Program: MS in Computer Science I grew up in Oscar, Ohio, where I attended Pleasant Meadows High School, a nationally recognized college preparatory institution. Pleasant Meadows is a public school which all academically inclined students throughout the city can attend if they manage to pass an entrance examination. t Pleasant Meadows I was placed in the honors program! later I too" six ad#anced placement courses, recei#ing college credit for fi#e of them. I also completed three full years of $ree" and two full years of ad#anced $erman. I graduated from Pleasant Meadows in the top ten percent of my class. %pon graduating Pleasant Meadows I was accepted to &arillon &ross %ni#ersity. Since my family was of #ery modest means, I relied hea#ily on financial aid. I immediately decided to become a chemical engineer, a decision that was not wel l informed. My first seme ster at &arillon &ross was promising, but I struggled through the next three years pursuing a career that I e#entually had to admit did not interest me. I learned from this experience that my true strengths and interests lay not in applied technology but, rather, in the philosophical constructs of scientific principles. So, it is not surprising that, in reaction to my unsatisfactory engineering experience, I spent the next year and a half in the humanities, completing a '.. degree in history, which I was awarded in the Spring of ()*+. I excelled during my studies in the history department, but I decided that I did not want to pursue graduate study in the field. hile considering career options, I too" the -S, -S, which strongly te sts analytical ability, placing in the )/th percentile. Howe#er, I really wanted to pursue a career in the sciences. I "new that I wanted to continue my education, but I was out of money. So, I got a 0ob wor"ing for %ni#ersity 1e#elopment at &arillon &ross as a P& programmer. My 0ob duties were to de#elop a database reporting system to trac" potential donors to the uni#ersity. I was #ery successful and was 2uic"ly promoted 3within 4 months5 to manager of the donor accounting department, but, more importantly, I disco#ered that I truly en0oyed wor"ing with computers. I li"ed the creati#e possibilities in programming! e#en more, I was intrigued with the process of modeling problems and then implementing different solutions through programming. I realized then that I wanted to learn more about computing. So, I decided to use my tuition wai#er benefit to begin to explore the computer engineering6science field. I started to ta"e classes towards a '.S. in computer engineering, but later switched to computer science because I wanted to wor" more with ideas and less with implementation. I was able to ta"e one course 3sometimes two5 per semester, which will enable me to recei#e my '.S. this Spring 3())75. s you can see from my transcript, in all of the courses that I ha#e ta"en while employed, I ha#e recei#ed only letter grades of or ' 37./ $P5. Meanwhile, I recei#ed two more 0ob promotions and currently hold the title of Senior Manager in d#ancement Ser#ices. My 0ob is e2ui#alent to a programmer6analyst II, but re2uires extensi#e "nowledge of %ni#ersity d#ancement and has managerial responsibilities as well. I spend much of my time programming on an I'M 8S)999 mainframe system as well as wor"ing with many P& applications. I feel that I ha#e grown tremendously as a person through my employment at &arillon &ross. I ha#e learned a lot about myself! for instance, I find teaching others to be #ery rewarding 3something I would li"e to pursue further along academic lines5. lthough my employment of fi#e years with the uni#ersity has taught me many #aluable s"ills, I find the wor" to be unchallenging and de#oid of ideas. It pains me to lea#e the security of a good 0ob and many close friends to go bac" to school, but, I am #ery committed to my career goals. My sincerest desire is to become a computer scientist. Specifically, I am interested in exploring how problems can be modeled and sol#ed using artificial intelligence. I also want to learn about human cognition and machine intelligence. I ha#e been studying the debate o#er whether machines will e#er become :intelligent: gi#en the current course of research and reading about such issues as whether a m achine can ac2uire :common sense: 3as discussed in Hubert 1reyfus;s boo" hat &omputers Still &an;t 1o5. I ha#e been exploring many different areas within the domain of artificial intelligence 3such as neural networ"s, genetic algorithms, and natural language processing5. he bottom line is that I want to be a part of this exciting field. o that end I would li"e to come to Indiana %ni#ersity to wor" towards an M.S. in computer science with an emphasis in natural language processing. I am loo"ing forward to attending Indiana %ni#ersity in the
>99 combined score? a @+9 in #erbal 3)7rd percentile5,+/9 in analytical 3)7rd percentile5, and a +*9 in 2uantitati#e 3)>nd percentile5. I "now that I can ma"e a positi#e contribution to your department, and I hope that you will gi#e me that chance. I than" you for you time in considering my application.