Graduate /
Chasing the dreams in the R&D department - Essay for MS in CS [3]
Dear readers and moderators please help me by reviewing my essay for MS application.
Direction for writing essay.
"Explain your purpose for graduate study, including your current degree goals and reasons for selecting a particular field of study."
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I believe true knowledge is the understanding of how things work and apply it to solve real life problems. This is what always motivated me to seek for practical application of theoretical knowledge. My decision to pursue Master's program at -- is promoted by my desire to delve deep into the subjects I cherish and pursue a research oriented career in Computer Systems.
My strong inclination towards science goes back to my school days. My interests were never bound to what was taught in the classrooms. I always wanted to appreciate and understand the application of concepts in books. My interests combined with hard work translated into good results, and which paved the way to study in the Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering offered by Institute of technical education and research which is the premier engineering institution in Biju Pattanayak University of technology, Orissa, India.
My undergraduate courses have been gripping and interesting. Even though I was introduced to a plethora of topics spanning the various domains of Computer Science, over the past couple of semesters, I have developed a great liking for Computer Networks. My interest for Networks made me to choose Computer Networks as domain for my final year project. I (along with my project mates) developed a real time multi-threaded Voice over Internet Protocol application under the guidance of Prof. (Dr) Binod Kumar Pattanayak. Our solution provides an audio stream that will adapt dynamically based on the client systems bandwidth. Our project was done using open-source Qt framework from Nokia. We got promising results from our project during the testing. All in all, working towards this project was an extremely satisfactory, edifying and rewarding experience.
Having been subjected to the rigor of my undergraduate course, it wasn't a very difficult task for me to land with multiple job offers from various companies. Considering my penchant for computer networks, I decided to join TCS-HP networking lab to work as network protocol engineer. The TCS-HP Networking project was involved in development and sustenance of HP-UX operating system network stack and tools in partnership with Hewlett Packard (HP). For me it's meant an opportunity to apply my knowledge gained during the undergraduate in industrial environment.
My penchant for computer networks was further strengthened while working at the networking lab. During this tenure, I worked on host of products, like Kerberos, Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), Gated and Routed, covering networking and security related products. I played a pivotal role in enhancement of products Gated and Kerberos. Under the guidance of my mentor <<Name>>, I contributed in enhancing HP-UX Kerberos Server with the DES3 (RFC2948) encryption algorithm. Moving on ahead, worked on Gated routing daemon and proposed solution to existing limitation in the implemented RIP routing protocol. Enhancing the RIP protocol capability to detect and advertise virtual interfaces in a HP-UX OS kernel was a challenge and made me understand routing protocols in work.
My early days in this project were very challenging, as I had to cope with tight deadlines and complex technical issues. My determination helped me succeed in gaining expertise and add value to the project. I was selected as a distinguished member of the team comprising of 30 individuals by the project manager for my contribution and awarded "Winners Spirit Award" for the same. Accountability and ownership of the task at hand was highly appreciated. Working under pressure to meet tight deadlines and the amount of self-learning required honed my intellectual, organizational and time management skills.
My tenure at TCS-HP Networking Lab ended when I decided to broaden my understanding in the same domain by working for Oracle Server Technology, Bangalore, India. I am responsible to develop and enhance the Oracle clustered patching framework "Opatch" to deploy applications on server with minimum downtime. "BoxMaster" is another individual project where I worked extensively with cluster node detection in network. Objective of this application is to gather and display real-time statistics about the cluster nodes and manage various maintenance activities remotely. This application helps engineers to get information in just few minutes which used to be tedious and time consuming process. It gives me immense joy and pride to see my application being used by many developers across Oracle on daily basis.
Having acquired sufficient exposure to the software industry, I would now like to get into Network Systems research and pursue a career as researcher or senior developer in a R&D department of the industry. I not only possess the intellectual ability, sound preparation and strong motivation but also consider myself mature, friendly to work with and open to criticism. I feel that Graduate studies in Computer Science will help me realize this objective. My strong aspiration to work on the frontiers of scientific research impelled me to apply for Graduate Studies in your university. I have the full confidence that I will be successful as a graduate student.