Statement of purpose

本文经修改后，作者的学习目的和选择学校的原因显得很清晰、明确，十分令人信服。对比原作者提供的中文稿和专家的修改稿，读者可以清楚地看出中英文写作的区别。

A graduate from the Harbin Institute of Technologies, an institution of higher learning known for its selectivity, I have solidly grounded myself in a discipline that is still new in China, namely, mechatronics. With four years of strict training and conscientious studies behind, I am now versed in a broad range of subjects related to this discipline. But I would like to pursue more advanced studies in it. I now apply for acceptance into your Master' program for the sole reason that your program is one of the few that offer graduate studies in mechatronics.（一般而言，开头并不是一定要依时间顺序介绍自己的童年。扼要的阐明自己目前的情况和学习的愿望往往更好。）

I first became fascinated with making electronic devices in high school. Until then, I was content with making mechanical gadgets, from which I derived immense pleasure. As a child, I made my own toy gliders and vacuum cleaners. In making such things, I instinctively grasped the principles of aeromechanics. After I entered into junior high school, I began to make small electronic appliances by using electrical circuit boards. As I experimented for new inventions, I felt more and more constrained by the limited approaches. I yearned to make really user-friendly gadgets and devices that could be readily accepted on the market.

At the university, I chose mechatronics as my major for its interdisciplinary nature. Built on the combined strength of mechanics, electronics, computer science and automatic control, this genre of studies does away the single-mindedness inherent in the pursuit of studies in one area. With mechatronics, I began to create a much larger variety of products that could serve a lot of different purposes. The onset of mechatronics represents to me a major step forward in the manufacturing technology.

I thoroughly enjoyed the four years of my undergraduate studies at the Harbin Institute of Technology, a major cradle of China's engineering talents. I found most of the courses I took not only instructive but also entertaining. But I particularly liked the hands-on experience that the Institute always promoted and required. For virtually every course of my major, we engaged in assorted experiments and projects. The completion of each experiment or academic paper brought me immense satisfaction by giving me an unmistakable sense of achievement.

I feel that technology makes sense only when it serves some human purpose. A good product therefore has to be designed and tailored to conform to human habits, some of which may be based on misperceptions or misconceptions. Designers of consumer products have to be aware of and take into consideration those misperceptions or misconceptions so that the products they design have enduring attraction to consumers. All this is easier said than done, of course, as it requires the designers not only a sophisticated understanding of human nature but also superb engineering skills to realize his ideas. I am glad to say that I have both.

A large part of my strength comes from my expertise in computer science. Making good use of my spare time, I taught myself a whole range of computer courses, among which were: Networking and Communications, Operating Systems, Data Structure and Computation, Computer Systems and Their Principles, Software Engineering, Database, C Language, and Visual Basic. I was particularly fond of improving and upgrading mechanical devices by the combined use of computerized control technology and the programmable logical controller. My computer skills paid off when I embarked on my graduation project, for which I spent only 14 days instead of the three months most of my classmates spent.

By studying mechatronics, I am involved in one of the five high-tech disciplines that the Chinese government is actively promoting. Thanks to the state sponsorship, my department grouped together the strongest in my university, as demonstrated by the amount and quality of their scientific research and technological achievements. Taking full advantage of this faculty's seasoned guidance, I trained myself vigorously and fruitfully. My command of English was considered the best in my class throughout my four undergraduate years, and my computer skills were so good that it would be an understatement to say that they were the best in my department. My overall GPA was among the top five per cent in my class of 103 students.

Taking myself to task in the real world, I worked on numerous part-time jobs while I was at the university. For these jobs, I usually utilized my computer skills and command of English. For example, I wrote computer programs for small companies and searched for information on the Internet for them. Besides making money, I also learned to market both my expertise and myself as a person.

Your program stands out as one of the precious few that offer graduate research in mechatronics. That alone testifies to your excellence in engineering. As I seek to place myself on the cutting-edge of the studies in mechatronics, I think your program is where I should be pursuing my advanced degrees. I am sure that, with the benefit of your advice, I can acquire broader perspectives and more profound insights. Your favorable consideration of my application will be greatly appreciated.

 

第二篇：Statement-of-Purpose

What’s a Good Statement of Purpose?

Your application to any graduate program at SUSE requires you to submit a statement of purpose. We attach great importance to the statement. A thoughtful and well-written statement often makes the difference between admission and denial. But applicants frequently fail to do justice to themselves in statements of purpose. In what follows, I offer a few tips to help you to make your best effort.

