SOP for German universities | What to do and what not to do? | Advice from seniors | GermanyUnofficial

Over the past years, there have been many candidates whom we have helped with respect to studying in Germany. One common thing where most of the applicants go wrong is their application documents. This post is to emphasize on the importance of the application documents and especially why Statement of Purpose is the most important document in the application.

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It is totally understandable that, since the application process for Germany is not similar to that of U.S or other countries, also it is relatively new to most of the candidates and therefore one can expect to make mistakes. But from German university point of view, it is not acceptable at any case.

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To start with, culturally German are "perfectionists" and they expect things to work as per the procedure/rules in their regular life. The candidate needs to understand this first. Making a small mistake in the application can cost the admit. 

This post is from an article series known as ADVICE FROM SENIORS

On a rough average, lets assume XYZ course gets around 500 applications from all around the world. As one of the candidate, you need to prove to the admissions committee that you are worthy of getting an admit in the course. You will be competing against other International candidates and thus you need to play your A-game.

This is where, your application documents come into picture. Let's assume we are the admissions committee and we receive an application from ABC candidate. We have 50 admits available in the course and we have 500 applications and these 500 applications doesn't come in a single day, but rather over a period of 4 months (application start date till end date).

As a admission committee member, the only thing we have in hand to judge the candidate is his/her application. Apart from all the certificates, marksheets, etc., the only thing that makes the candidate stand out is the CV, SOP and LOR. The intial filteration process would be to check for error in these documents, does the candidate's education/experience match the course content and how well others have recommended this candidate.


After the intial process, the next thing would be to check for the motivation of the candidate - meaning, why does he/she wants to study in this course and in this university? What benefit does he/she get by studying this course? This is where the Statement of Purpose comes handy. In my opinion, the statement of purpose or motivation letter is the only document in the application process, that will help you to "speak" to the admission committee, express your motivation towards the course and convince them to give you an admit. 

It seems so simple to just tell them that you need admit to grow your career, but most of the candidates mistakenly copy or refer other Motivation letters. If you're doing like this, then my question to you is - 

• How many SOPs do you think the people in admission committee would have read/seen? 
• Do you think that, they would not figure out that you copied it from some other source? 
• Won't they think that, this candidate hasn't even put effort to prepare a good SOP to explain his/her motivation towards that course, how will he/she benefit from this course?

The above questions weren't meant to be mean, but I just wanted to put some thought into the reader so that, he/she would understand the importance of Statement of Purpose. All these things are same for the CV also. 

Tips on how to prepare Statement of Purpose/Motivation letter for Germany

As said earlier, when you are applying for International courses your application also needs to be of International quality. In total, the main objective of this post is to make you understand that your documents in the application is very important and you cannot afford to make mistakes in it. If you need help with review of your documents, then send them to unofficialgermany@gmail.com

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