Using a Mission Statement in your Master of Social Work Statement of Purpose (SOP)

When writing your Master of Social Work (MSW) statement of purpose (SOP), creating your “mission statement” or “elevator pitch” is an important part of the writing process. Below, I’ll explain what the mission statement is, why it is important to create one in your SOP, give you a step-by-step for creating yours, and lastly, provide an in-depth example! 

What is a personal mission statement? 

You may be wondering what a mission statement even means. You can think of your mission statement as the “thesis” of your statement of purpose. Basically, your mission statement will highlight all of the most important aspects of your SOP, like your experience, areas of interest, and professional goals. Your mission statement should generally be 1-2 sentences in length, and will allow whoever is reviewing your statement to have an idea of what you have to offer as an MSW student before they even read your whole statement. 

Why is it important to include a mission statement in your SOP?

Including a mission statement in your statement of purpose is super important for a few reasons. First of all, having a personal mission statement serves as an anchor for all of your prompts. What I mean by this is that your answers for each of the questions or prompts will be based on what you have written in your mission statement. Anchoring your prompts with a mission statement will help your entire statement feel more cohesive and thought out! In addition, by including a mission statement, you will be able to show the admissions committee how you are poised to address a gap within the field. This helps to strengthen your SOP because it not only demonstrates your unique perspective, but also illustrates how you plan to make a positive impact as a social worker.

How to write a mission statement for your statement of purpose

Trying to create a mission statement from scratch can feel daunting at the beginning! Below, I’ll give you a step-by-step breakdown, so you have everything you need to write an amazing personal mission statement!

Brainstorm and list out all of your experience

First of all, it will be helpful to brainstorm a list of all of your past experiences! This can include everything like academic, professional, volunteer, or research experience, and beyond! Make sure you write down all of your experience, even if you don’t feel like it is relevant to social work. Also, if you have your own lived experience related to your personal identity, include this as well! No matter what the experience is, there will always be skills you gained that can help you in the field.

Identify insights and skills

Now that you have a list of your experiences, your next step will be to identify what skills and insights you are bringing to the table. To do this, use your experience list and then write down a few ideas of skills you gained or developed from that experience. For example, if you worked as a server at a restaurant, you probably gained skills in verbal communication, problem-solving, and working as a member of a team. Or, perhaps you have experience as a volunteer with the elderly. In this example, some of the skills you may have developed include active listening and empathy. Once you have listed a couple of ideas of skills or knowledge for each of your experiences, you should have a pretty good idea of what you can bring to the table as a social worker (and discuss in your statement of purpose!)

Connect your insights to a social justice problem

The next step in creating your personal mission statement is going to be connecting your skills and experience to a social justice problem that interests you. Coming up with a social justice problem that you’re interested in can be tricky, especially if you aren’t that familiar with the field. While there are many ways you could do this, one way you could narrow it down would be by starting with a population you want to work with; say, at-risk youths or older adults. Once you have narrowed down a population of interest, you can start considering social issues that might impact these populations. If you’re interested in working with older adults, perhaps you could focus specifically on the lack of economic security that older adults experience. It’s okay if you don’t have any experience specifically related to this issue, or even with the population in general. The main thing here will be finding ways that you can apply the knowledge and skills you already have to this social justice problem once you are a social worker.

Define goals and contribution to the field

Now that you have an idea of your experience and social justice problem of interest, it is time to combine these ideas together. In doing this, you will be able to highlight your goals as a social worker, and the unique ways that you will be able to contribute to the field. For your mission statement (and the SOP in general), it is helpful to be specific and clear about your goals for the future. For example, writing that your goal is to support the mental health of youths experiencing substance abuse is a lot stronger than just simply saying you want to work in mental health. When outlining your goals for your mission statement, it is okay if you aren’t 100% sure yet what you want to do in the field! The important thing at this stage is demonstrating that you have specific goals and are driven to make a positive difference as a social worker.

Example (putting it all together)

At this point, you should have all your experiences, skills, and goals written down, so now all you have to do is combine them into a cohesive statement! Like I said above, the mission statement itself should be only 1-2 sentences long, so you will have to be concise! To help you start thinking about how you can put all the pieces together into a mission statement, I’ve created an example from start to finish below.

Brainstorm experience:

For example, your experience might include:

• serving at a restaurant

• undergraduate degree in psychology

• volunteering with children with autism

• working with kids at a summer camp

• volunteering at a crisis line

Identify insights and skills:

Based on the experiences listed above, some of the skills you might identify could include:

• working with children and their families

• active listening

• thinking quickly on your feet/problem-solving

• written communication skills

• working well as part of a team

• patience

This list is far from exhaustive but should give you an idea of how you might be able to come up with some skills given your personal experience!

Connect insight to a social problem:

In this example, let’s say the applicant is interested in working with children and their families. Perhaps through their work experience, they found that there was a lack of accessible support for children with autism and their families. This could be the social issue of interest in this example, which aligns well with the experiences and insights outlined above.

Goals and contribution to the field:

Lastly, we need to turn this social issue of interest into a goal for contributing to the field. In this case, the goal might be to work with children with autism and their families to connect them with resources in the community.

Mission statement:

Now that all of the previous steps have been completed, it is time to put it all together into one mission statement! Based on the answers to the prompts above, an example mission statement in this case could be something like:

“My broad professional experiences, including working with children with autism, have allowed me to develop my problem-solving, communication, and active listening skills. These experiences have inspired me to pursue a career in social work so that I can continue working with children and their families to connect them with resources in the community.”

When drafting your mission statement, it is important to balance including enough detail to make it specific, while still allowing it to be fairly concise. You will not be able to include every single detail from your brainstorming, which is okay! You can use the rest of your SOP to expand on further details that you weren’t able to include in the mission statement.

Now that you have seen step-by-step how to write your mission statement, it’s your turn! To get started, check out our free personal statement template which will help walk you through the process so you can craft your mission statements with confidence!