Your statement should clearly have the purpose it’s supposed to have.

That sounds too obvious to be worth saying, but many statements fail on this elementary criterion. The statement should be narrowly focused on convincing the intended reader – i.e., a professor at SUSE who teaches in the program to which you are applying – that you have a serious and well-considered purpose in applying to that program. A compelling statement will convince the reader that you are the kind of student likely to thrive in the program to which you are admitted and who would contribute to (and not merely benefit from) our academic community. Too often, statements of purpose are poorly focused, vaguely autobiographical essays, in which case they become inadvertent disclosures of purposelessness.

A statement of purpose is not a narrative of your accomplishments.

The reader of your file will make a judgment about whether you merit

admission on the basis of many considerations, and your file will include much material including your transcripts, what your referees say about you, etc., that reveal your academic and other accomplishments. There is no harm in mentioning a particular accomplishment in passing in your statement when this is relevant to explaining your purpose in applying to the program. But statements go astray once the author assumes that his or her purpose is to

persuade the reader that he or she is highly qualified for admission. Remember that we will be quick to deny admission if we have insufficient evidence that the candidate is well-suited to the program by virtue of his or her interests and ambitions, regardless of how intellectually well qualified the applicant might be. The statement of purpose is usually the only part of the applicant’s file where one can find strong evidence of whether the program will really mesh with the applicant’s interests and ambitions. If you devote the statement to a list of the things the great things you have done, then you will merely exasperate the reader.

Your statement should be the right length.

The Stanford on-line application says that the statement should be two pages. Many applicants pay no heed to that stipulation and submit something

substantially longer. That is a mistake. Succinctness is a virtue in academic as

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in other writing. When your file is being read by members of the faculty, they will be reading it alongside many other files, and they will typically be reading under severe time constraints. People tend not to be especially tolerant of verbosity under these circumstances, to put it mildly. If your reader has evidence that you will take ten words to say something that another, equally qualified candidate will say in six, you might well find that the other candidate will be preferred over you.

Sometimes a statement can be overly concise by failing to give a sufficiently detailed account of the applicant’s purpose in applying to the program. If your first draft of the statement is merely a page, then it is probably insufficiently detailed.

Make absolutely sure that your statement contains no misspellings,

grammatical or factual errors, and that your prose is as lucid as you can possibly make it.

Your readers will reasonably expect that your statement is an example of your writing at its very best. After all, if you are really serious about applying to graduate school, then you will have devoted a lot of time to your statement, and what the reader sees is presumably the outcome of multiple drafts and prolonged effort. Poor writing and factual errors are very strong evidence that you are not yet ready for graduate school.

A statement of purpose for a doctoral program is different than one for a master’s program.

A master’s program is not inferior to a doctoral program; it is merely different. Therefore, it would be wrong to infer that standards for a statement of

purpose in an application to a doctoral program are higher than the standards applicable to master’s applications. But the standards are certainly different. For example, in a statement of application to our master’s in the Social

Sciences in Education (SSE), an excellent statement of purpose might or might not indicate any particular research topic that the student wishes to pursue in the program. The student might also be unsure about which particular social sciences would be the most important ones in his or her studies. Being unclear about these matters is not inappropriate when one is applying to a broadly focused master’s program. But being unclear about them would certainly be a liability in a doctoral application. Academic programs are more intensively specialized at the doctoral level, and a corresponding degree of specialization and precision in the way applicants specify their academic purposes is reasonably expected. Evidence of your familiarity with the educational research currently under way at SUSE is probably a good thing to see in any statement of purpose, even at the master’s level. But in a doctoral

application, it is extremely important to show that your interests converge closely with the current research of faculty who work in the program to which

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you are applying. Other doctoral applicants will certainly do this, and if you don’t, you will forfeit an important competitive advantage to them.

Your statement should be tailored to the particular institution to which you are applying.

This is not strictly necessary at the master’s level, but even there it is a good idea. Of course, it’s only commonsense to apply to several similar programs at different institutions, and so your statement of purpose in applying to a

program at SUSE may be 80% the same as the statement you submit to three or four programs elsewhere. But the few sentences that address why you are applying to this institution in particular can be very helpful. A student’s

application might be quite strong overall without making it clear to the reader why Stanford in particular would be an excellent fit for the student, as opposed to some other institution to which the he or she has applied. A statement of purpose can stand out by addressing that question directly and persuasively.

Eamonn Callan

Associate Dean for Academic Services

August 2011

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