Master of Artificial Intelligence Application Critique

Eighth Paragraph

Quick thoughts:

  • does somewhat introduce yourself, your interests and motivations
  • does somewhat summarize your undergraduate and previous graduate career
  • does somewhat discuss the relevance of your recent and current activities
  • doesn't elaborate on your academic interests

Longer thought: This paragraph confused me because before you said you were a Chem E major, then you said you were a non-CS major, and now you are saying you are a Process Engineer major. While those are all true, I would try to stick with one. People are lazy and reading tons of these applications, the less confusing the application is the easier it to read it and think about it. While "and the ability to conceptualize and abstract difficult problems into modular and solvable subsets." sounds good, there aren't any examples so it's hard to know what this actually means.

Ninth Paragraph

Quick thoughts:

  • does somewhat yourself, your interests and motivations
  • doesn't summarize your undergraduate and previous graduate career
  • doesn't somewhat discuss the relevance of your recent and current activities
  • doesn't elaborate on your academic interests

Longer thought: This sentence "As the Artificial Intelligence discipline grows in scope and complexity, we will need broader perspectives and inspiration from external disciplines to continue advancing the field." is very broad and vague and doesn't tell me anything. This sentence "With the combination of the foundational skillset I developed as a Chemical Engineer and my continued passion and education in Computer Science," starts of okay - makes me think you want to use Chem E with AI. Though it's confusing because above you said you had a "a non-Computer Science background," where as now you are claiming a "passion and education in Computer Science". This part of the sentence "I am confident that my unique perspectives and experiences will allow for valuable and influential contributions to the growth of Artificial Intelligence." would be good if you had actually shared your perspectives and experiences with us. At this point, all I know is that you took some Udacity courses, had a job that sucked, programmed a terrible script, and are making a predictive model for fantasy sports. None of which tell me about why you're interested in AI, or what you want to do. Additionally this part of the sentence - "valuable and influential contributions to the growth of Artificial Intelligence." seems a bit of a personality change as you've been downplaying your skills in all previous paragraphs and are now saying that you're going to make valuable and influential contributions to AI. Further, this doesn't tell me what part of AI you're actually interested in.


Alright, so that was probably painful to read. I'm proud and honored to have been able to read your statement of intent. You're obviously a smart person and do want to learn more about AI and do want to make a difference. The tricky part is that this statement of intent doesn't showcase anything you've done, anything about you, what you want to do, or why AI is even a thing for you.

One day in the not too distant past you woke up and decided that you really really wanted to get a masters in AI. What about your background convinced you this was the right call? What about your education made you think AI could be helpful to you and the world? What classes do you really want to study in the masters program? What AI things have you read or studied recently that you feel you need to learn about? What AI projects have you done recently where you are 100% convinced would be so much better and awesomer if you had studied all the classes you'll take in the masters program.

My guess is that you have all of those answers in your head. That you do give a sh*t about AI and that you can communicate all of those things on paper.

So my advice is simple - write out the answers to all of the questions I just posted. Then do a super quick draft where each point of (http://grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/apply/statement-purpose/) is 1 paragraph. Then write it again using the answers to the questions you just wrote out. Then go through each sub-section of the Berkeley thing and make sure you cover it. Then finally, as much as humanly possible, show rather than tell. Do it to such an extreme that you think you've actually over done it. Then do it just one more time. Then after all of that, read the essential tips in the Berkeley thing and make sure you hit them on the nose with your essay.

/r/datascience Thread Parent