Why do you want to pursue an MS-MIS degree at Mays Business School?
I come from a community which falls short in providing a good solid education to children, especially in the economically backward sections of my country. To remedy this, I've volunteered with Akanksha foundation as a part-time teacher in government run schools. They further offered me an opportunity to work as a Campaign Leader at Teach for India (TFI). My primary responsibility was setting vision and strategy for building awareness for the TFI Fellowship Program at my college. In addition to that I've worked with local authorities of Urdu Medium Schools in my hometown in an effort to supplement education quality and motivate students with anecdotes from my experiences. I believe I've pursued Mays vision in my own way - advancing world's prosperity through education - connecting me with the business school in a special way.
I've worked with tech startups in high pressure environments and contributed extensively in engineering with important contributions to the complete process of new product development . At Mays business school, I want to take my learnings forward and master the process of decision making, information planning and project management while not departing significantly from my engineering roots. MS-MIS is a program that blends technology and business courses, its course structure with 9 credits of electives will enable me to explore my interests in-depth. The program is rich in student body diversity (both geographically and industrially) with the enrolled class having an average work experience of about 33.3 months (last 3 years). I look forward to learning from the experience of people with diverse backgrounds such as finance, consulting and other industries in addition to sharing my learnings from the Indian and Chinese e-commerce, SaaS and product startup ecosystem.
Over the years, I've developed strengths in practical learning - I've taught myself Java, Android application development, Game development and Functional Programming paradigm. I'm a firm believer in pursuing personal side-projects (please see my personal website and GitHub ) and believe they can improve learnings by leaps and bounds. Looking at the curriculum, I observed most of the courses offered at Mays are project based, this experiential learning suits my method of learning and will enable me to make the most out of the program resources.
I've designed database schemas for BookMyShow's social network and optimised very large databases , courses like Advanced Database Management and Data Warehousing will improve my understanding and ability to work with databases systems. Business & Corporate strategy and Engineering Data Analysis courses will strengthen my skills in data analytics and prepare me to effectively use them in product development. My goal is to develop strong data analysis skills to compliment my engineering experience and leverage them to find concrete solutions to business problems. In addition to these courses, I find Mays business school offers an interesting and unique set of electives such as Business Process Design and Human Centered Computing . I intend to work in the software industry and based on placement statistics, 70% of Mays graduates join information technology sector. I would be able to make most out of the strong Aggie network and form lasting professional relationships.
I've had the opportunity to lead projects that require efforts from multiple specialised teams, these teams were essentially remote and worked out of our Delhi, Pune and New York offices. I overcame co-ordination and priority challenges, established work-around methods to enable teams to achieve goals and hence I'm interested in Professor Andre Araujo's research on global virtual teams . I also held the role of scrum master in my engineering team and worked with all stakeholders to achieve software release targets. These responsibilities have helped me develop people skills and form professional relationships. Engineering projects specially in software startups have short-to-medium execution cycles and require working frequently with different teams, I've found the work of Professor Aaron Becker, especially his work around Group Dynamics very practical and insightful.
