Statement of Purpose
Rongxin(Coy) Zheng
Curiosity about the surrounding world has inspired me to explore more since I was a little boy. I was obsessed with the computer which my mother bought for me in primary school. Just as the other boys, I was inquisitive about electronics and data analytics, and with computer I could play video games that were more advanced and with more gorgeous images than in arcades. What’s more, with the hands-on exposure to computer, I could discuss the video games and the Internet with my classmates, which could make me look more fashionable and cool. These were the right reasons why it attracted me, as a kid, to be interested in computer and electronic data. Hereinafter, my experiences, in the area of computer, in different period, will be introduced in further details below, with different recognitions of computer and data.
To gain a thorough understanding of its application, I spent substantial time on practicing. I studied the logo language, a kind of computer language, in primary school; PASCAL language was taught in middle school; I took the Olympic course in computer programming in high school, and at that time, I was twice awarded the third-prized in National Youth Informatics Olympic Competition. Also, with representing a university in a programming contest for college students, I was recommended by a professor for the admission to this university, although I chose another university finally. To be honest, by high school, it was ever my peak time in my life so far, although I acquitted myself with much more honor later, because my life was firstly, formally and completely directed in this period. That’s why I appreciate my high school computer advisor so much, even now. When I entered university, I started working with data. I took part in many contests in the area of computer and mathematical modeling and won many big awards, including many domestic and international contests. The biggest award I have ever won is the first-prized in an international contest. It’s right during undergraduate that I began to know how to program with data. That is also one of the reasons why I choose “Data Analytics Engineering” to be my major in Mason, of course, also considering the opportunity of job.
As said above, the practices gifted me with good minds and good hands. Most importantly, I remained good sense of the most cutting-edge technology and was so eager for its application principles that I chose Economic Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, the foundation and integrated courses for computing, as my undergraduate major.
Moreover, during the undergraduate study, I remained top performances in each subjects. With my attentive study I mastered the software of Statistics Software, R Software, SPSS Software, SAS Software, Eviews Software, Minitab Software, MATLAB Software, and Programing Languages of C, C#, C++, JAVA, R Language, Net, Ma. On the strength of my outstanding academic capacities, I was elected to take part in competition frequently. As a freshman, I was admitted by ACM team in the university with the second best score in the election. After that, I consecutively won the third prize, second prize and the first prize in the Mathematics Contest in Modeling, the second prized in National Mathematics Contest in Modeling; the Meritorious Winner in International Mathematics Contest in Modeling, and a student research training program (Research and Improvement of ATP model in Stock Market). During the period, I had my programming capacities improve steadily because I would try to solve problems by programming when others using mathematics software.
To testify my knowledge, I have several invaluable internship experiences, and two of them would arise in this article. I interned in China Minsheng Bank, responsible for examining and approving credit projects and putting forward corresponding suggestions; in Jinyou Futures Brokerage Co., Ltd. as a stock operator responsible for program trading, writing futures trading models. With these internship experiences, I gained first-hand knowledge of how to improve business efficiency by programming with data and the awareness of the importance of refining my knowledge hierarchy, which inspired me to move further.
Instead of doing research by myself, I paid great emphasis in teamwork. I was the leader in almost every Mathematics Contest in Modeling when I was an undergraduate. I formed the Mathematics Modeling Association in 2009 and the maximum members were more than 200. I organized the faculties and students in the university to take part in international mathematics contest in modeling, which was the first show of the university in the international stage. As the organizer, I took in charge of competition registration, essay submit and score inquiry. Besides, I could always pride myself on my ability of distributing work reasonably and scientifically among the team members. The ones good at design were responsible for GUI, the ones good at programming were responsible for BBL and patient ones were responsible for data base management and DAL. With the excellent cooperation, we won the first prize in the competition.
I believe that I am ready for my graduate study in George Mason University. I turned down a postgraduate recommendation to a prestigious university in China and chose to study abroad, here, due to the following reasons. As we all know, American education is much more creativeness-inspired than in China, which is called “critical thinking”. It allows students to develop comprehensively and to have new and original ideas and explore more on them, which will help me to have huge development on my strength, programming capacities. Your distinguished Data Analytics Engineering program attracts my attention soon with your most seasoned faculties, scientific course design and plentiful internship opportunity. Besides, as I have already been in the area of computer for a really long time, I know how hard it will be if I still choose to enroll in the program of Computer Science or Computation. So far, I would like to try something different. Although working with big data might be salaried with a little lower income than working as a programmer, it would be much less stressed.
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