Exploring the Frontiers of Computer Science: My Journey Towards Stanford University

Aspiring students often seek inspiration from Stanford essays that worked, utilizing them as a valuable resource for crafting their own compelling and impactful college applications. I am applying to Stanford University for admission to the Masters Program in Computer Science. My interests lie at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems, and Human-Machine Interaction. My objective is to prepare myself to pursue a career in research, through which I aspire to develop intelligent solutions in the future that have the potential for widespread impact.

It would be fitting to begin with a brief that consistency and excellence have always been ingrained in me since my childhood. Computer Science has invariably caught my attention since I was introduced to it after I entered Class XI and excited me every time I got an opportunity to dig deep into it. During this time, I acquired, the 1st and then the 2nd position in my school at the International Informatics Olympiad organized by Silverzone, India in 2011 and 2012 respectively. It was the project I developed in Class XII, a GUI-based Java application, to crunch Income Tax estimates for Indian nationals, with storage capabilities, that was the high point during school and urged me to study programming and computers in greater depth. By now, Computer Science had emerged as my strong curiosity and thus became my major during undergraduate studies. Subjects such as Data Structures, Linux, Mobile App Development and Distributed Operating Systems were some of my favorites during college.

My internships during college have been important stepping stones for me. During my first internship at Bharat Petroleum, Mumbai, I developed a Push Notification system for Android, based on the Firebase Platform and a corresponding server-client system for the same. During my second internship, at Hindustan Times, in the final semester, I developed a bulk email system for handling email marketing needs for some of their Internal entities. I learned about the SMTP Protocol, developed plans to handle bulk-email bottlenecks, was introduced to containerization using Docker and the search engine Elasticsearch that I used as a document database.

During college, the breakdown in the chain of information prevalent within my institute inspired me to look for a solution. For the final semester Project, I worked with a team and we were able to build an Android-based Notification System aimed at keeping students and faculties abreast with all key events across the campus. The application enabled an organized flow of information to targeted user groups. Prior knowledge of Android, Web frameworks, and Database design helped me execute the project and relate with the software development process. By this time product design and development had begun to interest me and I joined Flytbase, an Internet of Drones platform, as a full stack developer not long after finishing my college. This provided me with an opportunity to work on application architecture and product development. I was involved in numerous client projects as well as building prototypes for new features. A challenging assignment I was entrusted with was an architectural refactor of the main web application into a microservice based system. As I applied and refined my technical sentience, working here taught me the essence of far-sighted planning, conceptualizing, organizing and prioritization of tasks. At work, I presented a talk on non-relational databases as well.

Volunteering at a local meetup group, I discussed the importance of Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment and its relevance to Software Development with group peers. At Flytbase, my bent for Artificial Intelligence burgeoned as I was intrigued by how it was being applied to various problems. Following this lure and my itch to explore newer horizons, I am now working on a new Software Venture, Aidetic Software, with an ex-Colleague from Flytbase where we are in the initial stages of building a Video Analytics Product for the Retail Sector. The product heavily employs some of the recent advances in Computer Vision and Deep learning for real-time video analysis. So far, I have worked on aspects related to Facial recognition, Person demographics detection, and I am currently evaluating Person re-identification in real-time and Gaze estimation for dwell time analysis. I hope to acquire a considerable grasp on image processing and computer vision techniques with further work on the product. My main source of learning has been online courses, various blogs, articles and experimentation in areas of Artificial Intelligence that captured my attention, such as Prof. Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning Course on Coursera. However, I seek to learn deeper and turn this fascination into an expertise.

I acknowledge the fact that my academic record is not flawless, given the fluctuating performance in college resulting from my own lapses. However, I hold my extracurriculars, internships, and experiences since the latter years in college to be better indicators of my capabilities. The fact that graduate-level coursework and research requires focus and perseverance while sacrificing time and leisure for delayed gratification is not unknown to me. It is my conviction that my motivations, encounters, and intellectual abilities prepare me well to set out on this path.

While I have an open spirit towards learning, few areas certainly enjoy my interest. Among other things, I intend to study the cognitive capabilities of autonomous systems such as vision and world modeling. If admitted, I’m particularly interested in the possibility of working under the able guidance of Professor Silvio Savarese who works in similar areas, especially on the Jackrabbot Project. In this regard, Professor Niebles’ findings and suggestions in the recent publication on Indoor Autonomous Navigation using Deep Learning also interest me. I am positive Stanford would give me one of the best environments to pursue my passion and hone up my research acumen. I have chosen to pursue graduate studies here because by working under the guidance of distinguished researchers, I am also confident of making original contributions in the field of Computer Science.

I believe Stanford has a lot to offer me by means of its network, proximity to the industry, the researchers and the tight-knit academic community. At the same time, my grit, prior experiences, and knowledge make me a worthy extension to the student community.