Computational Geoscience (Universitas Gadjah Mada dual degree) [MSc] postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

On the second day of my dissertation fieldwork I stood on a hillside above a small valley in the Southern Uplands, clinometer in hand, and found that the slope I measured was nearly ten degrees steeper than the value my digital elevation model gave for the same spot. The model was not wrong so much as coarse: it averaged the slope over cells far wider than the scar I was standing beside. That gap between what a dataset says and what the ground shows is the problem I most want to understand properly, and it is why I am applying for postgraduate study in computational geoscience.

My undergraduate degree in geology gave me a solid grounding in structural geology, sedimentology and geomorphology, along with two mapping courses that taught me to record observations carefully before interpreting them. In my final year I took an optional course in GIS and a short introduction to Python, and I found that I enjoyed the second far more than I expected. My dissertation combined the two. I mapped shallow landslide scars across a catchment using freely available satellite imagery and a public elevation model, then compared their locations with slope, aspect and distance to streams. I wrote simple Python scripts to clip rasters, extract values at each scar and plot their distributions against the wider catchment. The results were modest: scars clustered on steeper, north-facing slopes, as expected, but my sample of just over sixty features was too small to say much about the role of drainage. Writing the limitations section taught me as much as the analysis, particularly about how resolution and sampling choices shape conclusions.

Since graduating I have worked early shifts in a supermarket bakery. The job is not glamorous, but it has made me reliable and organised: ovens are loaded to a schedule, stock is rotated by date, and mistakes are visible to the whole shop by eight o'clock. In the afternoons I have continued to teach myself. I have worked through an online course on numerical methods, written a basic one-dimensional diffusion model for hillslope evolution, and learned to use NumPy and Matplotlib more fluently. I can now read and adapt other people's code rather than only copy it, although I know my programming remains at an early stage and I would value formal training in modelling and data analysis.

The opportunity to study across two countries particularly appeals to me. Indonesia's volcanic and tectonic setting makes questions of slope stability, eruption hazard and rainfall-triggered landslides immediate for millions of people, and the geology is very different from the Scottish landscapes I know. I have been learning Bahasa Indonesia for about eight months through an app and a weekly conversation exchange, and I can now hold a simple conversation. I would not pretend this makes me ready to work in the language, but I want to arrive able to be polite, follow everyday exchanges and keep improving.

Outside work I referee junior football at weekends. Managing a match of eleven-year-olds and their parents requires calm decisions made quickly and explained clearly, which is not a bad rehearsal for presenting uncertain results to people who want certainty.

In the longer term I would like to work on hazard assessment, whether in a geological survey, consultancy or further research, where field knowledge and computational skill are used together. I know my strengths: careful observation, patience with messy data and a willingness to keep working at something until it runs. I am now looking for the structured training and international perspective that will turn those habits into genuine expertise, so that the next time a model and a hillside disagree, I can explain why and do something useful about it.