University of Chicago as the Best Option for My Career Development

In this 'The University of Chicago supplemental essay' I as applicant  provide you with an opportunity to showcase my academic path in Computer Science Engineering studies. Being a 90’s kid, I was lucky to have a profound exposure to both these areas (Data and Computers) even in my early school years. My interest in data and mathematics had me participate actively in national Science and Math Olympiads, apart from excelling in the curriculum. My hard work was often recognized, and one of the most memorable moments came in when I scored a school rank of 12 in the 4th International Mathematics Olympiad. It was the sound of that applause at that very twinkling moment that made me feel immensely proud of myself. I felt confident, and soon, my interest in data and numbers got strengthened. As I opted for computer programming in my senior secondary school, I gained both theoretical and practical knowledge on C, C++, databases, SQL, and logic building. Eventually, my interest developed more rooted, and I choose to study Computer Science Engineering for my undergraduate program.

As an undergraduate at IP University, New Delhi, I have attempted to broaden my horizons and acquaint myself with a wide variety of domains in computer science, which has provided me with a stronger foundation to maneuver into the Data Science field. From courses such as Probability and Statistics, Parallel Programming, Real-Time Systems, Software Development, Design and Analysis of Algorithms, etc. I have gained an invaluable amount of knowledge which I can further apply in real-world scenarios and has enabled me to understand the mechanics and foundations of Data Science in a scientific manner. Here, I offer a brief description of some of the relevant projects I have significantly contributed to as an undergraduate and after graduation that has helped to build my repertoire, in preparation for the challenges, I will face in graduate school and beyond.

One particular project that I participated in that has left an indelible mark on me was the time I spent in my second year working with Team IFOR (Intelligent Flying Object for Reconnaissance), a robotics team at my university. The team then aimed to construct a UAV specifically geared towards locating and fetching a known object, by navigating through a previously unspecified indoor terrain. We initially developed an optical flow positional drift control package for maintaining flight stability of the aerial vehicle and implemented an EKF-SLAM package using the onboard IMU and laser scan data for enabling the autonomous navigation of the UAV through the indoor environment. My first real-world experience with data analytics commenced when I did my final year project on “FOG COMPUTING”- Mitigating Data Theft Attacks in the Cloud”- which is primarily concerned with the protection of data from the malicious user using user behavior profiling and decoy technology. With the help of unsupervised machine learning and R programming language, I could validate the data access authorization and preserve user data security from malicious attackers by identifying the behavior pattern of accessing the files of real users. The project helped me widen my knowledge of analytics and gave me real insight towards the concept of machine learning and data mining.

Another most exciting stages of college are, it equips you with all the challenges you’ll face in life and helps you with essential life skills, by indulging in various co-curricular activities. With that in mind, I focused heavily on transforming my overall personality. During my first year, I participated in multiple sports activities like athletics and football. I bagged gold in 100mtr, 200mtr and 40x100mtr relay and also, got selected in a college football team. Besides, I represented my college at the university level in athletics division during the third and fourth year. Moreover, I also got the opportunity to represent my university in state level football championship in my second year. As a part of the learning process, sports taught me valuable life lessons like teamwork, dedication, optimism, time management, and most importantly working hard towards achieving my goals. Also, I was able to enhance my leadership qualities by organizing the biggest “Scavenger Hunt” event in the final year of a college fest.

In addition to my academics and extra-curricular, I was quite fascinated by the concepts of cloud data security from my final year project. I was always hunting for the opportunities within this domain to elevate my current proficiency on the same. Fortunately, my close friend was working on a similar idea. When I encountered this, I instantly pitched in and started providing my inputs. Subsequently, we had multiple brainstorming sessions on securing private medical records within the 5G cloud framework. After a year, with numerous research and experiments, we finally came up with the initial prototype. Carrying forward with the same intensity, we decided to submit our work to the prestigious IEEE/ACM Symposium on Edge Computing. Thankfully, our work got recognized on the poster track, and we were invited to present our work at Washington D.C, USA.

The amount of appreciation we received as a team for the excellent work broadened my understanding and provided another aspect of the applications of data analytics. With that in mind, I invested hours of time and dedication in sharpening the concepts of Big Data models for edge computing. My efforts turned out to be fruitful when I got an invitation to write a book chapter entitled “Big data analytical models for/on edge computing” under Prof. Javed Tahiri, which I believe is the right opportunity to explore the underlying concepts of Analytics.

