Statement of purpose -- Suggestions to make it better !!! Urgent

[kloud]

Statement of Purpose-- Not really sure how to start and after reading a few samples i felt, starting with quote is good so went with it ( and i did read that quote when i was little ).

 

The awards nd publications i have made it as little as possible only mentioning the most recent 1s. should i remove them totally and let it be only on CV ??

 

the letter is 1221 words long. quite long i felt need ways to cut it down a bit more nd bring to about 1100 range.

All suggestions welcome

 

Thanks in advance

 

cheers,

suhas

 

----------------------------------------------------------

“The great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense” –Thomas Alva Edison

This famous quote has inspired me greatly since I was a kid. Like young Edison and his interest in harnessing the power of steam, I was deeply fascinated by computers and the potential they hold, from a very young age. My love towards computers began when I was about 8 years old and my parents gifted me a Pentium III processor. I remember the first time I booted it and saw the neat icons, interface and writing my 1^st GW-Basic program on my Windows 95. The fascination towards programming and understanding the working of computers never died down and I took up computer science as a subject both in High School as well as in Pre University degree. Owing to these credentials I got admission into one of the most elite colleges in XYZ, one of the top 4 colleges in our state and top 20 private universities in our country. I opted for Information Science and Technology because I felt it was a fusion of the best parts of Computer Science and Information Systems. I am passionate about research, and this was the primary motivator to pursue graduate education in Computer Sciences.

My training in Information Science department was interdisciplinary. During my Fundamental of computing course, I was part of a group (of 5) project and we developed a two player chess program. We used Graphics.h libraries to design the chess board and pieces for the players. We presented this to the faculty and after Q&A session, we were encouraged to interact with seniors on other graphics based projects. In digital design course I built an infrared light detector to detect intruders. I implemented the circuit on a breadboard with components purchased from a store. As part of microcontrollers and microprocessors class, I was part of a 2 member team and we built a digital counter. For Computer Architecture and Organization course, I was part of a, two member team and we did an in depth review of the Itanium Processor and presented it. In Computer Networks-I course, I presented Hping3 tool for testing our college firewalls and in Computer Networks-II course, I was part of 4 member team which demoed the use of wire shark in network and topology analysis.  In our Scripting Languages course, I developed a website using Perl-Tk. During Software Engineering course, I was part of 3 member team. In this initially we used Resource Standard Matrix tool for analysis of C, C++, C# and Java based codes. This was presented by my teammates and I developed a independent tool, to correct syntax errors in C codes and issue smart warning to the users about other potential errors in the C code. We presented this in our class and the tool I developed was appreciated.

All these projects taught me the importance of team work, dividing work, keeping deadlines and other qualities essential to become a leader. All this proved to be of great help when I spearheaded my team into the Intel Embedded challenge 2012 in my 3rdyear, with an image processing project based on Seed Selection using Snake contours detection. We used a camera to take pictures of the seeds as they pass through the machine, to compare the seed’s shape, size, and color with a database of high quality seeds. Contour extraction using greedy algorithm to get the outline of the seeds as they pass through the machine. Though we didn’t get funding to build and demo the system, it was a learning experience for us and gained much exposure in embedded systems. All this hard work paid off when I got selected as a part of a 4 member team from our college for IBM sponsored Smarter Planet. In this project we explored ways to bring technology to rural India and remove age old farming traditions with modern techniques.

For the first phase of our project we were tasked to build a web portal which can be customized to each individual farmer. With my vast knowledge of Html, Css, php, Ajax this was easy task and we were successful in hosting our site on free web hosting services. The actual paper highlighting the main part of the project and use cases is published under IJCA (International Journal of Computer Applications) http://www.ijcaonline.org/archives/volume57/number18/9218-3773 with myself as one of the co-authors. Our paper also won the ‘Innovation Challenge’ in SRII-India ICESM (International conference 2012) Each farmer is provided with personalized web page and through it, he quickly accesses the rates at which crops are being sold in the nearest wholesale markets. If the crops have to be stored the closest warehouse or granaries are located, the tariffs and the details of the warehouse like storage area, cold storage facilities, closest access point or train yards are given to the farmers. We also provided a queries page where farmers can contact experts and get advice on crop diseases, the pesticides to use, nutrients that are necessary for growing that particular crop.

