and it can be impossible to include all the feedback you receive. I suggest sharing your statement with a maximum of four people. If you know someone who has previously gone through the entire university application process, it can be helpful to get their opinion on your statement. The rest can be people whose opinions you value and those who know you, they can help you understand if you’re showcasing all important aspects of your career and your future ahead. Wait for everyone’s feedback and then edit your statement a final time.

It’s very important to start working on your statement early, it took me over a month to finalise my statement of academic purpose and have it ready before applications opened.  It doesn’t have to be “perfect”; it just has to showcase the important qualities about you.