Graduate /
Purpose statement for MS business analytics and Information Management (with passion in agriculture) [4]
Hi, I just finished my SOP third draft (both a 1000 word and a 500 word limit prompt) and needed advice from a different perspective. I am from Taiwan not a native speaker so might have grammatical errors and would appreciate if someone could proofread for me. thanks in advance :)
SOP for Masters of Science in Business Analytics
"Farmers live at the mercy of the weather," Grandfather voice with a grave face as we were watching the news report on a major typhoon about to hit Taiwan. Growing up in an orange farmer's family, I witnessed how farmers were affected by the volatility of weather without reliable insurance system and the market price fluctuation. Since then I have developed deep care for the agriculture industry and have put finding the solution to help farmers to better adapt and communicate to the market as my top mission. During my 4 years as a Bio-Industry Communication major in college laying a focus on strategic marketing and digital communication for agri-businesses, along with my work experiences in Council of Agriculture and startup consulting company, I found that through becoming an expert in Business Analytics who could leverage the insights of abundance data is the solution that brings me closer to empower farmers both in smart farming operation and value-created marketing strategy.
I was enlightened to what data analysis can achieve in sorting complex issues during my Statistics and Social Science Quantitative Research class taught by Prof. Yu Hua Chen. It provided me with both statistical knowledge and SAS programming tool to reason with a scientific approach, and to sort the underlying rationale of the delayed marriage trend in Taiwan. I led 5 team members to conduct regression and coefficient correlation analysis to discover that "sacrificing personal time" was the factor of statistical significance. We later concluded life science major students were most willing to tie the knot by applying T-test and ANOVA test to compare college females' difference in major. I realized that data analytics lies in the heart of understanding the unknown and is the way to quench the thirst of my why-seeking nature as it provides an objective perspective that enables us to comb through the complexity of situations.
I competed for the opportunity to intern in Council of Agriculture that opened my eyes to an everlasting trend where analytics and agriculture meet. While reporting international agricultural development to assist APEC food and loss project and the bargain of Trans-Pacific Partnership, I explored how farming in the United States has progressed from a conventional industry with the help of big data. Startups leverage the historic weather data to generate detailed forecasts that help farmers optimize their operating decisions and set up crop insurance policies. I Discovered the practicality to apply data analytics not only in preparing Taiwanese small farmers to face weather condition changes, but also the use in establishing open data source on customer insights and pricing strategy that farmers could cooperate despite the small farmland limitations. Echoing my desire to contribute into the agriculture sector, it was then I envisioned myself to further my studies in the united states on business analytics, to build a career in multinational agribusiness, and eventually devote myself to the agriculture progress in my hometown.
The desire to see how analytics worked in a wider business sphere, I chose to join Backer-Founder, the largest crowdfunding consultant in Taiwan, helping startups whom lack of the resource to connect customers to fulfill their dreams. As a project specialist, I turned data into actionable insights that guided business decisions and performed a complete strategize-execute-measurement in project managing. Among the projects that I successfully managed on Kickstarter and domestic crowdfund platforms, the mooInk e-reader providing a holistic Chinese e-reading experience was most challenging and awarding. I acutely targeted audience by analyzing consumer demographics and reading habits to prioritize product features that led mooInk to reach twice as expected goal in the beginning month before we witnessed a decline. Spotted key metrics with Google Analytics and Facebook Ads manager, I had not only discover an exhaustion of original audiences with a peak in cost per ads click and frequency, but also inspected characteristic of backers to re-strategize on new audiences. In the end, we saw a comeback on performance with an ROI averaged 1:20 and fundraised over 460,000 USD. To win Chinese buyers over Kindle that Amazon has to offer was not easy, and I profoundly grasp that data analysis and problem-solving go hand in hand to navigate business strategy toward success. I also realized that landing limited resources where it's due, and avoiding risks in advance is crucial in developing profitable market more efficiently.
In the Masters of Science in Business Analytics, I yearn to learn beyond prescriptive analysis to further develop the understanding on consumer behaviors, and further set my eyes on predictive analysis and modeling, benefiting from uncovering data patterns of the past that points a hint to the future. I have envisioned myself to devote into the field of precision agriculture and smart farming, and the complete course covering predictive analysis and marketing analysis combined with a capstone project that the ______________ offers is the perfect combination of courses that would equip me with the technical skills to fulfill my career plan. To further prepare myself to dive in this exciting field, I have gained the certificate in R for data science, and D3.js for data visualization. I am looking forward to adding value to the class profile in_____________ and pave a new way for my professional advancement. I believe the passion and vision to make an impact, the business acumen nurtured within my professional experience, along with my academic training spanning from business, marketing and statistics make me the ideal candidate for your program and a presentable alumna post-graduation.