Write a Great Statement of Purpose (SOP) & College Essays

This lecture explains how the Design Thinking Process, taught in top business school, has been adapted to write an SOP.  It presents a step-by-step explanation of the different stages of the Design Thinking Process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test, and Iterate.

This lecture discusses Step 1 Empathize of the Design Thinking Process. It also explains the brainstorming method and how it is used to create a laundry list of your life events by answering a list of guiding questions.

This video demonstrates how to create a wall of your life events and experiences in the Empathize stage of your SOP creation using elaborate examples.

This lecture explains Step 2 Define of the Design Thinking process. You will apply it to uncover patterns and connections from the results uncovered in the Empathize stage. It also provides essential tips to uncover the patterns and connections using appropriate examples.

In this lecture video, you will see how connections and patterns are uncovered in the Define stage of creating your SOP.

This lecture introduces you to the Pyramid Principle of logical writing and explains Step 3 Ideate of the Design Thinking Process. You will apply the Pyramid Principle to structure the information of your SOP and ideate to create the theme of your SOP. The lecture also contains tips to build your theme and explains the elements of a theme using appropriate examples.

This video presents a detailed explanation of how to create themes or single line SOPs.

This lecture continues with an explanation of the Ideate Stage and how it is used to create topic sentences for your SOP's body paragraphs. It begins by briefly explaining the meaning of topics sentences and then goes on to describe the process of creating topic sentences by using appropriate examples.

This lecture proceeds to explain Step 4 Prototype of the Design Thinking Process. In a detailed manner it discusses the various components of an SOP (Beginning, Body Paragraphs, Conclusion) and uses numerous examples to illustrate how to create a prototype of your SOP by crafting sentences for each paragraph. Later, it guides you to organize the sentences in each paragraph by using the SHPC rules which stands for Start, Handover, Proof, and Conclusion.

This video lecture provides more information about creating paragraphs of an SOP.

This brief lecture explains Step 5 Test of the Design Thinking Process and how to apply it to get feedback for your SOP draft from friends, colleagues and professors.

This other brief lecture explains the final step of the Design Thinking Process which is Step 6 Iterate. It outlines how you will apply this step to incorporate the feedback and refine your SOP.

This concluding lecture provides a quick recap of the main concepts covered in the course to strengthen your learning.

This is a bonus video summarising how to write a perfect statement of purpose.