any comments on my sop ?

[neurotoxins]

                                     Statement of Interest

 

Like every kid, I wanted to be everything, right from the NASCAR racer to the astronaut, but I never stopped looking for my true passion and love. It was the year that I took a gap between my high school and college that introduced me to my passion for computers.

 

Coming from a family of mathematicians, I always had a profound interest on math and science subjects and scored well throughout my academic years. My teachers had an irrefutable influence on me and helped me to mold myself to what I’m today, responsible, explorative and compassionate.

 

With the exponential growth of everyday technology it has become a must-do task to delve more and more into the subject area and make them more efficient both in terms of speed and costs. To realize my career goal of a research oriented position, my first step is to obtain a Master’s degree followed by a doctoral one. I believe this could give me an ideal opportunity to probe and unravel the intricacies of my interested field and achieve my goals with great amount of freedom.

 

Artificial intelligence and Data Management are close to my interests. I believe that an AI system reflects the intelligence of the programmer. Managing data and making use of already available data interests me, but I’m open to other subjects as well. I have benefited from the wide prospect of subjects taught at our college (vidya vikas institute of technology-JNTUH). This has provided me with an opportunity to learn and understand various concepts of computer science and engineering like the Finite Automata, Operating systems, Computer Graphics, DBMS etc., and practical implementation of the same.

 

During the second year of my 4 year under graduation program, I was presented with an opportunity to be a Microsoft Student Partner. This gave me the perfect platform to showcase and improve my skills and work closely with an industry giant of my subject domain. The MSP program has a great influence on me. This opportunity also helped me to discover the leadership and management side of myself.

It was in the month of March 2013, that I was called to give a demo on ethical hacking in a National conference held by C-DAC, a R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Indian Government). This opportunity helped me to push my limits as it had me demoing the drawbacks of current profile recovery systems of social networks like facebook in front of the Industry leaders and an audience of 1100+ students, faculty and professionals. Events like these helped me to prepare myself for the next step of my career and kept me motivated.

 

I received a scholarship which covered full tuition fee in my schooling years from 5^th to 12^th, it was an institutional level scholarship. Principal of my school and other member of the school management believed in me and offered me the scholarship.

 

No education is complete without practical experience, I got my experience through an internship at Edukinect as an app developer. It was a three month paid internship from May-2013 to July-2013, where I was exposed to the design and development of apps on windows phone, windows 8 platforms and windows azure as a background service. I also worked as a freelancer trainer with Edukinect, where I trained students from various colleges on app development on Microsoft platforms.

 

Even though not generally included in the curriculum, the importance of certifications is irrefutable. I did my certifications as a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Microsoft Specialist (Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist) to establish myself as a professional grade developer.

 

I seek to fulfil my goals and follow my passion in an environment that encourages and uplifts creativity and innovation. After following the UBC’s research in the fields of AI, Data management and other areas closely and proliferate reputation of the University, I believe it would be better suited to me than elsewhere.

 

In a conclusive note, I would like to add that graduate study at UBC will be most logical extension of my academic pursuits and a major step towards achieving my career objectives. I would be grateful if I get the opportunity to pursue my graduate studies at UBC.

[ratlab]

Just a few comments right off:

 

- Your first two sentences are extremely cliche and irrelevant. No one cares that you were a normal child who wanted to drive in NASCAR or be an astronaut (to be blunt); find a better (and more mature) way to start your statement.

 

- Your SoP is very segmented and doesn't flow very well as you seem to separate everything into 1-2 sentence paragraphs, and some of your sentences are awkward or lack correct grammar (such as "Principal of my school and member..." and "I got experience").  

 

- Your transitions could use a lot of work as it is not sufficient just stating your opinion on the value of an experience or component of education ("no education is complete without..." and "the importance of certifications"). I can refute that, and I can disagree as to the importance of certificates. This type of transition hurts the flow of your SoP.

 

I don't have much time now, but I'll try to come back to this and give you more specific feedback and edits, but I suggest you read it aloud to yourself.  Good luck!

Edited December 12, 2013 by ratlab

[sunpenguin]

The big positive here is that your writing flows nicely. However, I agree with what ratlab said about the opening. I would jump right into your professional goals. In addition, almost everything in the SOP is stated twice, in different words. Try making the changes below and then see if the statement still seems segmented. I suspect it will flow better if you take out extraneous restatements of your points.    I've put my additions in blue, and my comments to you within the SOP in brackets. I hope this will help a little! Good luck!

