.png)
Writing Your FMS SOP? Avoid These Mistakes! [Video]
Recently, I published a video on the YouTube Channel of Non-Engineers which illustrated the mistakes I had made while writing my IIM Bangalore Statement of Purpose in the hope that you all don't commit the same:
In response to the video, I received a lot of comments by students preparing for MBA interviews, specifically those filling up the FMS admission form.
The Statement of Purpose for FMS has to be restricted to 100 words. In the video I had shared an SOP format that was as follows:
Introduction - academic, family, life goal
Why MBA - reason connected to life goal
Achievements - and strengths, value to batch
Weaknesses - in the way of life goal
Why FMS - particularly why FMS
Next Steps - post graduating
Now that the word limit for FMS is restricted to 100 words, the main areas to focus among the aforementioned would be:
Introduction
Why MBA
Strengths
Why FMS
Tips for a Good SOP
Apart from avoiding the mistakes mentioned in the video, here are a couple of things to take a note of:
Don't be Verbose! - No one cares how many words you know, rather than fabricating fancy lines or using quotes, utilize the words by sharing strong ideas/opinions/beliefs.
Limit Examples - Due to a constraint of words, don't fill your SOP with life instances. Pick maximum two critical moments you would want to briefly mention to build your case.
Strong Reasons - Make sure two of your reasons are the strongest - i. Why do you want to do an MBA? ii. Why do you want to do it from FMS specifically?
Why FMS Particularly? - A lot of you will end up mentioning ROI as the reason. That can be an honest reason but not a strong one. Instead, check with the past year students on some specialities of the institute which set it apart.
Run a Grammar Check - That's a must! Use Grammarly or any other free software to do a grammar check along with the spell-check. That'd be a blunder if missed
A mistake that I had made was to not double save my SOP, so make sure you keep multiple copies of your SOP with you because you may get asked questions based on that.
For IIM interview questions, you can refer to this video:
If you have any questions related to IIMs, MBA, CAT, you can reach out to me in the comments section of the latest video on this YouTube Channel. New videos get added every Tuesday and Saturday at 7 PM.
About Myself: My name is Shweta Arora, I graduated from IIM Ahmedabad in 2020 and created this blog called Non-Engineers to help students with their queries on CAT Preparation, IIM Admissions and Skill Building.