I was highly motivated by the cutting edge research technologies; MS in VLSI- SOP

With the ever increase in complexity of the VLSI systems today power consumption also increasing accordingly. So there is a necessity to implement low power techniques especially for power critical systems like Mobile,_____ etc .I aspire to work on challenging research areas of high performance architecture and low power digital VLSI domain through Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of ______________.

Till my higher secondary schooling I always used to be overwhelmingly fascinated towards Mathematics and Physics. Because of that interest and diligent effort I always used to ace top in the class in these subjects. And I got 1300 All India Rank out of 800,000 students appeared for National level exam AIEEE. Because of my interest in Mathematics and Physics I chose Electronics and Communication Engineering as my major.

When I entered the sophomore year of the college, I got introduced to electronics courses like Electronics Devices and Circuits and Switching Theory and Logic Design. I was mesmerized by the scope of research in the field of Electronics when Assistant Professor J Ravi Kumar was explaining. Later on, I approached him to give a chance in research. But his Doctoral research was towards Kalman Filters in Control Systems. He then told these filters can be applied into the field of electronics. Then I worked under him for almost a year while pursuing my undergraduate studies. After working for a year, I presented a paper titled "A HYBRID GA-ADAPTIVE PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION BASED TUNING OF UNSCENTED KALMAN FILTER FOR HARMONIC ESTIMATION" on Springer link conference. In the International conference, I saw a lot of Professors giving guest lectures. I was so bewitched with the guest lectures given by Professors from International universities, and I developed a strong aptitude to pursue my research in the field of Electronics and computing engineering. Later on I used to give presentations to juniors about these research topics who are working under same lecturer, which enabled me to develop effective leadership skills. I was also involved in various technical and cultural spectra of college life which helped me to hone my communication skills.

In the third year, I was introduced to subjects like Pulse Circuits, Linear IC Applications, Digital IC Applications and Digital System Design. During Digital System Design Lab, I Implemented Channel Equalization using 3-tap FIR filters. FIR filter was designed using Floating Point Adder, Floating point Multiplier and D Flip-Flop. I implemented the Channel Equalization filter in FPGA. The same Channel Equalization algorithm I implemented in MATLAB by adding coloured noise as part of Digital Signal Processing Assignment. Here I found the beauty of implementing same concept in both hardware and software.

Coming to my Final year project, I was given to work under Sri. Muralidhar P. Fortunately, his doctoral research matched with my interests. I have gone through various research papers in the field of Video Compression. I thought of implementing same Genetic and Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms for the Motion Estimation block in Video encoder. But, lack of time and sufficient hardware resource has hindered our project from moving towards research oriented work, although my passion for these novel ideas continues unabated. Finally I implemented Efficient Variable Block Size Motion Estimation Architecture for H.264/AVC Video Codec in FPGA.

When I entered the industry, I was exposed to various activities involved from front end to back end in whole ASIC design. After trainings, I was on my team and I have gone through all the System architectures in the SoC domain related to Cypress Semiconductors. Later, I was given AHB Bus Protocol IP. Initially, I have written System Verilog Assertions for all public cells. Later, I did all activities like Lint, Formality, Synthesis and Silicon Validation. Then, I have written System Verilog Assertions and Benchmarking for Flash Controller. After IP, I worked on full-chip project. In full-chip I had written top-level RTL, performed Lint, CDC, Synthesis, Formality and MVRC. Apart from a firm knowledge of System level Architecture and tools I am also proficient at scripting languages like TCL, Perl and Hardware description languages like VHDL and Verilog.

I was highly motivated by the cutting edge research technologies at the ______________ research labs in your department ______________ under Prof _______ and staff __________. I found my research interest match with the research going on your department.

Ok, you have talked a lot about your interests, credentials and experience. However, you haven't talked much about your future goals and how this program is going to help you achieve them. That is also very important in a SOP. The admission people would like to know what you aim to be and how you can make use of the degree you are going to earn at their instituion.

I agree with Dumi. This feels like a huge list of credentials which you'll mention in other parts of your application. Try cutting out the excessive nitty gritty details and try to add more about your future plans and how the school you're applying to will help you out. Try talking a lot more about the school you plan on applying to.

REMEMBER, the SOP is an opportunity for you to talk about stuff that you'd like to bring the admissions attention to that don't get mentioned in your application.

Well... I think it is better that your goals are more personal. This sounds a bit too broad.... Also, tell them the significance of your graduate studies in achieving your goals.


Yes, very true. The SOP is an opportunity for you to tell them things that other parts of your application do not talk about. More importantly, for them to you better as a person.

dumi: Can you please elaborate what I need to add or delete?

This belongs in the essay, but not in the position you placed it at. Thing is(this is coming from a major or Electrical And Electronics Engineering), if you have something particular you want to focus on during grad school, the problem you want to focus on should come from your work experiences. So it should be something like: "I worked in A, B and C, and I found this and that problem, hence I want to work on this". I hope you get my point here


This is something that I feel is simply not needed in an SOP, and I do not understand why a lot of people mention this in their SOPs. I don't mean to offend anyone, but it does not add anything to your graduate school application portfolio. It's good that you stood out among so many, but remember graduate studies are significantly different from what you previously did.

And finally, you haven't properly rectified the mistake I mentioned before, you need to talk a lot more about the graduate school you plan on applying to, and how you think the school will help you.

Here's the thing, It is important that you provide some detailed exposure to what you did during your work periods, but keep details like that for a CV which I think most online applications allow you to upload. Instead of trying so hard to impress with your credentials, try taking a more personal approach to the SOP