The second most crucial aspect was price prediction. For this we used a neural network and built a decision support system. I was inspired to use a DSS when I came across a paper by Keith Mathew’s. We used a neural network with 1 hidden layer, 4 inputs and 3 outputs. The inputs for the Neural Network were obtained from processing and extracting, previous decades crop prices, rainfall, irrigation and production details. After getting results from the neural network we used the DSS to better the accuracy of the predicted values. Example: We saw spiked increase in buying of flowers before festivities and we included such factors into the DSS. This task of mining the data from the vast database proved to be challenging task, we were able to host the entire web site on a cloud and demo it in various conferences like I-Care (national level) , Impress-IT (state level), IT-Bitz (state level)  just to name a few.

 

Today I work as an application delivery engineer in Volvo IT. As a fresh recruit in the DCL section, we work on front end applications, right from development to delivery of the finished application. I worked on ASP.Net and we also are trained in the maintenance of the current applications and providing patches and updates. The most challenging task, has been working across groups located at different geographic locations and collaborating with them to provide the best applications.

 

I strongly believe that computer engineers should be innovative, instinctive and able to adapt new technologies, which is possible only with solid foundation and guidance from good faculties. I not only see myself as a highly successful software  engineer working for one of the top companies but also as a significant member of the society by contributing time and money to various causes and charitable organizations. I have always been a quick learner and extremely hard working. These two qualities, clubbed with sound analytical strength, logical capabilities, natural aptitude for mathematics and my motivation to excel, I am confident that The University of X , Y will provide me with a synergetic experience, conducive to the benefit of the system as well as the surrounding. I am interested in research and University of X with its distinguished faculty, state of the art laboratories, multi-disciplinary research in ABC fields and phenomenal industrial interface, offers an opportunity that is sought after internationally. I earnestly hope that you will review my application favorably and grant me admission.

 

[fuzzylogician]

I don't know why this is urgent, but here are a few quick thoughts: 

- The first paragraph needs to go. It's not relevant to the present and future career that you are planning for yourself. I am amazed how many people think it's a good idea to tell the adcom that an 8th birthday present from their parents is what made them choose their future career.

- You have details about too many projects and it's not clear that they're all as worthy of the adcom's attention. In particular, it seems to me that describing all your class projects is a bit over the top; if it's a way of mentioning skills you've acquired, I'm sure there's a better way (e.g. just saying what skills you have learned through your education). I'd find a way to mention the skills and the benefits (team work, etc) without describing the innards of class projects--it's not clear from the description what your contribution was, what scope the project had and what it means exactly that the project was "appreciated."

-The middle part starting with the Intel project could be reworked. There are too many details and some of them are not necessary (I assume they'll be on your CV). I'd stick to telling about the successful project that yielded the paper, and keep all the details about the project in one place; right now there are details all over the place. 

- Scope: Your statement is about 75% past, 25% future; you need to flip this around -- SOPs are about the present and future, and even the description of past events should always be geared towards explaining how it prepares you for the future. 

- Fit: You need to seriously spend more time on the fit part of the SOP. Right now it's too short and very generic. If you send it like this, adcoms will know that you didn't spend a lot of time at all researching the schools you're applying to and thinking about why they are good matches for your interests. 

- Nitpicky but important: there are too many instances of you saying you're great and saying (instead of showing) that you worked hard: "with my vast knowledge in ...", "I have always been a quick learner and extremely hard worker...", "all this hard work paid off when.." . It's not as effective as you might think; your CV and your successful projects will show these traits of yours, and saying you have them doesn't really make you come off any better. 

[acarol]

Basically, what fuzzylogician said.

Also:

-Remove the Edison quotation, no matter what you end up writing in your first paragraph. It tells the adcomm nothing about your research interests, experience, or fit with the school. And it will not set you apart positively from other applicants.
 

