Hello all,
I am working on my essays and personal statement that will have an impact on my admission decision into the Computer Science department. I appreciate all tips and corrections provided; I will certainly do the same for your essay.
A few concerns:
1) Is there too much emotion in my essays, particularly the one about volunteering?
Thank you!
Here are the prompts/Essays:
Essay 1:
Computer science and engineering requires creativity, teamwork, and strong academic ability. We value breadth of interest, leadership, and diversity. Tell us about your academic and personal interests, goals, and what you will bring to the CSE community.
Essay 2:
MOD comment:One essay at one time please
Essay 1:
Having been inspired from the lively technology and entrepreneurship scene at the University of Washington, I have a strong interest in the applications of Computer Science . For example, at DubHacks, an event in which participants engineer innovative software applications, my peers and I developed an application that helped drivers focus on their driving. We did this through altering music they were listening to based on their driving characteristics, creating a safer environment on the road. We needed a vast, real time source of information for road conditions. A significant challenge was retrieving the speed limit of any given highway, street, express way. Having been absolutely dumfounded about how to write the code for this, we began to lost hope about our idea.
In fact, it would be a near impossible task of hard-coding the speed limits for every single road in the United States. There, I realized our mindset was flawed; we were searching for the wrong thing. Instead of writing the code, we could use a web API that did all the work. Instead of hard-coding a method that will find the address, it came to my mind that it would be more practicable to find an existing library that will do this. Luckily, we were able to find a Nokia Maps API that ,when inputted the coordinates of the road, returned the speed limit. Through just one call of this API method, our problem was solved. This ingenuity in implementing relevant API's won us a Dubhack's API Prize.
Just as importantly, I realized an essence of developing software: using and improving existing implementations instead of building from scratch. This collaborative and open atmosphere in software development where anyone can access and use the abundant resources of APIs and modules has motivated me to develop more APIs of my own in my spare time. For example, I extended the Nokia API to also take into consideration other variables such as traffic and weather, to give a more dynamic speed limit.
From my work with API's, I have come to appreciate the altruistic community of software development, which continually provides resources such as API's to novice programmers in order for them to work on their dream projects without spending the grueling hours of building the foundations. It is my intention to join and contribute to this community. Since Computer Science is a very diverse field and my knowledge of CS is still in its growing stage, I aspire to develop my understanding of CS at UW CSE. Through the tutelage of the brilliant CSE professors and making use of the extensive resources that the Paul G. Allen Centers offers, I will certainly contribute sophisticated designs and resources for others to use.
Hello, halcyoncxd,
Overall, excellent job on your essays. You utilized the terms which accompany CS and programming fields to demonstrate your commitment.
On your concerns, I don't find them emotional, but intelligent and sincere.
I'm no writing expert, just a student going through the same process, but by my opinion, they are just right. Not too long, too short, or awkward.
Once again, good job, and good luck! :)
