Letters /
A Program application: Express personal, educational background, practical experiences and interests [3]
pursuing a Master's degree
Hi all, I'm applying for a master degree to some universities in EU. I feel my letter still have some redundant information and grammar errors. I hope you can review it and give me advice. Note: I have to hide some information since I haven't had permission to share them.
Firstly, here is my letter structure with the main idea:
[part0: a formal introduction]
[part1: my main objective is using my knowledge to apply technology to help people in my country]
[part2: i studied high school with mathematics-informatics specialization. while I officially learned economy stuff in University, I researched IT by myself and had a real achievement]
[part3: i worked in IT industry for 3 years as a researcher, mainly focus into computer vision and deep learning]
[part4: i'm good at algorithm optimization and there was a proven result]
[part5: i have experienced in many kinds of machine learning stuff, the career path in my head is clear and I know what I need to study, so I think I'll succeed with this program]
[part6: highlighting again that I worked in a real environment, faced real problems, so I deserve to learn at this university + a formal ending]
Letters: (Under 4000 characters, ~ 700-800 words)
With this letter, I would like to express my personal, educational background, practical experiences, and interests for the application of [ProgramName] at [UniversityName]. I hope that I will have a great opportunity to pursue my Master's degree in one of the most renowned universities along with its advanced educational system in the world.
Three reasons motivate me to apply for a [ProgramName]. Firstly, my dream is to use my knowledge in informatics technology to help people in my country. My long-term plan is to become a technopreneur in IoT (internet of things) field especially "IoT Applications in Agriculture" which helps in boosting Vietnam agriculture industry and improve the productivity of farmers in Vietnam. More significantly, that Vietnam has achieved vital progress in building basic infrastructure to develop both hardware and software all over the country. Second reason, living in one of the most developed countries which have high GDP per capita. Lastly, enjoying the multicultural atmosphere at University and communicating with many people all around the world must increase the chance of opportunity.
During high school time, I achieved 2 bronze medals of "South Vietnam Olympiad in Informatics" and a third prize of "Vietnam National Olympiad in Informatics" (top 100 students). One of the most important decisions in my life was that I chose to pursuit economy after finishing high school because I wanted to learn managing skills and soft skills (such as teamwork, pitching, presenting, relation management) in order to obtain my dream. Despite that, I always spent time every week to follow and learn new technologies on the Internet. Thanks to the effort, I and my friends found an edtech startup, named "PROJECT_Y", which raised $100000 at seeding round. However, that financial support was not enough to help the young and inexperienced tech startup live through the bearish market in 2016. On the bright side, the failure was still healthy for me since I have learned a lot of lessons in both technical and operational.
In early 2017, I joint COMPANY_X, a 9 years old tech company, and worked with R&D team till now. At COMPANY_X, I was hardly inspired by many talented people from the US, Israel, China, and Vietnam, most of them are Ph.D. or master in computer science. My first project was "PROJECT_T", which was applying a 3D reconstruction technology from multiple cameras. Another project that I am very proud of is "PROJECT_U", which I worked with 3 other Vietnamese colleagues. The main idea of that project is segmenting human body from any background on any images by using deep neural network and computer vision algorithms.
On both mentioned projects, I have used almost all cutting-edge technologies of parallel computing (such as OpenCL, CUDA, AVX) on the planet to tackle many computer vision problems. Working with state-of-the-art technologies in the world may sound fancy, but it was really difficult for me and my team due to lack of documents and discussions on the internet. So when I faced a problem, I had to put double time and effort to solve it. Finally, thanks to the hardworking spirit and the support from everyone, I have optimized "PROJECT_T" to run on real-time by implementing several techniques of parallel computing on GPU devices. The project became successful and was acquired by Jaunt.
Dealing with the "PROJECT_U" required me to dig much deeper into machine learning and computer vision. After 4 months of researching and developing, my company shipped the very first products, named "The Presenter", to customers and now it is still a main revenue stream of my company. During the time implementing and integrating new technologies into my company products, a lot of other ideas popped in my head about chasing my dream. At that time, I started to think about pursuing higher education since there are a few holes in my knowledge that I believe I can fill them by enrolling to [ProgramName]. Moreover, with my current knowledge and skill set, I strongly believe I will become an excellent scholar of [School].
In conclusion, after 3 years of working on a real environment, solving various problems in the modern computing world, I realize that now is just the right time to improve my knowledge and have a formal education in my strongest field by enrolling to [ProgramName]. I am very confident that the opportunity to study at [UniversityName] will widen my horizons, help me connecting to many talented people. I am sure that I will match all the credentials and will be able to maintain high standards at your prestigious university. Moreover, I also believe that studying in [UniversityName] is my most efficient investment for my future career along with my admiration of honest citizens and peaceful country. Five years from now, I would love to come back to my country and use all of my knowledge to boost the agriculture industry of Vietnam.