My name is Long Zhang. Before coming to America, I majored in Mathematics as an undergraduate student in China. This academic background provided me with a comprehensive understanding of both theoretical research and mathematics applications. I think the most important lesson I learned is that a good understanding of the whole mathematics system greatly improved my self-study ability, even the study in many other domains because I know what kind of mathematical tools and theories are required in a new domain.

After that, I try to explore what I was most interested in and what I would like to pursue in the future. Gradually, I found that I enjoyed analyzing, modeling, and solving problems in real life, especially after participating two times of mathematical modeling contests. By the way, the highest award is the second prize in the whole country.

Therefore, now I am pursuing a master’s degree in data analytics engineering in George Mason. This major is to extract valuable information from datasets via modeling to guide the decision making, which exactly satisfies my interests before. As so far, I gradually adapt to the new academic life here and do well in each course. For example, I obtained two A and two A+ last semester, even my professor provided me with a position for grading for the assignments this semester.

In the future, I hope that I can become a good data analyst in the business and Internet domains. I think these industries are so variable and challenging that they remain to be developed.