Scholarship / Programming - "A researcher, coworker and friend" - Scholarship - Munich [7]

Hello.

I am an undergraduate student wishing to pursue a Master Degree at the University of Munich. I have to prepare a motivation letter in order to convince the admission committee that I am worthy of receiving a scholarship. The desired letter must be "1-2 pages long and explain, among other things, why do I believe I should be awarded that amount of money". (quoted from the UoM website)

Here is my first version:

LETTER OF MOTIVATION
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With this letter I would like to introduce my application for a scholarship, offered by the University of Munich. I am a third year undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science within the [Univ. Name]. I am expected to graduate in June 2011, with excellent academic results. I wish to continue my studies and pursue a Master degree, preferably in the field of Information Security and Cryptography, to which I plan fully dedicating. The University of Munich offers exciting opportunities in this direction and I believe there is a perfect match between my qualifications, my interests and the content of the Master in Computer Science at your university. Moreover, having the possibility to enhance my knowledge in an international environment, experience a tremendous cultural diversity and working side by side with the best professors and young researchers at your university, is as much as a challenge as it is a pride.

I consider myself an ideal candidate for the Master program and for a scholarship, due to my long-standing passion for Mathematics and Computer Science. I have begun programming when I was 10 years old. My education has always had an important scientific focus; my academic track and notable results stand proof of my motivation, as well as my ambition. I have attended the [Name of High-School], the highest rated science high-school in Switzerland. Here I started studying thoroughly the field of Computer Science and received advanced Math classes. I have participated in a wide array of Mathematics and Computer Science contests, earning several important national and international awards. My passion and perseverance brought me important achievements such as the Gold Medal in 2005 [at Intl. Contest 1], the Silver Medal in 2005 [at Intl. Contest 2] and, the most important, the Bronze Medal in 2007 [at Intl. Contest 3]. After finishing high-school, my education continued with Bachelor studies at the [Univ. Name]. Up until now, I have obtained a grade point average of 97.5% ranking in the top 2% of my peer students. Moreover, I have followed all courses regarding Information Security and Cryptography, available at my university. Also, I have been involved in a project financed by Google Inc., regarding the development of Android based applications, for Nexus One mobile phones.

Along with my academic assessments, my education is doubled by relevant experience in a well-known international company that activates in the field of Information Security. Since May 2010, I am a full time Software Developer in the Research and Development Department of [Comp. Name]. Here, I work among the best software developers in the country and I have been involved in two projects: [Proj. 1, 6 words description] and [Proj. 2, 6 words description]. I was privileged to be part of the team that took these two projects from the early stage of research ideas, up to usable products, now ready to launch on the IT market. The valuable knowledge gained in this environment helped me identify a challenging Bachelor Diploma Project that I'm currently pursuing, under the supervision of my mentor, Prof. Dr. [Prof. Name], the professor who introduced me to Information Security and Cryptography at the [Univ. Name].

Apart from my education and work experience, I believe I can further contribute to the social environment of the University of Munich, as I very much appreciate social activities and interacting with people. I have regularly organized various events at my university as the elected Students' Representative in the Faculty Council Board, and the Vice-president of the Students' Association. At the same time, I enjoy music and in my leisure time I play the piano and the guitar.

In the end, I would like to point out that diligence, motivation, passion and sincerity, along with the aforementioned accomplishments are my commitment of becoming a reputable researcher, a respected coworker and a better friend. Without doubt, a scholarship is a gift granted to only the worthiest students. If awarded, I will not only be able to fulfill my own aspirations, but this will literally be the gift that keeps on giving, because I want give it back, through my work.

[Date] Yours faithfully,

Graduate / Computer Science and Math, reason for choosing this master track, goals - Munich [4]

Hello.

I have to write an essay in which to describe the reasons I choose the CS Master Track (around 500 words).

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have always enjoyed studying Computer Science and Mathematics. Encouraged and guided by my parents, both professors of Mathematics, I have focused on these fields from a very early age. I learned my first programming language, Pascal, when I was 10 years old and attended the highest rated science high school [High-school name]. The challenging environment in which I grew stimulated me intellectually and made me want to excel in my every activity. Starting with middle school and continuing through high school, I participated in most of the major Computer Science and Mathematics competitions I have known. My most notable achievements, besides other various regional and national prizes, are winning the Gold Medal in 2005 at [Inlt. Contest 1], winning the Silver Medal in 2005 at [Inlt. Contest 2], and, the most important, winning the Bronze Medal in 2007 at [Inlt. Contest 3].

When finishing high school it was obviously clear to me what studies I wanted to pursue. Unfortunately, I had to face a hard choice, when having to opt for one of the two most renowned universities in my country: [Univ. 1] and [Univ. 2]. Not wanting to make a poor choice, I attended both universities during the first year of Bachelor studies, successfully completing it in both locations. I found that the [Univ. 1] is a better match for my interests. Since then I have been focusing only on it and I am very happy with my choice. Here I met my mentor, [Prof. name], my current Bachelor Diploma Project supervisor, who introduced me to the field of Information Security and Cryptography. I love how the challenging problems in this area require an in-depth knowledge of both Computer Science and Mathematics and, therefore I have followed all available courses at my university on this topic. I am also very pleased that alongside my studies I have had the fantastic opportunity to further gain knowledge and experience. Since May 2010, I have been employed as a Software Developer at [Comp. name], one of the world's leading security software providers. Here I work together with the best software developers in the country and I have been involved in two projects: [Proj. 1] and [Proj. 2]

My aim is to purse a career in research, either in academia or in industry and to this end I want to take the next step: obtain a Master's degree. I have heard highly of the University of Munich (UoM) and I think it is a perfect match for my goals. With its technological infrastructure, broad knowledge base, worldwide reputation and successful alumni, this institution and, moreover, the Computer Science Master degree at UoM, are the perfect framework for my career development. One of the most attractive features of this Master track is the wide array of optional courses available. Both research-focused and industrial-oriented classes like "Communications Engineering", "Security and Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems" or "Distributed and Parallel Systems" suit my interests closely. Nonetheless, having the possibility to enhance my knowledge in an international environment, experience a tremendous cultural diversity and working side by side with some of the best professors and young researchers at your university, is as much as a challenge as it is a pride.

