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. At Pleasant Meadows I was placed in the honors program; later I took six
advanced placement courses, receiving college credit for five of them. I also completed three full
years of Greek and two full years of advanced German. I graduated from Pleasant Meadows in
the top ten percent of my class.
Upon graduating Pleasant Meadows I was accepted to Carillon Cross University. Since my family
was of very modest means, I relied heavily on financial aid. I immediately decided to become a
chemical engineer, a decision that was not well informed. My first semester at Carillon Cross was
promising, but I struggled through the next three years pursuing a career that I eventually 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 B.A. degree in history, which I was awarded
in the Spring of 1987. I excelled during my studies in the history department, but I decided that
I did not want to pursue graduate study in the field. While considering career options, I took the
LSAT, which strongly tests analytical ability, placing in the 95th percentile. However, I really
wanted to pursue a career in the sciences.
I knew that I wanted to continue my education, but I was out of money. So, I got a job working
for University Development at Carillon Cross as a PC programmer. My job duties were to develop
a database reporting system to track potential donors to the university. I was very successful
and was quickly promoted (within 4 months) to manager of the donor accounting department,
but, more importantly, I discovered that I truly enjoyed working with computers. I liked the
creative possibilities in programming; even 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 waiver benefit to begin to
explore the computer engineering/science field. I started to take classes towards a B.S. in
computer engineering, but later switched to computer science because I wanted to work more
with ideas and less with implementation. I was able to take one course (sometimes two) per
semester, which will enable me to receive my B.S. this Spring (1993).
As you can see from my transcript, in all of the courses that I have taken while employed, I have
received only letter grades of A or B (3.5 GPA). Meanwhile, I received two more job promotions
and currently hold the title of Senior Manager in Advancement Services. My job is equivalent to a
programmer/analyst II, but requires extensive knowledge of University Advancement and has
managerial responsibilities as well. I spend much of my time programming on an IBM ES9000
mainframe system as well as working with many PC applications.
I feel that I have grown tremendously as a person through my employment at Carillon Cross. I
have learned a lot about myself; for instance, I find teaching others to be very rewarding
(something I would like to pursue further along academic lines). Although my employment of
five years with the university has taught me many valuable skills, I find the work to be
unchallenging and devoid of ideas. It pains me to leave the security of a good job and many
close friends to go back to school, but, I am very 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 solved using artificial intelligence. I also want to learn about
human cognition and machine intelligence. I have been studying the debate over whether
machines will ever become "intelligent" given the current course of research and reading about
such issues as whether a machine can acquire "common sense" (as discussed in Hubert
Dreyfus's book What Computers Still Can't Do). I have been exploring many different areas
within the domain of artificial intelligence (such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, and
natural language processing). The bottom line is that I want to be a part of this exciting field. To
that end I would like to come to Indiana University to work towards an M.S. in computer science
with an emphasis in natural language processing.
I am looking forward to attending Indiana University in the Fall. I recently took the GRE general
test and received a 2200 combined score: a 670 in verbal (93rd percentile),750 in analytical
(93rd percentile), and a 780 in quantitative (92nd percentile). I know that I can make a positive
contribution to your department, and I hope that you will give me that chance. I thank you for
you time in considering my application.