Outlining

The brainstorming activities asked you to list ideas for each of the goals of the SoP framework (experiences, motivation, fit to program). Now what should you do with all these notes? You might want to start by organizing and grouping the ideas together to see if you can understand the different parts of your story. What parts fit together? Where is there cause and effect?

The outlining stage of the writing process is an important bridge between the ideation stage and preparing to share a final product with someone else. Here you might start thinking about what the reader needs to know in what order; essentially, you’re giving yourself a tentative road map for your statement. This is where a past – present – future approach might be helpful. If you look at the example SoPs, you’ll see that many writers choose to start by providing background on their academic and research experiences, then move into talking about their research interests and career objectives, and then show their fit to the program. What if you were to loosely take this structure as your outline? How would your brainstorming fit into this structure? This structure follows a chronological order which can be a very effective way of writing the SoP. But it is not the only meaningful way to structure your statement. Is there important information that you need to communicate first? Or is there another more logical way to organize the information based on your experiences? What will make more sense for the reader?