-Try to remember you have a limited word count.  Your SOP has lots of extraneous sentences that should be replaced with information about your research focus and your fit within the school. For example, "I earnestly hope that you will review my application favorably and grant me admission." or "Owing to these credentials I got admission into one of the most elite colleges in XYZ, one of the top 4 colleges in our state and top 20 private universities in our country." The first, because you can safely assume that all applicants hope for a favourable review / to be granted admission, so you're not telling the adcomm anything they don't already know.  The second, because you use 30+ words to say "I attended School X" -- if the school is ranked so highly, the adcomm will recognize that it's elite without your saying so. Edit those sentences out and / or down and you will have more space for SOP-relevant information.

-As fuzzylogician says re: scope, every thing you mention -- all research, job experience, courses, etc -- should fit within an argument about why you should do your graduate studies at School Y.  Don't leave anything hanging there without explaining its relevance to your wanting to pursue a PhD at School Y. For example, if you write a sentence stating that you worked on ABC project, the next sentence should connect that work to your current research focus and, by extension, your future graduate studies.  

-Re: fit.  You should research each department you're applying to so you can mention specific faculty members, labs and/or research projects, research methods, etc, by name.  Instead of just saying "state of the art laboratories," mention the names of specific labs, their affiliate profs, and projects that are currently being done that would help support you in your research. You also want to state outright why that specific department is right for your graduate work. For example, "I want to attend School Y because DEF research lab's current work on Z project would support my focus on W. Also, Professor so-and-so's research in (insert specific topic prof works on or title of article / book / research project here) dovetails with mine in such-and-such ways."  

Don't mean to be harsh -- just trying to help!

Edited August 9, 2013 by acarol

[kloud]

Thanks for all the inputs, acarol and fuzzylogician =D

 

i have made the changes and made it more focused (i feel).... pls point out any other mistakes if present

 

Thanks

 

Cheers

 

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“The great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense” –Thomas Alva Edison

This famous quote has inspired me greatly since I was a kid. Like young Edison and his interest in harnessing the power of steam, I was deeply fascinated by computers and the potential they hold, from a very young age. My motivation to pursue Master of Science in Database and Information Systems at Xyz University stems from the need to broaden my academic perception and to understand better how data today is processed, stored and mined. Topics such as ‘Data integration’, ‘Text Retrieval and Mining’ and interdisciplinary research topic like ‘Computational Linguistics’ which couples AI , NLP with data processing have enthused  me, as they are crucial in tackling the challenges of  speedy, accurate retrieval of data.

 

M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT) is a renowned university and because of my interests, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in Information Science and Engineering department. In my freshman year of college, I worked under Professor Dr. Lingaraju to develop a two player chess program. I was part of a 3 member group and we coded the entire game using C+ + without using any of the data structure or object oriented features because we weren’t taught of these in our freshman year. This taught me to work smart, plan, research better before actually starting the work. During my sophomore year I worked under Professor George Phillips, on System Software project to develop tool to detect and correct syntax errors in code. I was part of 4 member team and was appointed as head. I understood the dynamics of being leader and motivating people in our team and distributing work amongst the members. On the technical aspect we faced challenges in detecting the error and providing the correct solution for it. This was my first experience with data storage and retrieval and to improve time efficiency we used parallel processing on the data files to retrieve data faster. To further increase the retrieval speeds we used custom hash functions to equally distribute the data into all the hashes.

 

These projects taught me the importance of team work, dividing work, keeping deadlines and other qualities essential to be a leader and as an engineer to work smart and efficiently . All this proved to be of great help when I spearheaded my team into the Intel Embedded challenge 2012 in my 3rdyear. The challenge was to build a Seed Selection machine. To select the seeds we used image processing techniques. A camera as used to take pictures of the seeds as they pass through the machine, to compare the seed’s shape, size, and color with a database of high quality seeds. We had a DB of high quality seed pictures to compare with the pictures taken during comparing mechanism. Though we didn’t get funding to build and demo the system, it was a learning experience for us and gained much exposure in embedded systems and image processing. All this hard work paid off when I got selected as a part of a 4 member team from our college for IBM ISL (Indian Software Labs) sponsored Smarter Planet (later I got to know that the examiners were impressed by the sorting algorithm I wrote to sort a 2gb data file and extract data from the file). In this project we explored ways to bring technology to rural India and remove age old farming traditions with modern techniques. I attended Summer School program in prestigious IISc (Indian Institute of Science) and learned about NLP, game theory and its applications.

