转自Quora：SOP在申请中是否重要

原链接：qr.ae

Uh folks...
I'm sorry, but these answers (except for Jay's) are flat out wrong.

As a faculty member who's been working on admissions for nearly a decade, and my other colleagues from other schools will confirm this, the SOP is the LEAST useful and impactful part of your application.

I'm particularly worried that readers here will get the wrong idea, especially since the existing 2 answers seem so strong in their opinion. It is fine to spend time on your SOP (as well as you should), but you should not be under the impression that it will have any significant impact on your overall application outcome. There are ways to write a better SOP that stands out, but for the most part, they have little to do with writing/presentation style and more about distinguishing content.

I'm going to repeat my other answer What are the points to be covered in a statement of purpose for applying for graduate school?
The short version: 99% of SOPs sound identical. Either avoid wasting time on it, or make it original by doing something different. But know that in all likelihood, it will have very little impact on your admission chances:

--- copied answer below: (NOTE: I wrote this answer nearly 2 years ago) ---
Interesting answers.

Let me add a different point of view. I've been a professor for 8 years, and have looked through hundreds of SOPs every year as part of grad admissions for our CS department.

OK, this is going to be slightly disappointing to some of you, but at least my personal view is that, with the exception of a couple of points which I'll mention below, in general, the SOP just doesn't matter. You have to realize we admissions committees look through hundreds of these. So everyone will have some version of "I found my first PC when I was 4 years old and fell in love..." story. It's cool, and it means a lot to many of the applicants, but it doesn't do much to help their case for why THEY should be admitted over the other hundreds of students in the pool. So yes, do NOT make grammatical errors, do not say inane things that reflect *negatively*. But beyond that, most SOPs will do little to hurt or help your application.

Now let me get to the exceptions. Yes, there are ways to stand out amongst the piles and piles of applications and make a faculty member remember you. How? Simple: talk research. The best way to convince the admissions committee you're ready for a phd is to talk research. Tell us your ideas, what's your vision for your area, what big inevitable trends do you see in the future, and how do you capitalize on them? What are hard problems you've already tried to tackle, and how did you succeed/fail? This is where an applicant can show that they have the clarity of thought to think hard about a real problem, and show the reasoning skills (and intuition for identifying tricky or interesting problems).

I'm always excited by the rare applicant who clearly has thought through a research area, and has some ideas and real thoughts about problems he/she wants to tackle. It's fine if the ideas are not likely to succeed, or if the thoughts are not realistic for current research. What matters is that the student showed their logical reasoning skills, and their passion for research at the same time.