 

Like every kid, I wanted to be everything, right from the NASCAR racer to the astronaut, but I never stopped looking for my true passion and love. It was the year that I took a gap between my high school and college that introduced me to my passion for computers.

 

Coming from a family of mathematicians, I always had a profound interest on math and science subjects and scored well throughout my academic years. My teachers had an irrefutable influence on me and helped me to mold myself to what I’m today, responsible, explorative and compassionate.

 

With the exponential growth of everyday technology it has become a must-do task to delve more and more into the subject area and make them software more efficient both in terms of speed and costs. To realize my career goal of a research oriented position, my first step is to obtain a Mmaster’s degree followed by a doctoral one PhD. ["One" at the end of the sentence sounded awkward.] I believe this could give me This will provide an ideal opportunity to probe and unravel the intricacies of my interested field and achieve my goals with great amount of freedom.

 

Artificial intelligence and Ddata Mmanagement are close to my primary interests. I believe that an AI system reflects the intelligence of the programmer. Managing data and making use of already available data interests me, but I’m open to other subjects as well. I have benefited from the wide prospect range of subjects taught at our college (vidya vikas institute of technology-JNTUH). [Capitalize college name!] This has provided me with an opportunity to learn and understand various concepts of My expertise in computer science and engineering like includes the Finite Automata, Ooperating systems, Ccomputer Ggraphics, DBMS etc., [never use etc. in formal writing] and practical implementation of the same.

 

[From this point onward, I've stopped doing a complete edit and I've just deleted some of the restated or unnecessary wording. You still need to correct grammar (especially removing the capitalization of common nouns) and rephrase awkward sentence structure in the paragraphs below. The last two paragraphs can definitely be combined. Look for other places where you can combine paragraphs as well.]

 

During the second year of my 4 year under graduation undergraduate program, I was presented with an opportunity to be a Microsoft Student Partner. This gave me the perfect platform to showcase and improve my skills and work closely with an industry giant of my subject domain. The MSP program has a great influence on me. This opportunity also helped me to discover the leadership and management side of myself.

It was in the month of March 2013, that I was called to give a demo on ethical hacking in a National conference held by C-DAC, a R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Indian Government). This opportunity helped me to push my limits as it had me demoing the drawbacks of current profile recovery systems of social networks like facebook in front of the Industry leaders and an audience of 1100+ students, faculty and professionals. Events like these helped me to prepare myself for the next step of my career and kept me motivated.

 

I received an institutional scholarship which covered full tuition fee in my schooling years from 5^th to 12^th, it was an institutional level scholarship. Principal of my school and other member of the school management believed in me and offered me the scholarship.

 

No education is complete without practical experience, [No need to tell the adcomm sweeping generalities. Tell them about you.   ] I got my experience through an internship at Edukinect as an app developer. It During was a three month paid internship as an app developer at Edukinect, from May-2013 to July-2013, where I was exposed to the designed and developedment of apps on windows phone, windows 8 platforms and windows azure as a background service. I also worked as a freelancer trainer with Edukinect, where I trained students from various colleges on app development on Microsoft platforms.

 

Even though not generally included in the curriculum, the importance of certifications is irrefutable. I did my certifications as a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Microsoft Specialist (Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist) to establish myself as a professional grade developer.

 

I seek to fulfil my goals and follow my passion in an environment that encourages and uplifts creativity and innovation. After following the UBC’s research in the fields of AI, Data management and other areas closely and proliferate reputation of the University, I believe it would be better suited to me than elsewhere.

 

In a conclusive note, I would like to add that gGraduate study at UBC will be the most logical extension of my academic pursuits and a major step towards achieving my career objectives. I would be grateful if I get the opportunity to pursue my graduate studies at UBC.

[neurotoxins]

thank you ratlab and sunpenguin    please do help me with the start and i have a gap year between my high school and college how should i mention it ? 

Edited December 12, 2013 by neurotoxins

[Icydubloon]

You said two, very broad subjects: artificial intelligence and data management. What specifically are you interested in? Robotics, data mining, distributed data management, query optimization, autonomous vehicles, schema design? The people reading your application have strong backgrounds in math and computing. Being specific will get them more "excited" about your SOP. The more specific you are (while taking into account the school's research areas), the better your SOP will be.

 

Hope this helps.

[Queen of Kale]

I wouldn't worry about mentioning the gap year unless you can tie it to something specific that bolsters your SOP - an independent research project, relevant work experience, or a course which informed your current path.  Don't explain a gap year just because you feel you have to account for every moment.  Most adcoms won't notice a gap year because they won't be interested in what you did before college.