SOP - a summary of your academic and professional goals and a description of the research work

MS program in Electrical and Computer Engineering SOP

Prompt : Your Statement of Purpose should be a summary of your academic and professional goals, as well as a description of the research work you have done in your past, and what research work you plan to do as a graduate student at UT.

I, xyz, am applying to the University of Texas at Austin for admission to MS thesis program in Electrical and Computer Engineering for the track : Architecture, Computer Systems, and Embedded Systems . I believe the program will enhance my knowledge base in depth as well as breadth and serve as a gateway to my career at a research-oriented organisation. I aim to gain in-depth exposure so that I can contribute to innovative projects and research in an industry or academic setting.

I have excelled in academics at every stage of my education. I have attended multiple schools in different places throughout my 15 years of schooling and have always been ranked top of my class. Even in the competitive environment at IIT Bombay, I have always maintained a high CPA (9.5+ in 4/6 semesters) in every semester.

The excellent undergraduate program at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay not only provided me with a strong foundation of ECE fundamentals, but also exposed me to its diverse fields. Since computer science and ECE has many overlapping areas, my minor in the computer science department has helped me attain a holistic education in ECE. My interest in computer architecture and digital design began with a course on microprocessors. My enthusiasm and effort in the microprocessors course led to an AP( awarded to top 2 out of 140 students) grade. I substantiated my knowledge in this area by choosing graduate level courses in Processor Design and Advanced Computer Architecture. Advanced computer architecture is especially a unique course because it consisted of weekly in-depth discussions on the latest research done in multiple domains including GPUs, reliable design, security, power vs performance tradeoff, in/near memory processing, domain specific accelerators etc. I have also been an active participant in the paper discussions by CADSL (Computer Architecture and Dependable Systems Lab) aimed at identifying current challenges in this field.

Computer architecture is at an exciting time right now and presents unique challenges.In the words of David Patterson himself, the pioneer of RISC architecture, "This is a golden age for computer architecture." As part of my B.Tech project(senior thesis), I am currently working on hardware security challenges and building secure microarchitecure. Specifically, we did a comprehensive literature review and looked into side channel attacks on cache and branch predictor. We have identified potential new ways of exploiting the prefetcher table and branch predictor and are currently in the process of implementing them.

Apart from architecture, I am also interested in all areas related to computer systems and digital design including VLSI and hardware verification. My exposure and inclination stemmed from theory and lab courses on digital and VLSI design.

My foray into industry work and RTL design & signal processing in particular came with my summer internship with Texas Instruments, Bangalore, India. I was involved with the design of a digital beamformer to be used in a base station for better directivity and noise reduction. I characterised the effect of quantisation noise on the antenna array performance and implemented it on RTL subject to timing and area constraints. This experience, while rewarding, further motivated me to pursue graduate studies as I realised that to work on cutting edge projects in the industry or elsewhere, a more elaborate and thorough grasp of concepts is required for which the rigorous coursework of an MS program is ideal.

Thus, while my education at IIT Bombay has given me a firm foundation, I believe a graduate program is necessary to develop a strong skill set for further understanding and practical implementation. Hence, combined with a thorough coursework and an opportunity to contribute to cutting edge research, the MS thesis program is the natural step after my undergraduate to be able to carve out a successful career in industry research. I am fully aware of the hardwork and diligence to excel in a program like this and I am committed to meeting these challenges.

The graduate program at UT Austin is, thus, fully suited to meet my goals. I have found the work done in The Laboratory for Computer Architecture(LCA) and SPARK research lab especially exciting in the areas of big data architecture, memory systems for multicore, workload characterisation and building secure systems. The research interest of other faculty members and the diverse course structure covering a large number of topics will help me keep abreast of the latest development in these fields. The state-of-art facilities will provide a conducive environment to pursue graduate studies.

I look forward to joining UT Austin as a graduate student at your esteemed department.

Namrata, you can skip the sentence about your academic performance at every stage of your education. You can also omit the mention of having attended various schools over 15 years. The only interest of the reviewer in an SOP with regards to your academic excellence is related to your college education. So those references, along with the quote from David Patterson are irrelevant and a waste of word usage in this essay. You don't need those word fillers, the reviewer doesn't have the time to wade through everything you have written to find the relevant points. Make sure that every paragraph you write is focused in something related to the prompt discussion instructions directly. If it is not, then it should not be placed in the essay.

Your discussion in relation to your academic qualifications are good. You obviously have the proper college studies on hand to help you complete the next step of your education. However, while your academic interests for the masters course is clear, the part of the essay in relation to your master thesis is not. I do understand what you hope to learn about during the course your masters studies, but the focal point of the academic studies , the research paper, is not threshed out in your presentation. What is the thesis statement that you hope to base your MS thesis on when you consider your academic and internship experience? the prompt clearly states: what research work you plan to do as a graduate student at UT? That is the only part that remains unanswered in your presentation.

You can easily develop your explanation for that question by omitting the parts I indicated above. Don't worry about the thesis presentation being the one that you will do as an MS student. You can change that later on. The purpose of the thesis statement at this point is just to prove to the reviewer that there is a professional goal for you in relation to this field and that you are serious about your studies. To make it easier for you to formulate a response, you can refer to your college thesis. Consider what the outcome of that was and how it requires continuing research. Base your MS thesis statement on that.