SOP for Master of Science in Computer Science - Machine Learning - University of Houston

Below is my essay. Please help me checking it.

Statement of purpose (maximum one page)Approximately 2 pages describing your reasons for pursuing graduate study and academic and professional interests and goals. This may include events/experiences that prepared you for CS graduate study and how your interests complement the department's faculty and research.

Essay

I am still thinking about the bug I am struggling to fix while writing this statement. The love of tinkering code and learning how computers understand human language and how we understand them have grown on me since I was a kid. Machine Learning and Database Management have always been my interest before I started doing undergraduate study. It struck me as a magnificent thing that we could give machines the abilities to learn and to improve. It also struck me how a small computer could store and process a very big amount of data in such a short time. It all started when I was still a boy who loved to play chess with my father. My father bought a computer so I would not bother him all the time and I managed to break it after a single day. "What did you do?" - he asked. "Dad, that thing is so cool. I just want to know why it was so good at chess."

Fast forward to college, I chose Electrical Engineering at first thinking that I would be able to work with more with machines, but I then switched my major to Computer Science because I realized that I was more interested in communicating with them instead of assembling printed circuit boards. Learning Data Structure awed me that I then know everything in computer language can be treated as objects. Now all the bytes and bits have become clearer to understand. String can be understood as a table, with many characters in it becomes legs, top, screws, and nails which make that table stable. I can then program and teach computers and interact with them

Artificial Intelligence Programming course has also provided me basic knowledge of how machine learning has been developed up to now. I learned how machines could make decision, then fail, then the machine learns from its own failure to improve its decision making. I always find myself interested in reading news where machines beat genius chess players. Database Management course supplies a decent knowledge of relational database that I have been using all the time in professional industry

I am now working at a steel company as a Software Developer. Our company supply people who build things out of steel. My main tasks are to work with very large data and build applications that serve the needs of all other employees. In August 2017, our company brought in Rosie the Robot. She is able to unload our new highspeed carbide saw and stack cut tubing on pallets all by itself after she was fully trained. This really peaked my interest as our company is the very first one in steel service industry who starts to apply Artificial Intelligence into our work. Since then we have been planning multiple projects that are related to AI. We are thinking of using drones to do all the stock count for us. Big Data will also help us a lot in analyzing customers' interests and pricing items. Furthermore, as our company has been around for more than 50 years, we have a very large amount of data that we need to run queries against; hence, being able to retrieve data as fast and efficient as possible is always my main interest.

I plan to get pursue Master's Degree in Computer Science. Upon checking programs in University of Texas at Austin, it provides several areas that fit my needs such as Database Management and Machine Learning. I believe my technical skill will be vastly improved so I can apply what I learn to refine my applications. Our company is more than 50 years old, so some technologies we are using are outdated. We have old AIX servers. We still count manually when managing inventory. The drone technology will become a big nice thing we can apply to our inventory management process. GPS integration will also be a big plus so our customers can track their orders. Query performance tuning will be super helpful when retrieving database for customers' usages. I would love to apply all the new things I learn to make our company becomes younger, and faster, both in technology perspective and business management perspective.

Thien, this statement of purpose is for a masters degree course. As such, the discussion should not include personal insights about time spent with your father discussing your early interests. The most relevant discussions here are your college experience, internships during this time, your current work, and your foresight regarding your career at this company, what the company aspirations are for the company growth in the future, and how you see yourself participating in that movement. These relevant sections will more than cover 2 double spaced pages or one single spaced page. Of particular interest to me while reading your paper is your reference to learning Data Structure. How did this learning directly apply to your workplace setting? How would you frame this as the basis of your current career?

Transition that to the arrival of Rosie the Robot. What sort of additional training or continued education did the company require you to have in order to become a functioning member of the Rosie team? How does the arrival of Rosie relate to your advanced academic interests? What sort of benefits do you see yourself contributing to the company and its other departments?

Truth be told, there is a lack of appropriate purpose in your current essay. That is why I am asking you all of these questions. If you can address most, if not all of these points in your presentation, then the paper will have a clearer purpose and goal for your desire for a masters degree.

With regards to the university choice, you really need to work on a more solid study plan to present in the essay. It could be only one or two paragraphs long. What's important is that it showcases the last part of the prompt which is "how your interests complement the department's faculty and research.". I believe that this requires you to mention specific university professors or university sponsored research that you hope to participate in during your thesis year. You could write about how you would like to focus your research on something specific related to AI and Machine learning by say, developing a more advanced version of Rosie that can become the more advanced version of the robot, or something like that.

Right now, this essay sounds like you just wrote down everything you could think of to see what would stick. I hope my questions and avice can help you write a more solid draft that has a better direction in terms of introducing your SOP to the reviewer.