MOTIVATIONAL LETTER

Dear Sir / Madam,

My main purpose for applying to master’s program in Information science is to expand my

education and to create more opportunities for myself in the future. I wish in particular to be
trained at an advanced level in data mining. My main goal is to become an expert in constructing
and designing state of the art information systems using data mining technology. I believe that
advanced studies in Information science master program at Radboud University Nijmegen will
help me to realize my dream.

As a highly motivated undergraduate majoring in Informatics at Diponegoro University, I have

gained distinctive academic results, hands-on experience in different research areas and
leadership skills. With my four and half years of consistent effort, I have successfully obtained a
good GPA (3.51 / 4.00). My academic performance won me acceptance into a various
competition project both regional and national level to represent my Informatics department and
Diponegoro university. Notably when I was appointed as the team leader to compete in Gemastik
V’s Data Mining competition, a prestigious IT competition in Indonesia. My duty was to
implement data mining technology to make an automation system for categorizing scientific
journal. Through hard work and intense research, we are successfully found the solution using
second order sequential minimal optimization, one of the support vector machine methods. We
are going through to the final stage competition as one of tenth contestant, defeating almost over
a hundred other contestants from other university across Indonesia. However, in the final stage of
competition our effort is not enough and we failed to get the first prize. During my internship in
Telkom Indonesia and ID-SIRTII (Indonesia Security Incident Response Team on Internet
Infrastructure), my ability to learn quickly and work hard also impressed the project manager. I
also have experience as Laboratory Assistant for various courses such as Database, Object
Oriented Programming, and Artificial Intelligence. These experiences solidly equip me for my
graduate study. Furthermore, as a research and development staff of Student Association in my
department, I have taken the initiative to organize numerous event, meetings and activities, such
as Algorithm & programming competition and Basic computer training.

My interest in data mining began two years ago, when I became familiar with it through the Data
Mining course in my University and fascinated by the successful data mining projects such as
Walmart’s data mining to identify customer buying patterns and NBA’s data mining to analyze
the movements of players. I picked up some of the theoretical foundations, in this real world we
are surrounded by data, numerical and otherwise, which must be analyzed and processed to
convert it into useful information that aids understanding and decision-making. But, due the
ever-increasing complexity and size of today’s data sets it is difficult to get the process the
information manually. Data mining was created to describe the indirect and automatic data
analysis techniques to convert massive number of data into useful information.
I wish to learn more into the subjects to be able to carry out independent research and analysis
and to follow it up with a PhD or serve in a research institution. My long-term goal is to be an
expert in the data mining field and to aid the development of data mining field. I am aware that
there is still so much to learn and your program will help fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

The desire to acquire these skills is one of my reasons why I am attracted to this program. I am
also attracted by the program’s commitment and vision. The Radboud University Nijmegen is
well known for its excellence in the information and communication technology field, with an
accomplished and beautiful university, modern research resources, and close links with top
researchers. With students from various nations, it provides students a good chance to learn from
different cultures.

I am confident that I will match the high standards set by your university and I will be able to
greatly contribute to the program. For all these reasons, I strongly aspire to secure admission in
order to pursue graduate studies.

Sincerely,

Muhammad Rizal Khaefi