 

For the first phase of our project we were tasked to build a web portal which can be customized to each individual farmer. As I had previously used Html, Css, php, Ajax in course based projects; it was relatively easy to successfully host our site on free web hosting services. Each farmer is provided with personalized web page and through it, he quickly accesses the rates at which crops are being sold in the nearest wholesale markets. If the crops have to be stored the closest warehouse or granaries are located, the tariffs and the details of the warehouse like storage area, cold storage facilities, closest access point or train yards are given to the farmers. We also provided a queries page where farmers can contact experts and get advice on crop diseases, the pesticides to use, nutrients that are necessary for growing that particular crop. The paper highlighting the main part of the project and use cases is published under IJCA (International Journal of Computer Applications) with me as one of the co-authors. Our paper also won the ‘Innovation Challenge’ in SRII-India ICESM (International conference 2012).

 

The second most crucial aspect was price prediction. For this we used a neural network and built a decision support system. I was inspired to use a DSS when I came across a paper by Keith Mathew’s. We used a neural network with 1 hidden layer, 4 inputs and 3 outputs. The inputs for the Neural Network were obtained from processing and extracting, previous decades crop prices, rainfall, irrigation and production details. After getting results from the neural network we used the DSS to better the accuracy of the predicted values. Example: We saw spiked increase in buying of flowers before festivities and we included such factors into the DSS. The main challenges were to mine the data necessary for the neural network form excel and word documents. We used text mining and formed DB’s to store information so subsequent searches would be faster. All the challenges I had faced before, helped me during this project, and I was able to lead my team in better way and we demoed the project in National level conferences like IT-BITZ, ImpressIT, I-Care

 

Today I work as an application delivery engineer in Volvo IT. As a fresh recruit in the DCL section, we work on front end applications, right from development to delivery of the finished application. I worked on ASP.Net and we also are trained in the maintenance of the current applications and providing patches and updates. The most challenging task, has been working across groups located at different geographic locations and collaborating with them to provide the best applications.

 

I strongly believe that computer engineers should be innovative, instinctive and able to adapt new technologies, which is possible only with solid foundation and guidance from good faculties. I love challenges and believe that practical implementation is the best to way to understand a concept. I don’t have ego problem and accept it when I don’t know certain skill and I try to develop and improve that skill. With every hurdle I have crossed, I make it a point to reflect how things could have been done better the next time and try to learn from my mistakes. These qualities, clubbed with sound analytical strength, logical capabilities, natural aptitude for mathematics and my motivation to excel, I am confident that The University of X , Y will provide me with a synergetic experience, conducive to the benefit of the system as well as the surrounding. As I am interested in research, and the Miams (multi-modal information access and synthesis), with its research courses like ‘analyst-centric retrieval’, ‘source modeling’ and Information Network Academic Research Center with research in ‘Real-time Data-Source Integration and Information Extraction’ match my research themes and I would be very keen to work with Dr. Dan Roth as I share some of his research interests.

[GeoDUDE!]

Honestly, this better be for a MS and not a PhD. I didn't read this very deeply, but my general feeling is that you are spending too much time on what inspired you and what you did in the past... that can all be done in 5 sentences. What you really need to do is show the graduate committee is your vision for the future. The questions they ask are, Why should we invest 2-5 years on you ? What do we get when your done? How will you make us look good? What problems are being researched currently in your field, and similar ones, and how do you plan on solving them?

 

 

Also, don't mention in your SoP anything thats on your CV. Remember, limited amount of space. They will see your publications. No need to tell them about it if its on your CV.

Edited August 10, 2013 by GeoDUDE!

[acarol]

It's a step forward, but it still needs work.  Your SOP is still a) very past focused and b ) full of sentences that aren't really communicating anything about your fit, focus, and future. 

