'I took some practical steps to choose the proposed universities' - Chevening: Studying in UK Essay

Hi, I am applying for Chevening Scholarship. I would like to get some advice regarding my essay, besides i need to cut several more words (10-20) to reach it maximum allowed words. My proposed universities are : Edinburgh university - MSc Data Science, Bristol University - MSc Advanced Computing, and Lancester University - MSc Data Science.

The instruction of the essay is :
Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future.

Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia is well known as one of the most congested cities in the world. It is predicted that over four million residents of the sorrounding Jakarta commute to and from the city each working day. Unfortunately, I am one of them. It turned out supply of public transport failed to fulfill the demand, people began to collectively opt for private vehicles over public transportation. These issues are also involving many other big cities in Indonesia. The bad truth is, Indonesia is one of the countries in the world that does not have a well-functioning public transportation system to handle it huge and centralize population.

Government and industries are in the move in developing better infrastructure. Besides, they are also concerning on utilizing information technology by opening public transportation data so that any computer scientist can get involved in building smart services for the cities. I was challenged and find out how information technology will help us to have a better transportation system. I absolutely think that big data and data science is a good place to start looking for a solution.

There are many things that we may learn from real time data given from the commuter patterns. To help commuters efficiently use public transportation and government to make an effective policy. Lately, I am volunteering on non-profit projects that utilizing government open data to develop smart services for Jakarta. We built a mobile app to give commuters insight which public transportation could they take ranked based on the availability and the efficiency. In addition, the application use crowdsourcing method to gain real time data from commuters and algorithms to validate and rank them. There are a lot of thing that we could explore, gain more data and implement some machine learning algorithm to get more insight from it. That is why I am very keen to learn about data science.

I believe that UK is the best place to do it. Although data science is quite new for the academia, UK universities are earlier in offering the program. There a lot of top universities already offering this program since couple years ago along with the world class facility to support the study.

to choose the proposed universities
There are some practical steps that I took to choose the proposed universities :

1. Searching the universities that offer MSc in data science or machine learning with help of search engine.
2. Learning some related research that the universities have been working on.
3. Sort them based on their global rank, location, entry requirements and the courses they offered in the program.

My first choice fells to Edinburgh University as one of the top university in UK for computer science subject and has a very good supporting facility for data science students to do their work. The second and third went to Bristol University and Lancaster University respectively.

Had my cum laude bachelor degree in computer science, almost three years working experience in software development project, determination and indepedence skills would help me to complete any of these three programmes very well.

Luthfi, one of the things can you can consider to help you bring your word count down would be to revise your first two paragraphs. You have spent too much of your word count recounting the traffic problem in Indonesia, using 3 paragraphs to describe the problem when it was not necessary to do so. The first 3 paragraphs could have been better utilized had you decided to use the space to more properly address the prompt instead.

The prompt actually asks you to do more than just list the 3 UK universities you have chosen to consider for your masters studies. You need to outline each one and relate it to your academic experience. One way of understanding that instructions is to have you list down each university and have you discuss what exactly about each university appeals to you. Concentrate on connecting your past academic experience with the university you are discussing. So you have 3 universities and 3 paragraphs to replace. Perfect.

The bullet points you listed in relation to how you chose the universities does not help your paper at all. Anybody can do a search based on what you did. What the essay needs to know is "Why these 3?" Discuss these in terms of your related previous college degree / classes attended, any seminars / conferences that relate to your chosen course at the university, and the social aspects of educational networking that can help you with your career improvement in the future.

Right now, all I can gather from your essay is that Indonesia has a traffic problem, information about that problem, and the current government solutions to it. I like the paragraphs that relate to your activities regarding solving the traffic problem. Those are activities that can certainly help enhance your statement. Provided that you can somehow connect those with the explanations about your top 3 universities.

Your last line also does not translate as a complete paragraph. It sounds like you just threw that information in there as an after thought, The information you provided directly relates to your previous academic experience. So try to integrate the information into your discussion about your university choices. That is where such information should be placed.

If you follow these guidelines regarding the revision of your essay, I am sure you will be able to remove more than 20 words from the essay, which will in turn help your essay not only meet the word count, but also help you to better respond to the prompt as well.

Yap you're right, I spent too much in describing the problem. Great insight! Thank you very much :)

I think you should look at the description of the courses you selected form each of your choice universities, their career destinations and the reasons why those schools think they are the best for you. Coupling that with what you want to gain by schooling in UK. I think with that, you will not only have a full essay but one that answers the question.

Luthfi, I'd like to help out, here are my points you may use as a guide to enhance your essay.

- the scholarship is about you studying in the UK and why did you come to choose it
- its asking for the relation of your university course choices to your future academic goals as well as professional goals
- go straight to the point, this will signify that you understood the prompt and you exactly know what you are doing
- this is a prompt of your admissions for the scholarship and dotting them in numbers will not be advisable, I'd rather that you present it in bullets

- as much as you love UK as a country, you have to see how to incorporate this in your success or your road towards achieving your goals

- the last 2 paragraphs needs revision as well, they are in a very awkward part of your essay and also never itemize the universities as to rank, leave it to the admissions officer to rank them for you, all you have to do is to justify your choices.

Lastly, check the other students here on EF who did their paper for Chevening too, this will give you an idea of what will and should be in your essay, I'm not saying that you copy but at least you have a wider research before you launch your own application.

I wish to see your revised essay here on EF so we can assist you further.