Personal Statement On Purdue Application

The life of a student is filled with many formative moments. Doing well on an exam is always a happy event and cements the semester’s learning. Success on the National Organization for Exceptional Student’s Talents exam made a lasting impression on me and instilled a deep appreciation of academic discipline to achieve one’s goals. In my elementary school I became deeply interested in mathematics and was fascinated by the application of numbers and formulas through mathematical technique to solve practical problems in our environments. In high school, I was introduced to Industrial Engineering and I learned that optimization and calculus were necessary skills for my future field of study. Prompted by a deep desire to formally learn Industrial Engineering, in 2005 I applied to the nationwide university entrance exam in my homeland of Iran. At the end of grueling months of revision, I ranked in the top 0.5% of some 400,000 students taking the exam.
During my undergraduate students at the Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, I was exposed to a wide range of subjects that helped me understand the entire field of study and allowed me to determine my academic strengths and weaknesses. The rigorous work in courses such as Operations Research, and Quality Control and Simulation, sharpened my intellectual capabilities and honed the skills necessary for future exploration. During this time I also undertook an internship to reinforce the classroom studies with real world application of my learning. The internship revolved around productivity measurement in the auto-trim part section and was a wonderful experience. The feeling of satisfaction attained by utilizing my theoretical background to solve problems was exhilarating. My interest and talents in operations research led me to seek to join a research group led by Dr. Aghaie, on optimization. This work resulted in a paper entitled “Project Time–cost Trade-off Scheduling: A Hybrid Optimization Approach.” Furthermore, my work with Dr. Roghanian’s group also resulted in a paper, entitled “Comparison of first aggregation and last aggregation in fuzzy group TOPSIS.” My abilities in Optimization, programming language and statistics lead me to start working with, Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of West Virginia University, on one of the most critical environmental problems which the world faces: climate change. The studies are currently in progress and will soon lead to three journal articles addressing the subject.
Purdue’s Industrial Engineering program is one of the most highly regarded in the United States. The excellent faculty and vibrant student body will enrich my experiences by promoting a deeper understanding of my research areas of interest. I would greatly benefit by the strong research conducted by the department in Operations Research while at the same time contributing to the learning of my colleagues. As an instructor in a manufacturing lab of West Virginia University, I taught students AutoCAD, CNC lathe Machine, CNC Milling Machine, and was also responsible for grading final reports. My personal commitment to the learning process is just one of my attributes that I hope to contribute to the Purdue environment. As a Project Control Engineer at the Amir Ayandehngar Company, I had to collaborate with diverse professionals in order to complete jobs on time. The dedication to collaboration is another factor that I hope to contribute to Purdue. In sum, admission into the prestigious department would allow me to further and more deeply explore areas that have interested me for a very long time.