Summary
The Statement of Purpose (SOP) has long been the soul of the admissions process — a space for human story, growth, and nuance. But as elite universities begin using artificial intelligence to pre-screen applications, the very thing that makes an SOP powerful — its imperfection, its unpredictability — is being reduced to patterns. In this blog, I reflect on what’s being lost through the lens of Steve Jobs: a creative rebel who never would have passed today’s machine-led filters.
Full Blog (Approx. 1500+ Words)
In 1972, Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College. He floated through calligraphy classes, wandered into spirituality, took apart machines, and experimented with ideas most universities would have found too “unstructured” to assess.
He didn’t write a perfect SOP.
He didn’t follow the expected path.
And he sure as hell didn’t score well on traditional metrics.
Yet, he went on to define design, technology, and creativity for generations.
Now imagine Jobs applying to graduate school in 2025. His application — messy, nonlinear, rebellious — would likely be scanned, scored, and possibly discarded by a software system trained to reward polish, not originality.
That’s the problem we’re facing.
The Rise of AI in Admissions
More than 60% of graduate schools in the U.S., UK, and Australia have begun experimenting with AI in their application screening process — especially for high-volume programs like STEM, business, and public policy.
Here’s what AI is being used for:
- Pre-screening SOPs before human review
- Scoring essays based on clarity, coherence, and fit
- Detecting plagiarism or AI-generated content
- Matching applicant profiles with past successful admits
On paper, this looks like innovation.
In reality, it’s a dangerous oversimplification of human complexity.
How AI Scores You — And Misses You
AI models evaluate SOPs using metrics like:
- Clarity score: Short sentences, clean structure, professional tone
- Intent match: Are your goals aligned with the program’s stated outcomes?
- Buzzword frequency: Words like “innovation”, “research”, “leadership”, “impact”
- Emotional sentiment: Too intense? Too negative? Too vague?
- Similarity index: Too close to other SOPs? Is it AI-generated?
Now ask yourself:
Would Steve Jobs — or Arundhati Roy, or Elon Musk, or Shakuntala Devi — ever pass that filter?
Unlikely.
Because brilliance doesn’t sound like a template. It sounds like risk. And AI doesn’t know what to do with risk.
The Real Danger: Sanitized Ambition
What we’re seeing now is a creeping standardization of human voice.
Students — terrified of being flagged — are beginning to:
- Avoid emotional or vulnerable storytelling
- Stick to safe, “buzzword-rich” structures
- Over-polish using ChatGPT or Grammarly
- Strip their SOPs of regional idioms, humor, and honesty
What’s left? A perfectly tuned, emotionally dead essay that says all the right things — and none of the real ones.
This is not helping applicants.
It’s training them to write for robots, not humans.
Who Gets Hurt the Most?
AI-driven SOP scoring disproportionately disadvantages:
- First-generation students who don’t speak “application English”
- Rural and regional applicants with raw but unstructured stories
- Creative thinkers and unconventional profiles who don’t fit checklists
- Linguistically diverse students who write in translated thoughts, not templates
A Dalit student who rebuilt a school in a village?
Scored “low clarity.”
A refugee writing about displacement and trauma?
Flagged as “high emotional volatility.”
A tribal artist who paints to process social injustice?
“Lacks professional relevance.”
These aren’t just misreadings. They’re erasures.
Steve Jobs Would Have Been Filtered Out
Jobs never packaged his story in MBA-speak.
He didn’t “demonstrate leadership in cross-functional teams.”
He spoke about intuition, imperfection, and connection.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward.”
Try putting that in an AI-scored SOP.
The system won’t understand it.
But every human would.
And that’s the crisis:
AI is mistaking unpredictability for failure.
Why AI Has No Business in SOP Evaluation
Let’s be clear: AI has its place in admissions logistics — like checking forms or handling email traffic.
But human storytelling is not a logistic.
It’s a soul function. And outsourcing that to code is not innovation. It’s surrender.
Reasons why AI must not judge SOPs:
- Lack of emotional literacy
Algorithms can’t grasp grief, resilience, irony, or cultural metaphor. - Pattern bias
Trained on past successful applicants — usually elite, English-fluent, urban. - No accountability
Who decides what the model rewards? What if it consistently punishes real-world struggle? - Kills diversity of expression
The more people write to the machine, the less they write like themselves.
What Applicants Should Know
- Write for humans, not robots
Structure clearly, yes. But keep your emotional tone intact. Show thought. Don’t neuter it. - Use voice, not tricks
Admissions officers remember lines that feel alive, not lines that score well. - Mention real outcomes
“I taught 40 kids” > “I engaged in transformative pedagogy.”
Keep it grounded, not jargon-heavy. - Avoid over-reliance on editing tools
SOPs over-polished by ChatGPT or Grammarly often get flagged for being “too AI-like.” - Don’t chase perfect grammar — chase clarity and courage.
What Universities Must Do
- Disclose if AI is used
Students have a right to know who (or what) is reading their words. - Use AI only for admin, not evaluation
At most, use it for sorting — never for judging voice, intent, or growth. - Train humans to read across differences
Admissions officers must be equipped to hear voices that don’t sound like theirs. - Create “anti-pattern” tags
Actively highlight stories that break format but resonate.
The WePegasus View: SOPs Are Human. Period.
At WePegasus, we don’t treat SOPs as marketing collateral.
We see them as memory, philosophy, and aspiration — all woven into one voice.
Our job is not to make you sound robotic.
It’s to make you sound like the best version of yourself — clear, intentional, and real.
Because that’s what real admissions committees still look for — beneath the noise, beyond the systems.
Closing Thoughts
Artificial Intelligence may help detect fake scores or manage inboxes.
But when it comes to reading who you are, it doesn’t stand a chance.
Because no algorithm can measure:
- What you sacrificed
- Why you care
- Where your courage comes from
- What you want to fix in the world
And that’s what an SOP is really about.
Steve Jobs didn’t write an SOP.
But every time he spoke, people understood his purpose.
So speak like that.
Write like that.
Let the robots glitch. Let the humans feel.
That’s your job. And ours is to help you get there.
Glossary
- SOP – Statement of Purpose, an admissions essay required by most grad programs
- NLP – Natural Language Processing, the AI technology used to analyze written text
- Buzzword Frequency – AI’s method of scoring based on popular terms
- Sentiment Scoring – Measuring emotional tone of content
- Similarity Index – Checks for plagiarism and AI-generated content patterns
