SOP for Electrical and Computer Emgineering specializing in communications

I am applying for M.Eng program in Electrical and Computer Engineering at your prestigious institution. I have chosen Signal Processing and Communication as my field of interest.

In the winter of 1995 my uncle immigrated to Japan to pursue a job in automotive industry. He would call my grandmother every week and she used to walk 15 minutes to the nearest phone to hear her son. The look of satisfaction on her face fostered in me the desire to contribute to the field of Telecommunications. My first milestone was securing a gold medal in high school in the pre-engineering division. I was accepted to the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) for B.Eng program in Electrical Engineering specializing in Communications. NUST is the first and only institution in Pakistan to have the honor of being ranked in the top 400 universities in the world by QS World University Rankings.

Due to personal and financial challenges I was unable to achieve high academic standing in my first year of university. NUST has preset courses for each semester and doesn't give the option to add or drop courses in a semester. I overcame my financial challenges and started my 2nd year with a renewed focused mind. I attained and continued to hold academic scholarship from NUST for the rest of 3 years in my university, by keeping GPA above 3.5 in at least one semester per year. I then joined the Telecom Society to help others who were going through personal and financial challenges. The Telecom Society is student union which communicates with administration and faculty on behalf of students. I helped many students who faced challenges throughout their university life which was a very rewarding experience.

Digital signal processing stimulated my interest. I joined Dr. X as a research assistant, it gave me the ability to cultivate practical aspects of academics. I worked on many projects related to Signal Processing like "Classification of EEG signals using machine learning algorithms" and "Reed Solomon Error Correction Codes". With the guidance of Dr. X I chose my final year project in Signal / Image Processing "Mosaicing and Orthorectification of UAV images". The project consisted to 3 parts. First part was the extraction of frames from the video stream from Unmanned Air Vehicle. The second part was creation of a MATLAB interface with Google Earth. After inputting the approximate GPS coordinates, this interface allowed extraction of ground control points from satellite data of Google Earth to MATLAB later used to geo reference the images taken by UAVs .This process could be performed manually or automatically. The last portion was to align the frames and seamlessly stitch images together to create a geo referenced mosaic which could be used as a digital map. Manual GCP selection had the accuracy of +/- 1 meter in digital map.

I worked with Dr. Y of NUST and Dr. Z of Carnegie Melon University holding web conferences and discussed various geo referencing techniques, scale invariant feature transform, direct linear transform and various alignment techniques. The project was awarded gold medal for best undergrad project of 2009.The project is currently being tailored by the next batch of students for military purposes in War on Terror and Aerial Surveys for Department of Transportation.

Your graduate department has a great program which will enable me to gain industrial level competency. I am really interested in "Adaptive Filtering" and "3D image Geometry". I look forward to hearing from you esteemed institution.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours Sincerely,

Overall a good essay.

Why don't you try focusing more on "why specifically that university". Try to read some articles from their professor or read the department specific research projects.


I think you should change this. Do not say that it is prestigious or not, because it looks like you are trying to honey them.

Thanks for your reply vladic007
I am going to do what you suggested , just didnt want to put it up here because I am applyinh to various universities
Thanks for your suggestion

cheers

I don't think "securing" is the best verb here. You can choose a different one, and it will probably be better. To secure something is to ensure control of it... and although it is not bad the way you use it, I think it is not the best choice.

NUST is the first and only institution in Pakistan to have the honor of being ranked in the top 400 universities in the world by QS World University Rankings.---I don't think this should be the last sentence of the first paragraph. The last sentence of the first paragraph leaves the reader with an idea to think about as she tries to interpret the theme of the essay. Express your theme at the end of that first paragraph.

I am really interested in "Adaptive Filtering" and "3D image Geometry"----I think these should be given a whole paragraph of the essay. If these are the things you are interested in, they deserve to be a big part of your "purpose" that you are stating in this sop. Show the reader how proactive you are about studying the things that interest you.

:-)