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Sample Personal Statement for Automatic Control
For twofold reasons I am sincerely grateful to my father who is
also my mentor. First, it was he who distilled in me the impulse to
adore those who can achieve success from apparently impossible
situations. When I was plunged into great despondency for failing to
gain admission into the nation’s most prestigious university at the
college entrance examination, my father told the story about how
General Wellington who, driven into a mountain cave, drew inspirations
from a spider which was patching up its web and re-organized his
troops to defeat Napoleon. My father made me convinced that I could be
a successful person in my own right.
Second, I owe my heartfelt gratitude to my father for the academic
interest that he cultivated in me. An electrical engineer himself in
the field of industrial control, my father influenced me by
encouraging my childhood interest in electricity. Unlike many other
parents who simply buy their children electric toys and leave them
playing with those toys, my father not only bought me many interesting
electrical toys but also explained the inner workings that produced
the sounds and the movements of those toys. As I grew up, he continued
his enlightenment of me with his regular “professional lectures”
concerning the more sophisticated electrical appliances in our daily
environment. His education persisted until I chose to major in
electrical engineering during my undergraduate program and came to
regard it as a lifelong career objective to which I would dedicate all
my intelligence and energy. From the undergraduate education I
received at the Information Science and Engineering Department of
Shenyang Institute of Technology, I derived useful knowledge from a
wide variety of foundational courses in industrial engineering that
included Analogical Electronic Circuits, Digital Electronic Circuits,
Principles of Microcomputer, Electrical Power and Electronics,
Single-Chip Microcomputer. In those courses, I achieved full marks or
the highest scores in the entire grade.
My theoretical understanding of automatic control came with my studies
of classical control theories embodied in such courses as Theory of
Modern Control, Theory of Automatic Control, Procedure Control, and
Computer Control. I also came to develop a relatively thorough
understanding of feedback control and some methods of system design.
With those understandings, I tried my own hands at designing and
experimenting with a closed-loop feedback system. However, as I delved
deeper into my studies, I came to discover that the classical
feedback-based control theories could no longer meet the requirements
posed by modern large-scale and complicated systems. Their challenges
could only be answered by some database-based, intelligence-oriented
theories. Therefore, I purposely self-studied some courses exclusively
offered to graduate students—Artificial Intelligence, Neural Network,
Self-Adaptive Control, etc. Although the theories incorporated in
those courses could by no means work out all the problems in modern
control, their effectiveness in improving production efficiency made
me all the more determined to devote myself to the studies in control
theories.
Various forms of control theory depend heavily on computing tools as
represented by mathematics. Without exaggeration, I can say that both
mathematics and computer application are precisely the subjects in
which I excel. On account of my distinguished mathematical talents, I
represented my institute to participate in the National Undergraduate
Mathematical Contest in Modeling in 2000 in which I proposed an
optimum solution to a steel procurement and transportation plan. In
this contest, I won third prize in the whole Liaoning Province. In
addition, I self-studied a number of advanced courses like Fuzzy
Mathematics and Discrete Mathematics which further widened my horizon
and called my attention to the possible trends of automatic control in
the future. One of the most important achievements in my undergraduate
program is that I spent one year and half doing coursework in the
computer specialty as a subsidiary program in order to develop my
comprehensive abilities and to improve my computer skills. In those
compulsory core courses that are generally acknowledged to be fairly
difficult even for computer majors, I achieved the highest scores in
my class in Data Structure and Operating Systems. By undergoing
systematic trainings, I have become quite familiar with computer
hardware structure, working principles, and software programming
debugging. I have also made independent efforts in program development
by means of VB, VC, Foxpro and Delphi.
While attentive to studies in control theories, I also attached great
importance to the application of theories to practical problem-solving
processes because all theories must be put to the test of practices.
Since the very beginning of my undergraduate program, I have closely
followed the leading international and domestic academic journals in
the field of automatic control and the important research papers
published in those journals. As a sophomore, I started to help my
father with some of his design projects. In the control system that he
designed for a cement mixer, I introduced a programmed single-chip
computerized controller which, after debugging, was put into
application and received very positive comments from the user. For my
graduation project, I designed The Automatic Monitoring System for
Detecting the Temperature and Humidity of a Tobacco Plant. With the
help of a PC and a single-chip microcomputer, I designed a 3-phase
system in connection with the concentration-distribution system.
Demonstrating obvious practical values, the system can conduct
automatic monitoring of the environmental parameters in the four
workshops of the tobacco plant. At present, I am working on an
automatic assembly line in collaboration with an industrial control
company. I am very proud to say that my overall undergraduate studies
have proved immensely fruitful. In terms of the ranking of scholastic
aptitudes, my ranking is top tenth among a total of 148 students in my
grade and I have been award scholarships for quite a few times.
Even a most cursory survey of most factories in China would reveal
that the overall level of automation in China’s industrial sector is
rather low. Even when there is a limited number of “advanced” systems,
they are mere copies of foreign models that are on the point of being
outmoded by international standards. This indicates how China lags
behind international levels of advanced technology. As we all know,
the most important factors in automation are system modeling and
analysis. It is essential to ensure, through analysis, the stability
and optimum effect of the system even when there are many
uncertainties. In this regard, we need cutting-edge technology and
mature theories. Under such circumstances, I have developed the idea
of seeking further studies in the United States where I can learn
advanced and systematic knowledge about large-scale systems. In this
way, I will be able to make in-depth studies concerning the
mathematical models of the systems when I have the opportunity to face
those increasingly complicated large-scale systems. Those studies will
enable me to find out possible solutions to problems.
The Institute of Industrial Engineering of Purdue University enjoys a
high academic status in the United States. The Automatic Control
Specialty in the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering
covers a wide range of programs in Artificial Intelligence, Neural
Network, Robotics, the Modeling and Analysis of Large-Scale Dynamic
Systems, etc. The application of those important fields of knowledge
will ultimately produce important impacts on the technological
advances in automation and control. Those fields are also the areas in
which I am very interested. I would like to apply for a Ph.D. program
in automatic control. As a matter of fact, Purdue University is also
the university from which China’s leading scientist Deng Jiaxian
graduated. That is why it attracts me so much. A Chinese proverb says,
“If you come to the most commanding height, you will have the greatest
vision.” I believe this axiom applies to my case perfectly. By “the
most commanding height”, I mean that an education at Purdue University
will endow me with the most advanced theories and expertise in my
chosen field. By “the greatest vision”, I mean that I will develop
international perspectives that will enable me to look ahead into the
future and keep up with the latest developments. My greatest
expectation from the prospective degree program is that I can build up
a firm foundation for a fruitful career in system designs.
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