Soon after my graduation, my professional journey began with Accenture consulting, which provided me the apt platform to explore the concepts of business analytics. As a part of Accenture’s Consulting practice, I was allotted my first project to work for the American retail corporation. I broadened my concepts on structuring and cleaning large data sets, that not only taught me to manage multichannel customer data seamlessly but also helped me to take advantage of that information in a broad range of areas, starting from customer acquisition to resource planning. As a result, I improved the forecast accuracy of sales at the store level by 25% using linear regression models.

Although my first assignment was for a short period, it gave me a great understanding of collecting and managing data from varied sources to provide meaningful business insights. Moreover, I was geared up for my next engagement to explore other branches of data analytics like data visualization, predictive modeling, and learning algorithms. Fortunately, I got a fantastic opportunity to work for the world’s second-largest mining company based in Australia. Initially, I spent my time gaining firsthand knowledge on Power BI and Infogram by developing complex reports and analytical dashboards. Later on, I engaged myself mostly on designing and developing learning algorithms and was eventually successful in achieving 81% accuracy. However, the best part of the project was something very unexpected when I was asked to work on building automation models using Excel VBA individually. As a result, I decreased the report production time by 60% and was quite confident about the path I wanted to undertake further in my career.

While moving ahead in my consulting journey, I did not want to obstruct myself to what I had acquired so far. Instead, I heavily invested my time upskilling my expertise on Google API and text mining via coursera. Furthermore, when I had a discussion about my learning outcomes with my manager, he suggested organizing a boot camp within the consulting track. I, with the help of Accenture central learning team, organized a 3-day bootcamp, where I trained approximately 150 professionals. As a result, I implemented a strategic solution to design an ATM network optimization engine, for America’s 5th largest investment bank and financial services corporation. Consequently, the solution resulted in the reduction of operational expenses by $2M, which was by far my greatest achievement within the organization. Also, I created all client’s performances report using the K-Means algorithm and forecasting demand using the ARIMA model. Overall, for my exceptional performance, I was promoted to Consultant and won “The Exceeding Everest” award.

My current engagement with the American steel manufacturing client has thrust my knowledge base to another level, by making me deal with some of the most challenging problems in ML modeling and Python scripting. As a part of the assignment, I led the machine learning efforts, to reduce cracks in steel production and simultaneously created an annual savings of $12M. Furthermore, I regularly helped my client team select the best approach and helped them better utilize statistical report dashboards. This qualified me earning the prestigious “Rockstar performer of the year” award.

Now, as I stand with four-plus years of professional experience in analytics at Accenture Consulting, I am keen to be a member of a graduate program that, while augmenting my perspectives, will provide me the ideal environment to further probe and explore other dimensions of analytics such as natural language processing & cognitive computing, advanced machine learning & artificial intelligence, and advanced big data platforms. In this regard, the Master of Science program in Analytics at the University of Chicago is the best option for which I am writing this application as it highly appeals to me, primarily because of the reputed and exceptional faculty like Dr. Yuri Balasanov. Also, Dr. Balasanov’s expertise in artificial intelligence & advanced machine learning would surely help me upgrade my analytical skills with the flavor of AI to understand industry trends, manage their workforce, address problems, power chatbots and personalize content to enable self-service.

The unique nature of the graduate program has led me to believe that it represents the right option for me at this stage of my career. Moreover, I would love to be part of the “Chicago Maroons Football” to exhibit my intense enthusiasm for football. Featuring 12 Global 500 companies and 17 Financial Times 500 companies, Chicago is also rated as the world’s best city for having it all by Time Out’s extensive city life index, which is a huge plus that has led me to choose this city for my higher education. Also, the University of Chicago would provide me with a multifaceted approach to aspects of analytics and its influence on the future of the business world, preparing me amply and relevantly for a progressive career at my dream company BCG GAMMA as a Machine Learning Engineer. Within the organization, I would like to help clients understand their data and provide them with scalable machine learning models with AI-powered solutions that deliver high impact by optimizing operations or transforming entire businesses. Thank you so much for considering my credentials. I await your decision, expectant and excited for the challenges ahead.