Personal Statement (PS) Template (English) Computer Major
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Personal Statement
According to Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” For me, artificial intelligence represents this kind of magic. Nowadays, the amount of data generated by humans and machines far outpaces our capacity to absorb, interpret, and analyze. AI has emerged as a solution for complex decision-making owing to its powerful and efficient feature extraction abilities. As novel as the field is, AI is no longer an unfamiliar concept to me since I have accumulated a wealth of experience through my bachelor’s study and extra-curricular projects. For instance, I have been in charge of a team of six in the Smart Campus Project - E-Canteen Management System since 2022, which offers a series of functions, including dish identification, contact-free payment, food recommendation, order management, data visualization, etc. A cutting-edge object-recognition algorithm - YOLOv5, which localizes and categorizes dishes by simultaneously regressing spatially separated bounding box and its associated class probability, was improved in accuracy and robustness by my inventive use of transfer and active learning techniques. Through collecting data, training and deploying the model, tuning hyperparameters, and evaluating results, I gained a deeper understanding of DL and improved my skills in transferring research findings to practical application. Although we have been recognized with the Second Prize in the 8th “Internet+” Competition and even invested in by the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program for College Students, I realize that there are still many areas to be improved, such as the unbalance of samples and the accuracy of few-shot learning. My limited amount of pertinent knowledge, however, prevents me from moving forward. To address this issue, I decided to pursue a postgraduate degree afterward to acquire more professional skills. I find this program provided by your prestigious university strikes me as the most suitable.
Having spent over three years studying Computer Science and Technology at XXX University, I have benefited from its high-quality teaching and practice-focused curricula. I have obtained professional mathematics and computer science training from modules like Linear Algebra, Optimization Methods, Object-Oriented Programming, Software Engineering, etc., laying a solid academic background to pursue a postgraduate degree. With my great efforts, I have achieved a high GPA of 4.3 over 5.0, ranking third among the 46 students in my class. Since entering college, my passion for Artificial Intelligence has fueled my enrollment in several electives related to this field, including Machine Learning and Design of Artificial Intelligence Projects. This allowed me to develop a mathematical understanding of how the human brain processes information. The more I learn, the more I am convinced that this is the right direction to which I want to devote the rest of my life. With this idea in mind, I chose Multi-Task Anatomical Landmark Detection based on U-Net as my undergraduate thesis topic, which plays a crucial role in segmentation, registration, medical diagnosis, biomechanical modeling, and surgery planning and guidance. Due to limited medical imaging data and intra-individual ambiguity, the thesis focuses on unleashing the potential of big data and improving accuracy by aggregating universal features from similar tasks and refining landmark locations with spatial context information, respectively. I appreciate the knowledge having gained in the past. Still, more importantly, I have accumulated valuable practical experience, which will be a huge asset to my postgraduate education and a decisive advantage in my application.
Apart from my study in college, I have sought out many opportunities to improve my abilities by participating in various extra-curriculum activities. In 2021, I studied in the NC State University Summer Online Data Science Program, where I grasped the skills of data visualization and analysis using Tableau and Python and earned the Outstanding Performance Student (First Prize) for my excellent performance. During this program, I led a team of four students from different cultures, like America and Korea, to finish two group projects: “Financial Crisis Prediction” and “Epidemiological Trends of COVID-19 in China.” Our projects received much positive feedback through our mutual efforts, and my communication and cooperation skills were enormously improved while working together. This experience profoundly impacted me as it reminded me to leave my comfort zones and improve myself on a broader stage. I have therefore decided to apply for this master’s program at the XXX University, and I am looking forward to meeting more talented peers and learning from them.
The reasons why I am determined to apply for this master’s degree at the XXX University are clear and strong. Firstly, this unique program equips me with mathematical methods and engineering expertise to solve real-world problems. For instance, the core module “Mathematics for AI” introduces the fundamental theories underlying AI, and the elective “Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition” covers advanced topics of pattern recognition while emphasizing both theories and applications. Secondly, the academic excellence of XXX University is worldwide, and the Department of Computer and Information Science is composed of high-level international researchers from medical image analysis to autonomous driving and has fifteen laboratories with advanced facilities. The first year after graduation, I plan to apply for a research assistant position at a university or institution to gain experience in my area of interest. Then I would seek a Ph.D. to delve further into this subject. I am confident that a degree from XXX University would give me additional competitiveness. Thirdly, life at XXX University is enjoyable and fruitful. Various events like symposia and competitions are organized by the department, where I could explore intriguing topics like Intelligent Driving. To conclude, I am longing to become part of this rigorous academic atmosphere. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you could favorably consider my application and give me a chance to study at your university.