SOP Review and Suggestions (MS in Mechanical Engg.)

[Harish Pavan]

Hi, I want to apply to a Engineering Masters program and I've drafted an SOP. Could you please review it and add any suggestions possible? Also, most of the Engineering Grad school's SOP objectives are long term goals, short term goals, motivation for their program and how I would fit them. But, to explain all those, I seemed to have included very much about myself. Am I fulfilling the basic SOP objectives in mine?

*SOP Starts from the below line*

Statement of Purpose

A penchant towards the field of Mechanical Engineering is something that I have developed on my own through exploring what I’ve been good at since my school days. After my X^th Standard, I found myself being very good at asking questions. I learned myself that there wouldn’t be as much to explore in Biology as there would be in Physics and hence, I took Physics as my major in my High school. I used to be more interested in knowing the background of anything I learn more than the application which I think was due to my excessive curiosity prevailing in me. After High school, I know I was interested in knowing how things work and that I want to contribute to make them work better. The Sciences of Computers and Electrical/Electronic seemed too much out of my comfort zone given my peculiar interests and hence, I took up Mechanical Engineering as my under-graduation major.

Until High school, I was studying in a small town and all of a sudden for my under-graduation, I have joined VIT University, one of the top most private Universities in whole of India situated in Chennai, arguably the most happening city in India. So, most of my first year of Engineering was spent in getting adjusted to the dynamic society and very soon, I realized that I have to be involved in something to get the best out of me. In my second year, I, along with two other students of my batch started a team which would design, manufacture an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) and test it out by participating in SAE Baja India 2013. We started with recruiting students and started working on the project from February 2012. As we are the first batch to start, we had to do everything from scratch. After 1 year of rigorous hard work which included weeks of sleepless nights, we were successfully able to complete the ATV and take it to the competition where we finished 62^nd out of the 248 teams which participated. This was a big achievement for us but, on the other hand, putting all my effort into this made my academics go a bit out of order in my second year and early third years of my Engineering.

 After the event, I left the team for the sake of concentrating on academics which was more important to me since I had very strong inspiration to study Masters. I did clear out all my backlogs and was able to improve my GPA only up to a decent level. But since I had more interest in getting involved in doing research, I used to do many mini projects which would relate to my academic curriculum courses. In this way, I could get more hands-on experience and better learning with application and also I would not lose track of my academics. In this process I have worked on more than 10 projects in my last 2 years. Most of them are aimed at applying what I have learned in the course to existing technologies and improving them.

For my final undergraduate thesis, I decided that it is more sensible to apply latest technologies to solve the most basic problems of Mechanical Engineering. After a lot of research, I found that a new IC Engine called IRIS Engine, a complete re-design of conventional IC Engine which was achieved by two brothers from Denver, USA. But the Engine existed and claimed most of its efficiencies only on paper. I contacted them and convinced them that I can work on the project further and prove all the claims it has been promising through Rapid Prototyping, a novel technology which could take any complex engineering design from initial stage to implementation stage in a very short period of time. I worked hard during my final semester and was able to complete all my objectives. The design proved to be 28% more efficient mechanically and 2.2% more efficient thermally than the conventional IC Engine.

Most of the projects I have worked on are relatively short termed. I used to take them up, work on them with the knowledge I gained through that particular course and then move on. Whenever I thought of publishing my works, I found they needed further research and since I had to keep on doing projects related to the courses with every new semester I had published none of my project works. Initially I had a strong inspiration to do my Masters immediately after my bachelors. Fortunately my father’s furniture business has seen a drastic improvement and he had plans to totally upgrade our business and for that, he had to travel to several countries and I had to look over our business in India.

My short term goals are to continue to learn and grasp as much as I can to apply the knowledge for solving the basic problems through innovative application and to get involved in latest state-the-art researches where I can contribute significantly to elite fraternities. I aim to inculcate the best knowledge and master the greatest level of skills in various fields such as Design Engineering, Manufacturing Technology, Automobile Engineering, Energy Engineering, etc. so as to perfect myself as a Mechanical Engineer. I also seek to earn funding for my master’s program in the form of assistantships. My long term goal is to set up a dynamic and rapid evolving furniture Industry in India that would revolutionize the markets and I feel the course structure, diverse researches and the facilities of your esteemed University would make me expedite all my goals.