Please review my SOP for CMU MISM program: NUS, 2.8 ys experience

[praneetha17]

When a visually impaired person used an Android app that I developed to navigate a crowded train station in Singapore easily, I knew that no matter what I do, I would work towards it being beneficial to the society. The growth in technology in the past decade has provided endless opportunities to work on that and prompted me to pursue bachelors degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. During my study there, I didn’t just learn the technical aspects of a subject, but also to apply them in the real world and skills to build more on them. During my work at Merck, a giant Pharmaceutical company, I worked to learn and implement effective systems and projects that helped the company invest more in saving lives around the world. Management and proper applications of technology is as important as the technology itself. And with this viewpoint, I jumped on every opportunity I got to learn and showcase more about technology management. However, I believe a Masters in Information Systems Management (MISM) degree from Carnegie Mellon will give me a bigger boost to realise my goal of creating effective technological solutions.

            I must admit I had no technology background prior to my undergraduate studies which affected my scores in my freshman year. However, I persevered and took up online courses while working on my other modules. When Apple Inc. launched the first ever iPhone, I attended several seminars to discuss how the breakthrough can impact the world in a positive way. I started learning mobile technologies in my free time. During my work in Technopreneurship and Incubation Program at my university, my team and I developed and pitched business plans for various technologies and mobile apps including automated home security management through mobile.

As part of the winter business exchange program to the major business cities in India, Mumbai and Hyderabad, I was one of the few people to meet with the several managing directors of the prominent retailers to discuss with them on how crowdsourcing technologies, especially in collaboration with universities, can benefit both parties. I also worked on a business plan for companies to provide updates regularly to their customers directly to their phones. This plan caters especially to the Indian market with a huge customer base for middle class and constantly rising mobile phone users. I decided that I wanted to work on fostering the bridge between technology and business to help corporates and consumers at the same time.

            My academic projects also provided me with an outlet to work on different upcoming technologies. Even though I did not do well in my object oriented programming module taken in my freshman year, I worked continuously to improve those skills and learn, as I progressed into my senior years.  As part of my final year project, I developed an android application that communicates with a transmitter-receiver kit that my partner built into the walking cane to help the visually impaired navigate public places. The app was praised by the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH) for its ease, convenience and usability. As part of a team for my Software Engineering Course, I developed a desktop to-do application using C# that connects with google calendars, facebook and other custom applications to help individuals keep track of their items as well as remind them of upcoming tasks. This course also helped me build more skills in general programming and software project management that I used in my other courses and during my work as a Web Platform Engineer.

            Working at Merck provided me with a lot of opportunities to learn, build and utilise my technological skills while working with and managing teams across the globe. During my first year, to solve the problem of slow or unresponsive Microsoft Sharepoint pages in parts of Asia Pacific and Australia branches, I helped design, build and test the infrastructure in Singapore. This system would support delivery of pages directly instead of routing through our main data centre in the United States. Confident that I was able to manage this project on my own with the help of one of my colleagues, I headed the project of building a customized intranet site that would handle requests for the Merck internal SAP system and store data into one of our Oracle databases all through the process of a workflow that is run on a Microsoft Sharepoint site. This system is currently used by the Singapore Merck team and handle around 100 requests daily. I worked on building an archiving system for unstructured data collected from Sharepoint Sites. Pharma companies have a lot of confidential records and data dated years back that need to be archived and be available readily and this system made that easier.

            I was then asked to work with our Cloud and Web Platform Services team to help administer, customize and manage the cloud environment that Merck decided to adopt. I worked with my team in New Jersey to retire a content deployment system that was about a decade old and built a new cost-effective system that syncs developers code into the cloud and help them deploy their content into production systems within seconds. I am currently working on customising the Amazon cloud services to better fit Merck’s needs in terms of security and usability as well as migrating the existing infrastructure from the data centre to cloud. Working with cross-cultural teams located in the United States, Prague, Asia Pacific region and Australia gave me amazing learning opportunities not just regarding work cultures but also regarding the challenges of managing teams overseas, importance of communication, challenges of time-difference and necessity of collaboration and work towards common goals.

            I can proudly say that my education has evolved from just learning to survive in a class with students from different countries to being able to survive the culture shock, learning from mistakes, perseverance, building up soft skills, learning the importance of communication. Time and again, I have tried to put all these lessons to use in my work and I see the results very positively. My curiosity to learn more and implement it to my work pulled me towards higher education that will help me achieve it. And hence, I apply to the CMU MISM Program in hopes of pushing my career towards effective use of technology and management and the importance of them put together for an effective enterprise. 

[mrxplek]

very unstructured essay.there is no link between the various works.try to explain acads then work.work go chronologically.it seems random on tour SOP.explain more about why you choose the program.research,coursework,faculty etc.not too much but just a para rather than 1-2 lines

[StudyStar]

The good thing about your SOP is that you provide a lot of specific details about projects you have worked on and contributed to, and the anecdote about the Android app makes for a strong opener/hook (you just need to develop it more.) One thing that jumps out at me right away is the length; at over 1,000 words, it's a bit long (this can be fixed in two ways: 1) phrasing things in a less wordy way, and 2) cutting excess details. Does the program specify a word count limit?

 

You need a better way of tying all these paragraphs together in a way that gives the SOP organization/structure and allows it to "flow" smoothly and logically from one paragraph to the next. Also, this statement is problematic: "I must admit I had no technology background prior to my undergraduate studies which affected my scores in my freshman year. However, I persevered and took up online courses while working on my other modules." It's not quite clear what you mean. The wording could also be changed to de-emphasize the negative aspect and EMPHASIZE the positive. Something like "Although I had no technology background prior to my undergraduate studies, I faced the challenge head-on by taking on online courses...." In this way, you can say the same thing without stating directly that your scores/grades were affected.

Hope this helps!

David

Edited December 24, 2014 by fuzzylogician
edited to remove advertisement