 

- I maintain that you should delete the Edison quotation along with the "since I was a kid" focus in the opening paragraph.  I also think your first paragraph should give a clearer idea of what it is you are interested in studying in your MS. This paragraph has your only reference to your future research interests and it isn't substantial or detailed enough -- you need to convey that you know the field well and have a handle on what it is you want to study going forward.  While you don't have to suggest a research topic as specific as you would for a PhD SOP, I think your motivation for going to grad school needs to be more than broadening your perception or understanding data. 

-The following few paragraphs, as geoDUDE! said, are still too much about what you did before grad school / what has inspired you to go to grad school.  Granted, you have done a better job of integrating what you feel you've learned from these experiences.  But you don't take the final step of saying why that matters toward your present interest in pursuing your MS and your future prospects in the field.  You should really limit the description of these projects -- currently, you mention details about setup, results, challenges, etc.  That's not important to the adcomm. What's important is demonstrating how that is relevant preparation for your MS and how your current and future goals have come out of that experience.  If you want to give the adcomm a sentence or two of detail about project specifics, you should do that in your CV. 

Think of it like proving a thesis statement in an essay. Every time you write something in your SOP, ask yourself "so what?" -- why does this point matter in the context of your argument? In this case, your argument is that you are an excellent candidate for the MS program. Every single point you make must contribute to that argument.  If a point doesn't further that argument, either contextualize it so that it does or remove it altogether. 

-You still need to edit for flowery language / extraneous sentences.  You could delete the entire first four sentences of the final paragraph, as they either make obvious statements (e.g. computer engineers must adapt to new technologies) or are not conveying anything meaningful about your goals in pursuing a MS at this school (e.g. you don't have an ego problem).  Use the extra word count space you get as a result of deleting those sentences to write more about your research interests, your fit at this school, etc.

 

-When you mention Professor Roth, be explicit as you can about which of his research interests intersect with yours. This information is widely available -- it took me less than 30 seconds on Google to find his faculty profile, including a detailed description of his research. You should include at least one thing he studies that you're interested in, and why it interests you / how it intersects with your research goals. 

 

Maybe what's best at this juncture is to take a few days away from this draft.  You can use that time to think about what your SOP needs to accomplish, to research the department a bit more, to think about your reasons for pursuing the MS. Then, come back with fresh eyes and edit.  SOPs are difficult to write and taking your time to get through them is the best way to go!

*As an aside, I would add that, if you can, you should edit this post to remove identifying details (professor names, lab names). It's in your best interest to be as anonymous as possible when posting SOPs before the admissions process is over. 

Edited August 10, 2013 by acarol

[GeoDUDE!]

Another note, while this is in the same vein as my last post I think this is worth mentioning:

 

75% of your SoP should be about what you will do in their PhD program, what problems you want to solve, and why their PhD program will help you achieve those goals.  You currently devote one paragraph to that, with the exception that it doesn't lay out why you need to obtain a PhD in the first place. It seems that you have gotten what you wanted from an MS. 

 

Also, mention, specifically, whom you want to work with, or at least the lab, and why that lab will help you with the research problems that YOU want to solve. Remember, a PhD is the chance for YOU to develop a research program.

 

If this essay were written by someone with just a BA/BSc, it would be fine. Its not great, but its OK. But you have done a great deal of research, you need to show them that you actually thinking instead of just doing what some advisor says. You need to layout a vision. They expect more from you. They expect something closer to a research proposal. 

[kloud]

Honestly, this better be for a MS and not a PhD. I didn't read this very deeply, but my general feeling is that you are spending too much time on what inspired you and what you did in the past... that can all be done in 5 sentences. What you really need to do is show the graduate committee is your vision for the future. The questions they ask are, Why should we invest 2-5 years on you ? What do we get when your done? How will you make us look good? What problems are being researched currently in your field, and similar ones, and how do you plan on solving them?

 

 

Also, don't mention in your SoP anything thats on your CV. Remember, limited amount of space. They will see your publications. No need to tell them about it if its on your CV.

IT is for MS not PhD .... ya ill remove the publications and awards para's

[kloud]

It's a step forward, but it still needs work.  Your SOP is still a) very past focused and b ) full of sentences that aren't really communicating anything about your fit, focus, and future. 

