Hi everyone, below is an essay I have to write for TAMU. I reckon it is a bit long. I am having a tough time writing these essays :-( . Could you guys kindly suggest the shortcomings in my essay and suggest where I can improve. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Describe your background, interests, personal and professional accomplishments, and how they demonstrate your potential for success in this degree and your career
"Great job! This is beyond our expectations" the words from my client who had called me to inform that the module that we as a team had designed and deployed had exceeded his expectations on functionality and performance. These words and the appreciations from our supervisors made me realize that the milestones a team can achieve can be far greater than the ones an individual can. This gave me great confidence in my abilities to lead a team and produce best results. Applying to the MS-MIS at Texas A&M University is an obvious choice for me as I firmly believe that it would refine my skills and enable me to lead bigger teams and spearhead innovations that make a difference.
My interest in computers and programming began during school days, the time spent with my brother who was by then a student of computer engineering. I have to thank him for letting me debug his C programs and help in his college projects. I was inspired and fascinated to see how engineers design and implement projects.
My desire to learn and work with computers gained momentum when I joined the abc School of Engineering Technology, one of the top technological institutions in India to pursue an undergraduate degree in computer science. I fondly remember the days in my sixth semester, when two of my classmates and me developed a Web Based Remote Administration tool which required no thick clients, only a web browser client. For me the take away from this project was the significance of thinking 'out of the box'.
After joining Cognizant Technology solutions, a leading IT consulting services provider, I was trained on the concepts of data warehousing. This opened doors to the whole new world of business intelligence. Complex requirements, huge data volume, multiple variable parameters, challenging timelines! My first project was for a US Retail giant. The challenge here was to devise algorithms to figure out the shortest possible path to transport a commodity by taking into consideration a myriad of factors ranging from local demand to weather. This project introduced me to the ETL tool called "Informatica". In addition to being a huge learning opportunity, this project also enabled me to become an Informatica Certified professional.
As recognition for my passion for designing and troubleshooting, I was given the opportunity to lead a five member team responsible to review and optimize design of an insurance claim management application of a leading insurance client. We revamped the design and provided implementation guidelines that greatly enhanced the performance of the application. This design directly resulted in substantial financial gains for the client. I was given the outstanding performer award for successfully delivering this application.
My work experience at Cognizant also improved my interpersonal skills. Interacting with clients from different parts of the world with different cultures and understanding their requirements is part of my profession.
Four years into my career I feel like having reached a growth plateau. To move forward I would need to equip myself with better management skills and the latest in information science.
I strongly believe that my education and work experience so far, has instilled in me perseverance and a never say die attitude that I believe can enable me to face the challenges of the MS-MIS program at Texas A&M University would throw. Finally I would like to reiterate that I am keenly looking forward to joining your prestigious University.
"Great job! This is beyond our expectations" [...] and spearhead innovations that make a difference .
- It is actually the paragraph after this which contains the start of your essay responses to the prompt so you can delete this particular paragraph without affecting the overall content of the essay.Four years into my career I feel like [...] and the latest in information science.
- This is also an unnecessary paragraph filler that only serves to make your essay longer without actually providing information relevant to the prompt. You need to avoid these fillers in your essays in order to keep it short and whenever possible, within the required word count.With the removal of these 2 paragraphs, it seems to me that the essay flows better and has shortened in length immensely. Do me a favor and review the essay with my suggestions and let me know if it works for you? Post the revised version here so I can have another look at it with the intention of finding other areas where we can cut down the content to shorten the paper even more. There may be some paragraphs or sentences that can be merged to accomplish that.
