I applied to graduate school in the Winter of 2016 to start in the Fall of 2017 with the intention to study human-computer interaction, research programming, and online learning. I was accepted to the PhD in Information at the University of Michigan and the PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of California San Diego. I was also rejected from many programs. Below are my personal statements from the programs where I was accepted. I do not feel that any of these essays are generally good examples of my writing, but perhaps they can help someone somewhere.
After applying to UC San Diego my eventual advisor encouraged me to also apply to the PhD in Computer Science and he commented on how long my personal statement was for Cognitive Science. This freaked me out so I wrote a much shorter personal statement which is linked below. I was rejected from the PhD but accepted to the MS program.
In the Winter of 2015 I applied and was accepted to the Ohio State University for the MS in Biostatistics program. The personal essay I applied with is below. I ended up not attending OSU, instead I accepted a position as the Chief Technology Officer at the Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab.
Silly side note: I love college football and I wonder if Iām one of the only people in history to have applied to and been accepted to both Ohio State and Michigan and to have chosen other options over both. Or expressed at an emojiquation: š¤ (š¦ > š°) ā© (š± > ć½ļø)