# New Zealand Scholarship Preparation

The New Zealand Scholarship application form requires you to:
provide your name, birth date, physical address and phone number
provide an email address: a current email address that you use regularly

Nguyen Hoang Nguyen
31/03/1996
C1 Cao Thi Chinh, Phu Thuan Ward, District 7, HCM City
[phone]
[e-mail]

**list your preferred courses and the education institution for your scholarship**
First choice: Master of Data Science - The University of Auckland
Second choice: Master of Analytics - Auckland University of Technology

Note: Your preferred courses must progress on from the highest qualification that you have previously completed.

**describe how your preferred courses relate to one of our recommended study subjects for your country**

From what I have read, New Zealand Government recommend four areas for my study: Climate & Environment, Geology, Renewable energy and Governance. Although the major that I have chosen - Data Science, does not fall into any of these categories, I strongly believe that my chosen major can play a critical supportive role in the development of these aforemention areas. The main reason behind such claim is due to the fact that nowadays, technology allows us to generate and access to an abundent amount of data. These large amount of data, when use correctly, can uplift any business and enhance the operations of any fields, since it can provide specialist with the most useful and latest information, which improve their decision making ability tremendously.

For example, in the field of climate change, environment and disaster management, one always need to make decisive decisions to prevent and minimize the damage caused by natural disaster. In order to make such decisions in a timely manner, experts need to collect a large amount of data from many sources, then filter it to extract useful information and insights, which then can be use to make predictions or recommendations. As data colletion is very time consuming, data analyst becomes an invaluable resource, as they are able to get and process huge quantity of data into human readable format quickly, and support predictions through machine learning model. This allows the scientists in natural disaster field to concentrate on their expertise and also enable them to make the best decision possible in a short period of time, which helps to prevent large-scale disaster from happening, like the forest-fire incident in Australia recently.

The similar logic can also be apply to other listed fields above, since these fields are also very data driven. Accurate and up to date data in these area means better decision making, which improves both day to day operation and long term strategic business decisions. This helps the company in the related fields not only operate more efficiently, but also provide them with more options to innovate and create new technologies to tackle modern problem such as climate change and energy problem. In conclusion, although Data Scientist cannot replace the specialist in their particular field, I believe that they play very important role in supporting and enhancing the capabilities of any industry, which drastically need to innovate in order to adapt to the problem of the modern world.

**list the qualifications you have already completed**
B.Sc in Finance and Accounting Goethe University, Frankfurt Am Main (4/2019)

B.Sc in Finance and Accounting Vietnamese German University, Vietnam (4/2019)

**list any awards or prizes you have won, or articles you have published**

(5/2020) Graduate with honor at Vietnamese German University

(5/2017) DAAD full Scholarship for an exchange semester in Goethe University

**provide the details of previous jobs or work experience**
My first job was Junior Data Analyst at Evergreen capital partner, a real estate investment company. My daily task was to consolidate and clean data from more than 20 real estate properties into the predefined format, gather data from the market such as interest rate, housing price and create formular to calcuate the cashflow of these assets base on those data. I am also in charge of creating report and visualization to present the keys information to the investor.

My second and current job is Junior Machine Learning Instructor at Coderschool, a start-up company, which specializes in education. My daily task is to research the latest technology in order to teach and create exercises for students. Furthermore, I also grade homework assignment, support students with their difficulties, suggest ways to solve problem and debug code. Until now, me and my team has successfully held 2 fulltime bootcamp class, in which we teach them the fundamental knowledge about data analyst, machine learning and deep learning.

**describe how your work experience relates to your preferred courses or career (Note: School leavers and first year undergraduate applicants do not need work experience.)**

In the first jobs, I have learned the fundamental knowledge about data analysis through manipulating data to provide cash flow estimation for porfolios of real estate assets. The job provided me a clearer understanding of the tasks of a data analyst as well as the chance to horn my complementary skills such as public speaking, teamwork and critical thinking.

My latest job as machine learning instructor gives me 3 main benefits that will support me in the future career as a Data Scientist. First, it gives me with the basics knowledge about machine learning. As I have gained a lot of practical experience in my first job, this jobs has provide me with more tools and technology for me to utilize those understanding into real projects. Second, teaching also improve my communication skills and ehance my fundamental knowledge about machine learning and data analysis, since I must review them every day in order to teach the students. The job also requires me to study and implement new technologies, which drastically improve my research ability. Last but not least, my coding ability also improve by a large margin due to the fact that I have to constantly debug students code and research new technologies. Furthermore, my understanding about data structures and databases has also improved, which are the two very important skills for a Data Scientist.