 

- I maintain that you should delete the Edison quotation along with the "since I was a kid" focus in the opening paragraph.  I also think your first paragraph should give a clearer idea of what it is you are interested in studying in your MS. This paragraph has your only reference to your future research interests and it isn't substantial or detailed enough -- you need to convey that you know the field well and have a handle on what it is you want to study going forward.  While you don't have to suggest a research topic as specific as you would for a PhD SOP, I think your motivation for going to grad school needs to be more than broadening your perception or understanding data. 

-The following few paragraphs, as geoDUDE! said, are still too much about what you did before grad school / what has inspired you to go to grad school.  Granted, you have done a better job of integrating what you feel you've learned from these experiences.  But you don't take the final step of saying why that matters toward your present interest in pursuing your MS and your future prospects in the field.  You should really limit the description of these projects -- currently, you mention details about setup, results, challenges, etc.  That's not important to the adcomm. What's important is demonstrating how that is relevant preparation for your MS and how your current and future goals have come out of that experience.  If you want to give the adcomm a sentence or two of detail about project specifics, you should do that in your CV. 

Think of it like proving a thesis statement in an essay. Every time you write something in your SOP, ask yourself "so what?" -- why does this point matter in the context of your argument? In this case, your argument is that you are an excellent candidate for the MS program. Every single point you make must contribute to that argument.  If a point doesn't further that argument, either contextualize it so that it does or remove it altogether. 

-You still need to edit for flowery language / extraneous sentences.  You could delete the entire first four sentences of the final paragraph, as they either make obvious statements (e.g. computer engineers must adapt to new technologies) or are not conveying anything meaningful about your goals in pursuing a MS at this school (e.g. you don't have an ego problem).  Use the extra word count space you get as a result of deleting those sentences to write more about your research interests, your fit at this school, etc.

 

-When you mention Professor Roth, be explicit as you can about which of his research interests intersect with yours. This information is widely available -- it took me less than 30 seconds on Google to find his faculty profile, including a detailed description of his research. You should include at least one thing he studies that you're interested in, and why it interests you / how it intersects with your research goals. 

 

Maybe what's best at this juncture is to take a few days away from this draft.  You can use that time to think about what your SOP needs to accomplish, to research the department a bit more, to think about your reasons for pursuing the MS. Then, come back with fresh eyes and edit.  SOPs are difficult to write and taking your time to get through them is the best way to go!

*As an aside, I would add that, if you can, you should edit this post to remove identifying details (professor names, lab names). It's in your best interest to be as anonymous as possible when posting SOPs before the admissions process is over. 

Sorry to be such a burden !! I redid sm parts and saw through his current research project and pointed exactly what i want to pursue.

And tried to cut down the extraneous details of projects and showed how it fits to my MS ... any further suggestion ??

 

-----------------------------------------

 

With the abundance of data available online to us, ‘Search’ has become the most operation, to gather information.  Current search techniques are prominently keyword based and they use crawling and indexing techniques to retrieve the data. The next logical step to increase efficiency of the search engines is to improve both how data is stored and the searching algorithms. My motivation to pursue Master of Science in Database and Information Systems at Xyz University stems from the need to broaden my academic perception and to explore interdisciplinary fields, which can tackle the challenges currently faced and take ‘search’ as we know to the next level. Topics such as ‘Data integration’, ‘Text Retrieval and Mining’ and interdisciplinary research topic like ‘Computational Linguistics’ which couples AI , NLP with data processing have enthused  me, as they are crucial in speedy and accurate retrieval of data.

 

M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT) is a renowned university and because of my interests, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in Information Science and Engineering department. In my freshman year of college, I worked under Professor Dr. Lingaraju to develop a two player chess program. I was part of a 3 member group and we coded the entire game using C+ + without using any of the data structure or object oriented features because we weren’t taught of these in our freshman year. This taught me to work smart, plan, research better before actually starting the work. During my sophomore year I worked under Professor George Phillips, on System Software project to develop tool to detect and correct syntax errors in code. I was part of 4 member team and was appointed as head. I understood the dynamics of being leader and motivating people in our team and distributing work amongst the members. On the technical aspect we faced challenges in detecting the error and providing the correct solution for it. This was my first experience with data storage and retrieval and to improve time efficiency we used parallel processing on the data files to retrieve data faster. My task was to improve the time efficiency as we had to work on Intel Atom processors for the comparisons.  This gave me hands on experience and insight into storage of data and indexing for faster recovery. To further increase the retrieval speeds we used custom hash functions to equally distribute the data into all the hashes. I attended Summer School program in prestigious IISc (Indian Institute of Science) that year and learned about NLP, game theory and its applications, data indexing, computer graphics and other topics over course of 3 weeks.

