Hi,
I'm applying for Masters in Data Science and have prepared the following SOP. Would love for people to review and share their feedback:
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After working for more than eight years, I want to return to academic study and pursue my master's degree. This was a challenging decision for me, however being successful to me is not just about rising to a high position in the company hierarchy, but to be able to learn and apply the learning's in life.
I am a practical person and my understanding is prodded by seeing things work. I am a quick thinker and learner. I also believe in getting the basics right, enabling one to take on any task, no matter how complex it is. During my fourth semester in my bachelor's degree one of the papers was a project. We'd begun learning Java in the same semester and after discussing the options with our project guide, I decided to create an examination results website for our college using Java Servlets. This required using the GET and POST methods to retrieve and insert records accordingly. Right from setting up a server, connecting the database and writing the java code I performed all these tasks. It definitely was overwhelming at times when after doing everything correct it still wouldn't work, however perseverance, unalterable focus and help from my project guide kept me going to its successful completion. As my project area was different from the rest of the class, this got me spending more time trying to understand and implement a lot more than was expected from me.
Although it took me more time to complete my bachelor's degree than expected, I have now matured as individual and realized how I could've done certain tasks better. I learnt the importance of timelines and not giving up. In fact I explain and demonstrate my real life example to kids. I teach underprivileged children Math and English on as many weekends possible. Imbibing these qualities and implementing them in practice, I have gained knowledge in various fields such as Web Analytics (tools and techniques), Text Analytics (NLP and sentiment analysis), and analyzing different types of data (qualitative and quantitative) to generate meaningful and actionable insights.
I am interested in studying and gaining expertise in Machine Learning. In today's world, big data is becoming a reality fast and is extremely challenging to deal with, especially in the IT domain. Starting from customer acquisition data until the customer leaves an organization, the size and type of data
available for analysis and explanation is colossal and promising.
Conclusively I would say that your Institute has an international reputation, attracting students and aspiring graduates from across the globe for this course. With, top-rated teaching your university is firmly positioned at the leading-edge of dynamic performance. For the immediate future, I envision myself at your campus striving to become a successful student equipping myself with all the latest knowledge, and intellectual discipline to become a productive and competent professional in my field. Such a platform to interact with globally diverse student community will bring the opportunity to
learn cutting edge business tools and practices and will also prepare me to excel going forward.
After working for more than eight years, I want to return to academic study and pursue my master's degree. After being on the workforce for eight years, I've decide to pursue a master's degree to further improve my professional knowledge and skills . (Why was this a hard decision)--> This was a challenging decision for me. however being successful to me is not just about rising to a high position in the company hierarchy, but to be able to learn and apply the learning's in life.
Nikhil, your statement of purpose is not really as impressive as you think it to be. While you were off to a perfect start with your opening statement, you dropped the ball with your succeeding paragraphs. I urge you to discuss more of your professional life and accomplishments rather than your college projects and extra curricular activities. These pieces of information do not tell the reviewer anything solid about your future plans and goals. So it does nothing for your application.
What the reviewer is looking for is your passion for your current profession. What drives you to succeed in this field? At what point in your career do you currently find yourself at? How do these things affect your desire for higher education? Do you feel that the degree will truly help your career? What do you base that assumption on? Tell the reviewer how you see your career progressing should you be able to complete the degree. The reason that I have listed these questions for you is because the reviewer looks for representations of those questions in your statement of purpose. You need to represent your future plans and goals as it directly relates to the course you are interested in taking up otherwise he will not have any idea as to why you have a professional interest in the course.
Talking about your 8 year career will help you direct this paper in more ways than you think. Let the reviewer know how difficult it was for you to achieve your current position and what you learned along the way. Don't neglect the necessity of your academic training and improvement because if certain professional shortcomings you plan to improve with further study.
Rather than talking about your immediate future, discuss your long range plans over 5-10 years. That way the reviewer will see the importance of the masters degree to your career plans and development. He is definitely interested in knowing what those plans are and how they can help you achieve it.
