Carnegie Mellon University IT SOP
The requirement is around 1000 words, I drafted and edited with grammerly. Please check out the main idea and structure. Big thanks!
Why would an accounting graduate suddenly choose to switch his career to computer science? What has happened that effected such a pivotal change? Born inside a family of accountants, I have long been indoctrinated the notion that 'Accounting is a perfect discipline as accountants become more valuable as they age.' Without any further thought on this motto, I started my college life as an accounting student, worked assiduously and won myself decent internships yet I remained open to other fields of knowledge. Once when browsing Quora, I noticed an excellent skill, web scraping, that records humongous website data in an extremely efficient fashion. Ever since then, I practiced frequently scraping to hone my programming skills and even managed to build some VBA scripts at Deloitte that automated replying of confirmation letters. Throughout my college life, I won many scholarships, including two first class(for top one student) and one exchange scholarship, and graduated with an overall GPA of 3.83. Apart from all these fancy credits, I wondered from time to time whether accounting was a good fit for me. During Deloitte internship, I noticed bank receipt reminders repeated via phone calls and emails, third-party confirmation letters posted all over the state and these are just a few examples. I began to contemplate seriously on how much the work of an account could be simplified with the help of software and even whether I should learn further more about IT.
However, one thing happened during my exchange sealed the deal and made up my mind. During my exchange, I used to apply for a research assistant position for Professor XXX. It was not until a few weeks later when I saw the professor chatting with students about reading research papers that I realized I did not get elected. Professor's decision was easy to understand, how could a student from China excel at reading and summarizing papers then the European elite who nurtured in English environment throughout their education?
It also provoked new thoughts on me, how am I supposed to compete with natives, definitely not with language skills. All of a sudden, it occurred to me that my programming skills might help professor scrape data efficiently. After resending an email that stressed my web scraping skills, I secured the RA position and managed to crawl thousands of data about 20-century Italian movies. Since the input data was often dilapidated and erroneous, I had to design a filtering mechanism to produce reliable outcomes. I thrilled how my work made an impact in the real world when Professor xxx told me how my effort helped the article got published in AER(American Economic Review), the best economics journal in the world.
Later on, I began my internship at GE M&A. During my internship at General Electric Merger&Acquisition department, one of my main tasks was to modify Excel financial models which projected future operation. Simple as it may first seem, seldom had the modification of models gone smooth, especially when it involved multiple departments. Each time an update had been made, every party had to go through the model and assumptions with great caution in case of fatal valuation error caused by slippery adjustments. To make the matter worse, one often had to build a new financial model from scratch when necessary. Suffering endlessly from the tedious work, I designed a financial model framework which modulized necessary steps of financial modeling and provided shortcuts for comparing major indicators, i.e., IRR, DCF and payback period. Also, as a git user, I introduced the notion of version control where updates were recorded each time a change had been done so that careful comparison could be saved.
In the past score, the internet has changed every bit and byte of human life. However, we have to admit the fact that tech giants have come up with information cocoons within which information is filtered and tailored to one's taste. Under such cocoons, people naturally extend their polarized opinion further extreme. Is that the best we can do with Internet technology? Come on. We can do far better than that.
In the past decades, consumer internet(mainly FAANG products) swept across the globe, yet in the next decade, I firmly believe that industrial internet, where every industry is boosted with the help of IT, shall blossom. As an accounting student in the future era of the industrial internet, I do believe that, with my accounting and computer science knowledge, I will facilitate the automation and simplification of the traditional accounting industry.
Currently, I have finished Coursera courses about C, algorithm, computer system, front-end basics .etc. I cannot stress how amazed I was when I studied 15213 Introduction to Computer Systems. The course was well supported by the laboratory, and I managed to get a great understanding of the entire computer system. Just as the motto goes, I felt the heart of CMU faculty in the coursework. In addition to the extraordinary courses offered, the job placement of MISM startles me as well since few have I ever seen such a detailed placement report. Also, the summer internship is also vital for me to break into the IT industry and get me prepared for full-time hiring.
Should I get enrolled, I will set my full strength towards becoming a full-stack engineer, consolidating my knowledge in data structures, network, database, and systems. For the foreseeable future, I would be accumulating experience in tech companies like Intuit. When the time has come, I will join companies that aim to transform the traditional industry and will save time and energy for accountants for the well being of the world.
I used to imagine myself working as an auditor in Pwc or as a merger&acquisition analyst in a Fortune 500 companies. Now that I have already known how it feels, I decided to switch to information technology since I crave for a deep change in accounting with information technology.