 

These projects taught me the importance of team work, dividing work, keeping deadlines and other qualities essential to be a leader and as an engineer to work smart and efficiently . All this proved to be of great help when I spearheaded my team into the Intel Embedded challenge 2012 in my 3rdyear. The challenge was to build a Seed Selection machine. To select the seeds we used image processing techniques. A camera as used to take pictures of the seeds as they pass through the machine, to compare the seed’s shape, size, and color with a database of high quality seeds. We had a database of high quality seed pictures to compare with the pictures taken during comparing mechanism.

Though we didn’t get funding to build and demo the system, it was a learning experience for us and gained much exposure in embedded systems and image processing. All this hard work paid off when I got selected as a part of a 4 member team from our college for IBM ISL (Indian Software Labs) sponsored Smarter Planet (later I got to know that the examiners were impressed by the sorting algorithm I wrote to sort a 2gb data file). In this project we explored ways to bring technology to rural India and remove age old farming traditions with modern techniques

For the first phase of our project we were tasked to build a web portal which can be customized to each individual farmer. As I had previously used Html, Css, php, Ajax in course based projects; it was relatively easy to successfully host our site on free web hosting services. Each farmer is provided with personalized web page and through it, he quickly accesses the rates at which crops are being sold in the nearest wholesale markets. If the crops have to be stored; the closest warehouse or granaries are located on Google maps, and we also provided a queries page where farmers can contact experts.

The second most crucial aspect was price prediction. For this we used a neural network and built a decision support system. I was inspired to use a DSS when I came across a paper by Keith Mathew’s. We used a neural network for prediction. The inputs for the Neural Network (NN) were obtained from processing and extracting, previous decades crop prices, rainfall, and irrigation and production details. After getting results from the neural network we used the DSS to better the accuracy of the predicted values. We used parsers to extract the data from the text files and using Mysql, created databases to organize the data extracted to be used by the NN. As we developed both the front and back end of website from scratch, I understood the importance of getting accurate price information for the farmers and how to organize and present the data in neat understandable format. The search feature was limited to finding the disease types and pesticides to use, based on keyword based searching.

 

Today I work at Graduate Trainee in Volvo IT as a delivery to customer loyalty associate, and to quote my mentor, Mr. Miklos, “We spend about half our time, waiting machines for catch up to us and collect information we need”. Working with real time data and constantly updating databases at Volvo IT, I came to realize the actual complexity involved in organizing and storing the necessary information from the real time data. I strongly believe that computer engineers should be innovative, instinctive and able to adapt new technologies, which is possible only with solid foundation and guidance from good faculties. With every hurdle I have crossed, I make it a point to reflect how things could have been done better the next time and try to learn from my mistakes. These qualities, clubbed with sound analytical strength, logical capabilities, natural aptitude for mathematics and my motivation to excel, I am confident that The University of X , Y will provide me with a synergetic experience, conducive to the benefit of the system as well as the surrounding. As I am interested in research, and the Miams (multi-modal information access and synthesis), with its research courses like ‘analyst-centric retrieval’, ‘source modeling’ and Information Network Academic Research Center with research in ‘Real-time Data-Source Integration and Information Extraction’ match my research themes and I would be very keen to work with Dr. X as I share his current research interests in NLP based search and information extraction in the Intelligent information access theme.

[zoepatel2]

Hey,

 

It does look better from your first attempt but I did quick read through and can point out some glaring errors like the fonts don't look the same and I just noticed a typo in the word 'modeling' in the last paragraph. Also I think your a little over the character/word limit. 

 

Best of luck!

Zoe

Edited August 17, 2013 by zoepatel2