Alongside my academic goals, my education and my work, I am an active person and I appreciate social activities and interacting with people very much. I have regularly organized various events at my university; I am the Vice-president of the Students' Association, and the Students' Representative in the Faculty Council Board. I also enjoy music and in my spare time I play the piano and the guitar.

My aforementioned qualities and accomplishments are my commitment to become a reputable researcher, a respected coworker and a well-developed person. I believe that my academic background, my work assessments and my life experiences make me a worthy and competitive candidate for the admission at the Computer Science Master degree offered by the University of Munich.

[Date] Yours faithfully,

Graduate / I have always been provided with a great learning environment; PhD SoP [4]

Hello everybody,

I am almost ready to apply for a PhD. The only thing that's missing... my statement of purpose.
In the past week I have struggled to summarize my research interests. Here's what I've got.
Please let me know what you think.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Dear Members of the Admission Committee,

I have always been provided with a great learning environment. Encouraged and guided by my parents - both professors of Mathematics - I focused on topics that I enjoyed the most. Playing the piano, exploring algorithms and tutoring other students, all fit into my regular week and provide me with great contentment. My progress is driven by enthusiasm, the same enthusiasm that brought me to AAA for a Master program in Computer Science at the XXX.

I aim to pursue a career in research and for this end I wish to take the next step, namely pursue a Ph.D. at an outstanding university. After two years in XXX, I am certain that this university offers the perfect framework for my development. Its broad knowledge base, dedicated professors and enthusiastic young researchers are indeed a strong incentive to find novelty.

My research interests are reflected by the wide variety of projects and classes followed thus far. I have started with a more theoretical approach to Computer Science during my Bachelor studies at the UUU. My main focus was on topics such as cryptography, algorithms and data structures, program semantics and genetic programming, the latter being the subject of my Bachelor Thesis.

For my Master studies, I have turned to a more practical perspective. This shift was challenging and required significant effort since I had to follow, in addition to the program's mandatory classes, few Bachelor courses in order to improve my knowledge on topics such as Computer Architecture or Information Theory.

A significant part of my curriculum is focused on Information Security. Apart from relevant courses - Advanced Cryptography, Algorithms in Public Key Cryptography or IT Security Engineering - I have also been involved in several related research projects.

Currently I am working on my Master Thesis within the Laboratory YYY supervised by Professor YYY. The project aims to investigate the security of a lattice-based cryptographic primitive that resembles the properties of multilinear maps. My task is to first provide a much more thorough mathematical description (theorems and proofs that are incomplete or missing) and then study if it may or may not be used in practice for applications such as key exchange protocols, broadcast encryption or non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs.

Last semester I have carried out another project supervised by Professor YYY that was related to the elliptic curve factorization method. My task was to reduce the number of arithmetic operations required to compute multiples of arbitrary points on the elliptic curve. Although my results were of the same magnitude as the ones found by Dr, HHH, we believe that the algorithm is promising and thus I am further pursuing it, in parallel with my Master Thesis.

Prior to joining YYY, I have worked on a project within the Laboratory ZZZ, supervised by Professor ZZZ. My tasks were to sketch and implement a solution to perform incremental backup. The application emphasizes on authentication and encryption, as the backup data is stored on a remote machine (e.g. a cloud). The main functionality is mirroring data in a deterministic way, ensuring the incremental characteristic of the design. To achieve privacy, I have implemented a hybrid encryption scheme, with a symmetric cipher for encrypting data and a public key cipher for exchanging the symmetric key. This way, the symmetric key can be safely stored on the remote machine and retrieved every time a data restore operation is required.

In addition, this semester I am a Teaching Assistant for two courses: ZZZ (DS) and ZZZ (TCS). My responsibilities for DS include tutoring students and providing administrative support, while my tasks for TCS comprise grading and coaching students for exams.

Alongside my education, I have had the opportunity to gain relevant industry experience in the field working for TTT, one of the world's leading security solutions providers. In this company I was a member of the Research and Development Department where I took part in two major projects: develop a security solution for virtual environments (SVE) with a client-server architecture, and implement a secondary SSL certificates validation mechanism (CVM).

My main contribution within the SVE project was to minimize network traffic between a client which requested virus scans and a scanning server. To this end, I first empirically established which parts of a file are relevant to the scanning process, and then constructed a two-layered cache to avoid redundancies: the first layer (client-based) stored scan results for local file fragments, while the second layer (server-based) aggregated scan results to exploit file similarities across machines. After one year of maintenance, our solution was acquired by VMware Inc.

The CVM project was driven by the lack of a global certificate validation enforcement policy. To achieve its purpose, the application captures all incoming TCP traffic, performs stream reconstruction and listens on the ports which started TLS/SSL sessions. When a certificate arrives, it is extracted and securely sent to a central storage server for validation. If the certificate is already stored, only few checksums are verified; if not, the whole certificate chain is validated.

All these experiences have driven my passion for research and pushed me to gradually further my knowledge. Therefore, my enthusiasm is my commitment to succeed. I believe that the numerous projects, classes and workplace tasks that I have met, shape me as a suitable candidate for the Doctoral School of Computer Science at the XXX.

Sincerely yours,