SOP Sample for MS in Computer Science in the US

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

"Life begins at the end of comfort zone" – Neale Donald Walsch

I feel that we are all intended to be great, so if we all remain stuck in our comfort zones, the universe will sit idle. I've developed a keen eye for the latest technologies around me, and I have always been fascinated by the science of computers and information systems since schooling. While pursuing a Master's in Computer Science at [UNIVERSITY_1], I hope to enhance my knowledge of this technical field and acquire the expertise needed to progress further. Additionally, I aspire to enhance my capabilities and explore my potential and I am also excited by artificial intelligence, which is quickly becoming an integral component of every technology we are using today. I find it incredible that machines can learn and act like humans is something holding a large potential to transform our lives. Despite the tough competition across all technical areas, and the in-depth knowledge required to handle challenges that may arise in these directions over the coming years, we expect the race to be fierce and your esteemed university will provide that necessary exposure through the Graduate Course in order to discover it in greater depth.

Shedding light on my trajectory until now, I have achieved 9.8 CGPA in my Schooling which was the Top Score in my region, and Higher Secondary school with an aggregate of 96%. I was one of the 3% of students chosen out of 200k applicants to get admission into [UNIVERSITY_2], one of India's top private universities, for my undergraduate studies.

To put my knowledge into practice, I took a project under [PROFESSOR_1] on Data Mining during my sophomore year. Her immense knowledge in machine learning inspired me to choose a real-time project titled "Cab Recommendation System". The system I Developed for recommending the Lowest Cab Fare uses Data Mining Techniques like Data Reduction to reduce the volume of the data and maintain data integrity, Attribute Subset Selection is to select a subset of attributes to avoid redundancy and by using Decision Trees, the system recommends cab fares that are the least expensive with a high degree of accuracy. This work stood at One of the Top 5 Best Projects in the semester. My understanding of the subject was greatly enriched by this project.

I believe that an internship would be an excellent opportunity for me to gain industry experience and put my skills to use. In this regard, I Interned as an Android Developer at [COMPANY_1], one of the highly competitive Indian Railway eTicketing companies. I was responsible for both front-end and back-end development in order to integrate mobile recharge capabilities into their service. I developed an Interactive and Mobile Friendly App UI using HTML, CSS, and JAVA for the Back-End process. It was my first real-time industry project which I deployed in production within a very short time.

In my senior year, I took advantage of a Second Internship opportunity as a Research Intern offered by [COMPANY_2] to work in one of the prestigious labs "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Lab (AIR Labs)" for 9 months. It's been my privilege to work on real-time AI projects such as "Synthetic Voice Emotion Generation" using Deep-Learning techniques like CycleGAN to Create a different Voice Emotion than the Input Voice. As a result, researchers would be able to generate more data for their experiments without having to rely on human intervention which in turn reduces the time and improves the model performance. My internship experience changed the way I look at the problem and being exposed to various domains and technologies has boosted my confidence to take up any new challenge.

In my spare time, I experimented with an Object Detection module using CRF-Net (Camera Radar Fusion Network) on publicly available radar sensor data in order to understand how the combination of radar sensors and camera images can be used to Detect Objects and Measure the Distance from Objects in automated vehicles. I also Developed a UI Interface in Python which performs Image Processing Operations of an input image in the backend using OpenCV and displays processed histograms and translated images. This Interface Allows users to do Code-Free Image Processing operations. I had my hands on developing a Command-Line Tool using Scala that performs Data Completeness and 12 Statistical Feature-Level operations on a numerical dataset. This tool will let the user choose the type of operation they want to perform on each feature.

After my graduation, I got a Full-Time opportunity in [COMPANY_3], a company that provides simplified Healthcare Solutions using Automation. For the last 16 months, I was working as a Research Engineer which helped me in improving existing methodologies and developing new technologies using engineering knowledge. I Developed an Algorithm using Scala which Automatically generates HCPCS codes for Electronic Health Records, which was significantly faster than manually generating the same codes. Along with development, I also got an opportunity to work on Research Projects like Named Entity Recognition (NER) on Medical data (Electronic Health Records) using BILSTM and CRF models to Capture Clinical and Non-Clinical variables from Medical Records to extract medical entities like Drugs, Medication, Gene, etc from unstructured data. Extending this work, I am currently working on leveraging the NER task on Conversational Text Medical Data using BioBert as a reference model, which not just recognizes the entities but also considers the contextual information in a sentence for Enhanced Tagging. As part of a POC for a client who requested NER on Podcast Data, I developed a Named Entity Recognition module using BertNER and also Rule-base entity Extraction module, where I ensembled both modules to get better accuracy. All these components are integrated together to build an end-to-end machine learning pipeline. A CEO's appreciation was a testament to a successful project, as this project has been developed in a very short span and got acceptance from the client.

Despite being academically active, I always enjoyed extracurricular activities. I was a member of an NGO called [ORGANIZATION_1] which works on Empowering Rural India with Digital Education. As a volunteer, along with my team, I visited rural schools to Teach kids Vocabulary, English stories to improve their listening and reading skills, moral stories to improve their self-esteem, and internet knowledge such as using email, browsing, etc and I was elected as a Director of Quality Controller for the NGO. Furthermore, I was a member of the [UNIVERSITY_2] Trekking club and organized many treks to impart knowledge and to spread awareness about the importance of fitness.

Future innovations will be determined by the need to be innovative and think outside the box, and I want to be a part of such fascinating endeavors. With optimistic thoughts, I look forward to gaining explicit knowledge to go above and beyond. My technical knowledge would be strengthened as a result of the Master's program. [UNIVERSITY_1]'s esteemed faculty, outstanding research facilities, and master's program structure make it an ideal choice for graduate studies. For instance, the idea that [PROFESSOR_2] has patented a method to leverage text, image, and video sources from social networks to mine information, which seems fascinating. And his articles on data mining and machine learning are remarkable. On the other hand, [PROFESSOR_3]'s research on data mining perspective to detect fake news on social media is significant. Having chosen to pursue a career in Computer Science, I completely comprehend the level of dedication and perseverance required for a graduate program. I sincerely hope to be admitted to [UNIVERSITY_1] in the United States, because I believe I have the skills and willingness to successfully pursue graduate studies while contributing to the community.

Regards, [APPLICANT_NAME]