SOP

1. Why are you interested in that graduate program?

2. What are your academic, professional, and

3. How do these experiences make you an ideal

4. What are your plans after completing your degree?

Draft 1

Data has been an integral part of everyday life now, and the ever-evolving nature of data-driven
insights driving business and everyday decisions has been quite popular and efficient. During
my high school days, I was introduced to the concept of coding because computer science was
one of the subjects I undertook as a part of my curriculum. While I was learning to code, C++
was the very first language that got me into the domain, and as and when I progressed, the
college opened various doors for me. Moreover, working with data gives me a sense of purpose,
as I got more into analyzing the data I was tasked with, it made me explore tools and ways of
dealing with data.
While studying at the university, I could correlate statistical methods with data because I was
learning to implement techniques like decision trees and neural networks as a part of Data
Structures as my course subject. As the semesters progressed, I was introduced to Machine
Learning and how data can be used to create valuable learning models. I understood that
Machine Learning has a core relation with statistical methods like the concept of logistic
regression which also gave me insight into prediction models and how this field can help me
understand the process of automation. These sorts of events throughout my undergraduate
gave me a direction that I firmly believe to be my calling, ie, Data Science. After my graduation, I
joined a company wherein I was tasked to handle a team of 10 contractual employees. On one
hand, the team’s main task was data mining and collection. On the other, I was in charge of
monitoring that data and presenting meaningful insights from it. The work concerned doctors in
the USA, so we were tasked to collect information regarding the same. For example, once I was
tasked to report regarding the specialties of doctors and their density in multiple states of the
USA giving insights driving the priority queue for outreach programs, I used multiple heatmaps
for market cap, highly-valued specialty, etc. I also had the curiosity to explore automation, so
when I was introduced to the concept of operational efficiency within the organization. I started
exploring scripts for automation using Java script wherein I was able to minimize the time taken
for certain processes. While I was already into visualization, I began experimenting with different
dashboards, be they static or dynamic.
Up until the mid-journey of my professional career, I was heavily involved in the technical
aspects of things. However, as things progressed I started working on a sports event company
with my co-founder. I have been passionate about basketball since school and wanted to create
something in that space. Although working on a basketball event helped me learn management
and operational skills to a great degree, I also learned the power of data and how one can drive
decisions based on it. I have been working on creating sponsorship packages based on the
metrics I retrieved from my company's website and social channels. Also, the same data is
being used to drive the content strategy for the social media of the company.
Recently, I also took up a data analytics specialization with an eight-part course by Google
wherein I learned the concept of asking the right questions to solve a problem and how to clean
and organize the data.
Furthermore, after being able to prepare my data, I moved to the analysis phase of the course
wherein I used different statistical tools to aggregate data and generate visualizations for it.
Although I had learned and implemented SQL before the specialization, it was a useful course
in the program that helped me explore the tool even further with the introduction of nested
queries. Tableau was another tool for visualization that immensely helped me experiment with
data. Lastly, I was tasked with a case study to analyze open-source data from a fitness tracker
and give insights to a fitness-based brand owner. For this, I used R programming as my main
tool wherein I majorly used tidyverse and ggplot2 libraries for my analysis.
I believe to have built a foundation to pursue Data Science at your esteemed University, wherein
the program would help me dive deeper into the world of Data and Intelligence as I find the
courses within the degree in sync with my goals. While your university is a great fit for me, I
believe that taking me as a candidate would include a diverse set of skills along with the core
skill set. As I have embarked on the journey, my immediate goals include working for a reputed
firm as a Data Scientist to understand the application aspect of the degree whereas my larger
set of goals includes building something in the space of Artificial Intelligence, one idea revolves
around my current company wherein I can integrate Data and Intelligence for better overall
development of an athlete.

Note - Closing is incomplete, need to address the university while asking them to consider my
application.

Draft 2
With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, the importance of data-driven insights is rising. These
insights have been a driving force for business decisions and daily life alike. Although my affinity
towards data science developed at university, growing up I was surrounded by computers and
data because of my father’s venture. And while I was engaging with computers, I got involved in
games. Besides the thrill of participating in a video game, the stats at the end of every session
intrigued me and I was always analyzing those stats to polish my gaming skills.
Moreover, trading in-game assets was one of the activities that I enjoyed the most. My friends
and I used to predict prices based on previous data through charts and tables. As high school
began, I took my interest further by choosing computer science as my elective.

As I enrolled in college, a wide range of possibilities opened up for me. While I started learning
Javascript and web development, I got hooked on data and its endless applications as the
degree program progressed. Moreover, I was inclined toward the analytical aspect of exploring
data enabling me to expose myself to various related tools and methods. Data Structure was
one of the major subjects at the university which helped me integrate statistical methods or tools
like regression with concepts like neural networks and decision trees. Furthermore, the
introduction of learning models within the purview of the subject, Machine Learning further
expanded my understanding of application-based statistics like the concept of logistic
regression used in classification, which gave me a basic knowledge of prediction models and
automation.

Recently, my zeal for data and its applications led me to undertake a data analytics
specialization with an eight-part course by Google wherein I learned the concept of asking the
right questions for problem-solving along with data preparation and analysis. The program
included various methods of sorting and filtering data, which was followed by preparation and
analysis of the data. During the specialization, I was introduced to multiple tools, including R
programming, SQL, and Tableau. My capstone project was a case study that involved a
high-tech company that manufactures health-focused smart products for women. I was solving
for business growth via marketing strategy based on the insights from analyzing open-source
health tracker data, wherein I used basic statistical methods and R programming to gain
insightful trends thus arriving at three user personas for their marketing campaign.

After graduating, I joined a healthcare-based tech company wherein I was assigned to a team of
10 contractual employees, who were involved in data collection. Besides managing a team and
the data they procured, I was tasked to create dashboards for performance-monitoring which
helped in rectifying and avoiding inconsistencies within the data collected. Moreover, I used
insights from those dashboards to create a prerequisite data filtration using Javascript.
Furthermore, I was also involved in data mining of the larger dataset collected by the team thus
providing useful insights.

While I am heavily invested in the world of data, I also enjoy the sport of basketball. From
playing it to starting my venture of basketball events. It has helped me develop good
communication and management skills. Although I had prior experience in organizing cultural
events because I was a part of the organizing team of the college cultural fest.

While I believe to have acquired a foundation for Data Science, there is still a lot of ground to
cover and an esteemed university would be a pivotal point in my journey. And [Your University]
would enable me to garner the knowledge that I require because of the structured program and
industry-relevant subjects which would help me gain a vantage point for achieving my goals.