AASSupporting Statements. How did you choose your proposed Course and Inst. M. Accounting ANU

Hi all moderators and members,
I need your help to review my draft essay for Australia Award Scholarship
Thanks in advance for your input
Prompt:

How Did You Choose Your Proposed Course and Institution

Answer:

Having been working as a tax auditor at Directorate General of Tax (DGT) Ministry of Finance, I have observed that some areas in tax audit policy need amending. One of the main challenges for us when conducting an audit is unstructured financial statements of the taxpayers that makes tax auditor difficult to analyze it, even sometimes we need to re-entering or re-formatting data from taxpayers to make it a ready-to-analyze financial information. It costs us the most valuable resource which is time. On the other side, this problem also affects taxpayers in which they will be less productive because of consuming more time on administrative activities (re-entering data, filling forms) instead of focusing on their business. For this reason, I feel the need to continue my formal education to solve this issue with Australia Award Scholarship because I share Australia Award's vision of supporting human development for a productive society in Indonesia.

Australia would be the perfect study destination for me because The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) was the pioneer of implementation of Standard Business Reporting (SBR) to optimize financial and accounting information. SBR is a standard digital record-keeping using XBRL format that permits taxpayers to lodge automatically to various government agencies. It was reported that SBR transactions exceeded 15 millions with an estimated 1.2 billion AUD cost saving from using SBR in 2016.

After rigorous research on universities in Australia, I opt to study Master of Accounting at Australian National University because I can obtain a sound knowledge of XBRL and SBR on its subjects Accounting Information System and Corporate Financial Reporting respectively. It also offers courses such as Auditing and Assurance Services in which I can learn more about risk-based audit, and Taxation Law in which I can gain perspective on tax administration in Australia. Moreover, its proximity to the ATO Headquarters will allow me to interact and build connection with their experts. Those aforementioned skills combined will help me to reach my full potential to contribute to DGT, especially in assisting and making a modernized tax audit policy.

Hi Seskussaa,

First paragraph is second sentence is too long. Break it into smaller few smaller sentences. Start would feel more commanding if something like - As a tax auditor at Directorate General of Tax Ministry of finance, I strongly feel that some areas in tax audit policy need amending. Unstructured financial statements of taxpayers makes audit extremely difficult to analyze. Formatting this unstructured statements into meaningful ready-to-analyze financial information costs most valuable resource - Time.

Don't use aforementioned in a statement. No need to say that.

Zamir, your approach to the prompt is too simplistic. You need to further develop the reason you chose the course and the institution as well. What you have here explains the predicament of the tax area you are working in, but not the specific points that have a direct effect on your profession. That means, your essay is informative in a general manner, but it needs to be more informative in a manner more specific to your professional goals first and academic needs second.

Therefore, it would be better if your tried to develop a 2nd version of your response. One that better addresses the prompt by responding to the following guide questions:

Proposed Course:
1.What is your current position at the DGT?
2. What are your duties and responsibilities in that position?
3. What are your perceived weaknesses in completing your work tasks?
4. What course do you believe you have to study in order to improve in your workplace participation?
5. How do you see your studies in this proposed course helping you to get a job promotion and why?

Chosen Institution:
1. How did you hear about the university?
2. What makes the course offering for the Masters in Accounting the best offering at the Australian National University?
3. Which courses specifically relate to your aforementioned problems in the workplace?
4. How do you see yourself applying what you have learned?

Using the above guide questions, you should be able to write an extremely relevant response within only 2 paragraphs. You don't need more than 2 paragraphs to fully explain your academic and professional goals for this prompt. The questions I provided will help you deliver a more focused and relevant series of informative sentences that the reviewer will be able to use in considering the validity of your application.

Thanks for the inpust komziee and Holt

@Holt, yes Holt, I'd definitely revise my essay. My problem is I was a business process analyst who produce some recommendations to policy makers at DGT ,,now I am a Tax Auditor,,some problems I encounter as a tax auditor make me want to do the career change to be eventual policy maker especially in tax audit policy, but to get there in my organization I need to be a senior tax auditor first then I can be a good policy maker.

So, I choose a course that can fulfill all the criteria, so I can contribute or give recommendations to the organization about Financial Reporting with XBRL, Risk-Based Audit,,etc..I need those courses to help me give policy recommendation to DGT in audit policy and other courses such as Financial Statement Analysis,,etc will help me to be a better tax auditor myself.

As Australia Awards is very competitive, I think I cant sell myself on the essay only to be a better tax auditor,,but to be a future policy maker and this one thing called XBRL is an area that lack of expertise here in my country. especially at tax authority.

How do you think I should approach the essay Holt?