STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

This quotation by Victor Frankl, a world renowned Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist as well
as a Holocaust survivor reminds me of the important traits that one needs to possess in order
to achieve success. I believe that a lack of either the drive to succeed and/or the will to
accomplish my goals will produce only a labored effort and a half-hearted approach to
achieving the heights of success. The inherent drive to succeed toward reaching a career goal
is something that I have nurtured and consider vital at this point of my career.

I am on the verge of completing my Bachelors of Engineering (BE) in Computer Engineering

from the University of Mumbai during the past several years of my educational training, I have
been exposed to different technical aspects of my subject area. I believe that I have had
significant educational experience in various areas of study including Database Management
System, Big Data Analysis, Theory of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and Soft
Computing. However, I have had limited training related to the business and management
aspects of my discipline. I strongly believe that I will be better positioned with a competitive
edge in my career as well as in the corporate world by obtaining advanced education in my
chosen area of specialty, Management Information Systems (MIS).

MIS is regarded to be a subset of the overall internal controls procedures in a business, which
cover the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures used by
management accountants to solve business problems such as costing a product, service or a
business-wide strategy. My immediate goal is to obtain further education in MIS from the
George Mason University. I believe that advanced education will allow me to enhance my
knowledge, elevate me to a higher level professionally and to become accomplished in the
management and consultancy aspects of MIS. Although I believe that technical knowledge is
important, an equally important aspect and one of my primary interests is specifically related
to the business aspects of MIS, which I intend to work during my future education. My long-
term goal is to be in a position to provide information and services to manage an organization
effectively. Higher education will provide me with a platform to achieve my career goals and
become successful.

During the final year of my undergraduate education, I worked on a project, Interactive Image
Question Answering: Tiny Tots Learning Platform, which was based on using a system that generates
questions and answers from an Image using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and present
them in form of a quiz. Under the aegis of the project, I learned to use Natural Language
Processing (NLP) and Computer vision in such a way that we can extract image features using
Convolutional neural network i.e. computer vision we can get natural language text after
passing to the NLP and Visual Question Generation for question generation and image
features are extracted. During my position as the team leader, I have managed to motivate and
maintain a high level of enthusiasm among team members. This has also allowed me to build
my self-confidence and serve in leadership roles while being able to stay focused on the task
that needs to be accomplished.

In addition to learning via the medium of project work, I have also had the pleasure of
completing three internships, which allowed me to get a handle on Machine learning
algorithms, Database used and Securities provided to Banking sector. Besides academics, I am
interested in several extra-curricular activities including sports such as Basketball and have
enjoyed the challenge of serving as the Captain of my college team and leading it to famous
victories in several tournaments. I had been a member of the MUN committee in my college
for 2 years and in the 3rd year, I represented Egypt on the debate topic of Women Rights issue
in Arabic countries. During my tenures in these myriad events, I undertook the responsibility
for not just my work, but also that of other students as well. I enjoyed the challenge and look
forward to working with more teams in the years to come. I believe that it is experiences such
as these that have allowed me to be better prepared to succeed in my aspiration to excel in the
MS program from George Mason University.

The George Mason University is well known for having some of the most outstanding
academic facilities in the United States and the rest of the world. In addition, I am aware of
the incredible mix of international student population at George Mason University and an
opportunity to be part of your graduate training program will allow me to excel in my
professional career and accomplish my goals. I am aware of the contributions of prominent
scientists including Prof. Anamaria Berea and Dr. Andrew Crooks at George Mason
University and to collaborate with these individuals will allow me to significantly progress in
my career. I would like to conclude my statement of purpose by mentioning that in the absence
of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

I am confident that I have the will and dedication to be triumphant in achieving my career
goals and to not stop short of reaching the heights of success in my professional life.

Avnit Singh Banga

Fall 2021