**describe the skills and knowledge you want to gain from your preferred courses**

Until now, both of my job are at junior level. What I lack is advance knowledge in statistic and modeling if I want to advance to senior level. Furthermore, my coding ability as well as my ability to comprehend data are also limited, which are also my main focus if I was accepted to the course.

Aside from the technical knowledge that I have mentioned above, I expect to learn more and strengthen my work ethics as a Data Scientist. I also hope that the course can provide me with opportunities to meet with other successful data scientist in the industry so that I can extend my professional connection, as well as improve my communication abilities, which is a crucial ability in this line of work.

**describe how these skills and knowledge arpe important to your country’s social and economic development**

When I worked as a Data Analyst, a lot of time I needed the data from the General Statistical Office (GSO) in Vietnam such as the inflation rate, birth rate, GDP, etc. Unfortunately, the GSO in our country is still very weak and unorganize. By learning more about statistic and improve my coding ability, I hope I will be able to restructure the data in the GSO, which with no doubt, will contribute to the growth of Vietnam, since these information are very crucial to many business in our country. Futhermore, Vietnam is an emerging market with a large number of technology related start-up being founded every year, which leads to a high demand for qualified âdata scientist. However, at the moment, we still have a shortage of quality Data Scientist due to out-of-date education system and underdeveloped Data Science communities. Therefore, if I was accepted to your program and finished my study at University of Auckland , there would be no doubt that I will be able to contribute my knowledge from one of the best university in the world to build the Data Scientist community in Vietnam.

**describe a situation when you had a problem and solved it**

After 2 months in Coderschool, I was asked to create a brand new material for a new class and prepare to teach 2 weeks about data analysis in the bootcamp class. The task was really overwhelming for me at that time, since I was relatively new in the company and had a very short deadline, around 2 weeks, to prepare for the material. Although my scope was only about fundamental knowledge of coding and data analyst, which I have already learned in my past job, explaining a new concept to a beginner was still a very challenging task. To tackle this challenge, I have made a plan as follow:

1) Spend the first week reading about the new technology and make some small project base on that technology. Then, I tried to explain that technology to my senior and asked him for feedbacks as often as possible. In the end, the feedbacks was incredibly useful, as it allow me to speed up my learning process due to reciprocal interaction, which helped me to approach the problems from many different aspects.

2) Held a public workshop to talk about basic coding and data analyst on the second week. This event served two purposes. First, it acted as a small marketing campaign for my company, which helped us to attract more student. Second, the event created pressure on me, which forced me to study harder and more comprehensive about the subject. I believe that people tend to overlook subjects that they have already learned before, since subjects are always deemed to be easy once we finished them. Hence the workshop was my motivation to prepare as hard as I could for the upcomming class to minizime my mistake.

The result was exceptionally good. Student satisfaction score in that two weeks rose from 7.4 to 8.5, compare to the average score of 7.2. Furthermore, my research on the new technology (Docker) became the main material to teach on the last 2 week of the bootcamp class, and we also have attracted 2 new students from the data analysis event. The only thing that I wish I have done better is make my material on Docker technology easier to read and understand for beginner.

**describe a situation when you created a successful relationship at work or with someone in a community group**

The case that I remember the most was Dinh. He was a hardworking students, but lack the ability to comprehend new things quickly. This makes him felt very frustrated at times, due to the fact that he could not catch up with the rest of the class although he had tried his hardest. Hence I decided to offer extra one on one session with him, in order to explain to him all the fundamental concept, as well as shared some personal experience to help him understand new concepts faster. His English was also very limited, so I tried to have lunch with him everytime I could, in order to explain more clearly about the concept taught in class in Vietnamese. At the moment I write this paragraph, he has became one of the top 5 students in our class, and for my part, I have made a new friend, who can give me invaluable feedback about my teaching style, and sharing with me his experience as a chemical engineer.

**describe a situation when you had to work very hard to achieve your goals**

To me, the most difficult goal that I have achieved was to win the DAAD scholarship to study in Germany. The scholarship was given by the German government to top 1 percent student in Vietnamese Germany University, who must have both excellent academic performance as well as extra curriculum activities. My university was consist of students, who have studied in school for the gifted across the nations, and the scholarship announcement was a huge motivation for nearly every person in the school. The competition was both challenging and fierce, to the point that everyone avoided sharing extra material about the lecture or forming study groups, with the intention of gaining competitive advantage against other students. In order to compete with the other students for the scholarship, I devised the following strategies:

1) Firstly, I tried to form study groups with other students who was also willing to do so. In these groups, we exchanged information freely and tried to help each other on difficult problems. This idea was base on my belief that people can learn faster and remember longer when there is reciprocal interactions. Even if in the case that I cannot acquire any new knowledge from others, teaching is a very effective method to revise and gain even more insights on a particular subject that I wish to master. The method has been serving me well since I was in high school and it continue to prove its effectiveness until today (main reason why I join Coderschool and try teaching beginners code and data analysis).

