ontheway1
Jun 8, 2018
Graduate / Data has become the new gold standard; SOP for part time Data Science Masters [2]
This is my second draft of the Statement of Purpose. To give context, the part time masters is not local to me currently. Any advice on the context, organization, and points needs to be made (or not made) are appreciated. Sorry for all the redactions and thanks for your help!
Data has become the new gold standard. Living in XXX and working at XXX, I have the opportunity to experience the rise of this new age up close. I celebrated with colleagues when XXX won it's historic match. I stood in awe as XXX passed by our building with the steering wheel unmanned. I have been an analyst for most of my career, but only marveled at the "magic" around me that is clearly the future. I would like to demystify this magic and be a part of that future by stepping up my career as a Data Scientist.
Though my background is not in CS, through my career I have learned SQL and RegEx for data gathering, Python/Panda for form creation and data visualization, and VBA, XXX, and Javascript for data manipulation. One of my proudest project was creating a tool using App Script and Javascript that services the end to end processing of new XXX from warehouse to engineers. This required API connection to multiple supporting platforms including database, bug tracking, and ticketing service. It also logs timestamped activities which is turned into meaningful statistics to visualize KPI of different teams. This experience gave me the confidence that I handle more difficult task in coding that is required in fields like Data Science.
For data interpretation, my current role in XXX involves building actionable insights into XXX on our platform. XXX was a young team, with billion rows device and usage XXX data created by engineering groups; but leveraging them for business purposes was a work in progress. To better understand our XXX in relation to their activities, I used internal systems XXX and XXX to perform descriptive statistic analysis. However, I always thought more could be done with the amount of data we have. I understood the answer when a colleague used NLP algorithms to bring out value in one of my data set. Seeing what he did demystified the "magic" from the past few years and solidified my desire to become a data scientist.
I started to learn machine learning concepts through MOOC courses and am active on Kaggle. I built a web scraping database tool in Python to scrape data scientist jobs to understand trend changes in data scientist skills over time. Currently I'm trial applying ensemble of Tree, Boosting, and Regression models in XXX for the first time on phone performance in relation to usage duration to find significant insight into improving the user experience.
Data Scientists needs to have good communication skills. Beyond my work experience, my MBA courses also helped to hone my presentation skills. In 2011, I participated in the premiere XXX competition, which required us to deeply analyze a company for it's valuation and present recommendations on it's strategic merger and acquisition prospects to a panel of M&A professionals. Our team won against 9 other teams in the intra-school competition to represent XXXuniversity in the regional finals and received $1000 in award for our performance.
Recently, I was accepted to the Data Science bootcamp Metis. However, the more I learned, the more I leaned towards a formal education. XXX is my first choice because it has a mature curriculum built specifically for working professionals like myself. I especially wish gain high level proficiency in Python and Machine Learning to expand on the weaker part of my career parameters. I saw the curriculum's quality first hand when I found out a blogger I followed XXX, XXX was a graduate of this program. My desire became even more intensified when my XXX got offered a XXX position with [the same] university to research on XXX. We excitedly discussed the prospect of applying my expertise in her domain to gain further insights and better her work for [the same] university.
I hope strongly to be admitted into the next cohort of the XXX program. I intend to enrich the classroom experience through my background and better the cohort as a whole. I am confident the skills and networking opportunities I gain will transition my career to the next level. After moving to XXX, I aim to work in an analyst field that can leverage predictive analytics and apply my newly learned DS knowledge as soon as I can. I plan to contribute to the booming XXX industry of XXX in the long term by becoming a full on Data Scientist after graduation.
This is my second draft of the Statement of Purpose. To give context, the part time masters is not local to me currently. Any advice on the context, organization, and points needs to be made (or not made) are appreciated. Sorry for all the redactions and thanks for your help!
Data Science Masters sop
Data has become the new gold standard. Living in XXX and working at XXX, I have the opportunity to experience the rise of this new age up close. I celebrated with colleagues when XXX won it's historic match. I stood in awe as XXX passed by our building with the steering wheel unmanned. I have been an analyst for most of my career, but only marveled at the "magic" around me that is clearly the future. I would like to demystify this magic and be a part of that future by stepping up my career as a Data Scientist.
Though my background is not in CS, through my career I have learned SQL and RegEx for data gathering, Python/Panda for form creation and data visualization, and VBA, XXX, and Javascript for data manipulation. One of my proudest project was creating a tool using App Script and Javascript that services the end to end processing of new XXX from warehouse to engineers. This required API connection to multiple supporting platforms including database, bug tracking, and ticketing service. It also logs timestamped activities which is turned into meaningful statistics to visualize KPI of different teams. This experience gave me the confidence that I handle more difficult task in coding that is required in fields like Data Science.
For data interpretation, my current role in XXX involves building actionable insights into XXX on our platform. XXX was a young team, with billion rows device and usage XXX data created by engineering groups; but leveraging them for business purposes was a work in progress. To better understand our XXX in relation to their activities, I used internal systems XXX and XXX to perform descriptive statistic analysis. However, I always thought more could be done with the amount of data we have. I understood the answer when a colleague used NLP algorithms to bring out value in one of my data set. Seeing what he did demystified the "magic" from the past few years and solidified my desire to become a data scientist.
I started to learn machine learning concepts through MOOC courses and am active on Kaggle. I built a web scraping database tool in Python to scrape data scientist jobs to understand trend changes in data scientist skills over time. Currently I'm trial applying ensemble of Tree, Boosting, and Regression models in XXX for the first time on phone performance in relation to usage duration to find significant insight into improving the user experience.
Data Scientists needs to have good communication skills. Beyond my work experience, my MBA courses also helped to hone my presentation skills. In 2011, I participated in the premiere XXX competition, which required us to deeply analyze a company for it's valuation and present recommendations on it's strategic merger and acquisition prospects to a panel of M&A professionals. Our team won against 9 other teams in the intra-school competition to represent XXXuniversity in the regional finals and received $1000 in award for our performance.
Recently, I was accepted to the Data Science bootcamp Metis. However, the more I learned, the more I leaned towards a formal education. XXX is my first choice because it has a mature curriculum built specifically for working professionals like myself. I especially wish gain high level proficiency in Python and Machine Learning to expand on the weaker part of my career parameters. I saw the curriculum's quality first hand when I found out a blogger I followed XXX, XXX was a graduate of this program. My desire became even more intensified when my XXX got offered a XXX position with [the same] university to research on XXX. We excitedly discussed the prospect of applying my expertise in her domain to gain further insights and better her work for [the same] university.
I hope strongly to be admitted into the next cohort of the XXX program. I intend to enrich the classroom experience through my background and better the cohort as a whole. I am confident the skills and networking opportunities I gain will transition my career to the next level. After moving to XXX, I aim to work in an analyst field that can leverage predictive analytics and apply my newly learned DS knowledge as soon as I can. I plan to contribute to the booming XXX industry of XXX in the long term by becoming a full on Data Scientist after graduation.
