I’m applying to Georgia Tech’s Computer Science Master of Cybersecurity program, and I’ve been struggling with my personal statement. I ended up barely passing my senior project (my professor never received my group’s project to grade it, so I’ve been appealing it. It’s two marks below the lowest grade I’ve gotten before it.) I’m afraid that the grade looks bad for me as a computer scientist, considering it’s meant to represent all that I’ve learned as an undergraduate. Comments about my personal statement have suggested that it shouldn’t be too personal and just focus on my research goals. I don’t feel comfortable with that, but the prompt doesn’t seem to allow me to address what happened. Georgia Tech is the only grad school I’m applying to due to how expensive the entire process is (and it’s the only school I see myself attending.) I really don’t want to misunderstand the prompt and hurt my chances at attending.
By the way, the prompt is: Please give a Statement of Purpose detailing your academic and research goals as well as career plans. Include your reasons for choosing the College of Computing as opposed to other programs and/or other universities. Your space is limited to 4000 characters.
First of all, if you are really serious about getting an MS in cybersecurity I highly recommend that you apply to more than one program. Applying to graduate school is indeed an investment in your future; you may want to consider saving some money over the next year or so in case you are unsuccessful this year, so that you can apply to a few more programs next year.
You should only address the senior project grade if you’ve got some good reason for the low grade that you can explain concisely - something like a death in the family, a serious illness on your part, being the victim of a crime, etc. Right now, you haven’t really given enough information to evaluate your reason, and honestly your explanation only raises more questions. As an evaluator, my question would be WHY did your professor never receive the project? Did you not turn it in at all? Did it get lost, destroyed? Did you not do it? None of the answers or reasons I can come up with in my head are good.
You might want to give a few more details here, as some folks may be able to help you come up with some phrasing or advice about whether or how to address it. Also, if you’ve got a trusted professor who’s writing your recommendation it may be worth asking them about the best way to address this if at all.
Don’t worry too much about the prompt. This isn’t like undergrad where the focus is on answering some quirky question; you do need to address the statements in the prompt, but including information like this is fine.
Thank you for the advice about applying to multiple programs. I originally intended to apply to multiple schools, but unfortunately I had to shell out my savings after my car was totaled in an accident. (Sucks, but no one was seriously injured, and my car was on its way out.)
I really don’t understand why my senior project professor never received it. We were required to submit on three websites, which we did (I verified this after he told me he never received it.) I have a nagging feeling it’s because the project name was misspelled in various ways on his lists, and my group addresses it by its proper name (given to us by our mentor and project owner). He likely has the folder, but came up with nothing when he searched my group’s name due to the misspelling. He has offered to grade it, and possibly replace the grade my group received.
I am in the process of rewriting my statement again, based on a professor’s recommendation that I keep some of the personality. Thank you for the relief; it’s likely my application won’t be hurt by a single poor grade, and pointing it out may disrupt the coherent flow of my writing. I’ll mention my senior project by discussing how I learned Android and created a working front-end application on my own.