2) Secondly, I allocated more time on studying while maintaining my physical activities and sleep scheldure. At that time, my study time increased to 12 hours a day with 2 hours for swimming and 8 hours for sleep. Personally, I believe that health should always be the top priority, since it allow you to work for longer time and still be efficient. To be honest, it was incredibly difficult to maintain the scheldure during holidays and weekends but I have managed to do that with lots of support from my roommate.

The result was that, not only I was awarded with the scholarship from DAAD, but also the title of the best student in the year of 2017. Moreover, two of my friends from my study group also won the scholarship, which proves that my study plans was really effective. From my personal perspective, the event was a difficult test for my aptitude and mental strength, which after completed it, I believe that I can overcome any hardship that I will encounter in my career path in the future.

**provide convincing reasons why you want to study in New Zealand**

Since I have a German Bachelor of Science degree, in many ways, it would be natural for me to choose Germany as my next destination for my higher study. However, the more I read about New Zealand, the more convinced I am that I should choose this country to continue my study. There are three reasons that leads to my decision.

Firstly, the University of Auckland is on of the top university in the world. This means that I will have the access to the highest quality of education, and also the opportunity to work with the world-class professional in the Data Science field. By getting a degree from this University, I will have a better chance to secure my dream job as a Data Scientist in many quality job market around the world.

The second reason why I want to pursuit my higher education in New Zealand also comes from the fact that New Zealand is one of the most beautiful place on earth. Hiking and biking was my favorite activites during my study in Germany, and since New Zealand offers a lot of beatiful places and breathtaking landscape, I am further convinced that my time study here will creates a lot of memorable memories. There is also one more personal reason. To be honest, I am a big fan of the Lord of The Ring movies, and this has always motivated to travel to New Zealand and visit all the places that was the filming locations in those movies.

In addition to top level of education and marvelous landscape, I also have heard a lot of good things about New Zealand people and its culture. From my personal experience in Germany, people are one of the most important factor to consider, especially when you have to stay for a long time in the country, since it affects greatly on your morale and psychological health. This belief of mine makes New Zealand becomes a highly attractive place, since New Zealanders are known for their incredibly friendly personality and their positive attitude toward hardship. Fortunately, I have had an opportunity to experience these characteristic first hand as I teached Sean, a brilliant student who comes from New Zealand. Aside from people, culture and cuisine also contribute greatly to a good quality of life, which are two very strong aspects of the Kiwi country. Regard to the cuisine, New Zealander's diet consist of mostly fruits and vegetables, which are very identical to the diet that we have here in Vietname. For those reasons, I strongly believe that New Zealand is the ideal country for me to pursuit my master degree in Data Science.

**describe what challenges you could find as a new scholar in New Zealand and how you would deal with these challenges.**

One of the very first challenge that I could think of is the lack of understanding about the culture and lifestyle of the New Zealanders. This could potentially makes it incredibly difficult to make close contact with the natives and expose me to loneliness for the first couple of months. To prepare for this hardship, I am currently trying to learn more about the culture of the Kiwiland as well as the normal routine of the people in order to avoid any culture shock if I had the chance to study in New Zealand.

The second problem may arise from my study plan. Enjoying one of the best education system also means that I need to work more diligent to keep up with the curriculums, while make sure that I have enough time to create meaningful connection with many profeesionals in the field. This might be the most difficult challenge, but thanks to my past experiences as a Data Analyst and an international student in Goethe University, one of the best University in Europe, I am confident that I have the ability to overcome this challenge. However, as time in prepration is never wasted, I have researched a few modules from University of Auckland in advance, with the intention to better prepare for my study in New Zealand.

Coderschool is a start-up company, which specializes in teaching people about coding. The main customers of the company are people who want to change their career path to Machine Learning specialist or Full-Stack Web Developer. Hence, Coderschool always aims to teach the latest, most demand technologies to the students, with the intention to make them employed after graduation. Coderschool also operates as a tech hub in Vietnam, where passionate developers can comes and share their experience or speaks about the latest trend in technology.