Hi people! I have read several essay from this website and it has inspire me to write this.
Please kindly give a recommendation or correction to improve my personal statement.
thank you!
Personal Statement prompt ---
"This is a chance for you to tell us about yourself and why you are a suitable candidate for your programme of choice. Typically your personal statement should be 1-2 sides of A4. You may wish to include: 1. Your reasons for choosing the programme 2. Positions of responsibility you have held and how these have helped any subsequent endeavours 3. Achievements in your life of which you are most proud and what you have learned from these"
--(610words)
I want to enroll in the master of finance program at Imperial College London Business school because of its excellent reputation in industry knowledge and experience with cutting edge-academic research. This program also fit to me because it enables me to to prepare myself by choosing courses such as behavioral investment management and quantitative trading strategies. These courses have caught my attention as the application of these theory can bring a betterment to community in terms of the understanding of asset allocation and psychological factor that affects investment decision. Moreover, the European financial trip is one of the major reasons for me where I can compare how the the financial knowledge bring a contribution to the development of local business in Brussels.
To increase my exposure to financial world, I join Financial Market Update Corner- a financial research group in the university. From day-to-day basis, I was positioned as an operator of Bloomberg terminal who used to receive data request from undergraduate, master, and doctoral students. During my work, I used to download firms' financial report, macroeconomics data and high frequency data such as stock price, trading volume and foreign exchange rate from Bloomberg data station. This job required a high attention to detail and adequate knowledge in financial research as the student's research results depend on how my job was done. Thus, this experience had taught me not only about how to transform data to useful information, but also communication skills, time and project management.
My participation in several business case competitions became one of the tipping point to deliver impact to community. For example, Indonesia Investment Banking Competition and Indonesia Capital market student studies had sharpened on equity research and then burn my desire to start a career in financial industry. The final point was when I and my team win a national business case competition in 2014. This experience has sharpened my skills and learn how to apply financial knowledge to solve a real business case problem.
To bring another betterment to the community, I set up a student-based community called Youth Finance Indonesia as the transformation of my desire to improve people's financial literacy. As a founder and development director, I responsible to define organization values, create organization planning, and evaluate member's performance. The art was how to transform college text books materials which high schools' students find it boring to be an interesting materials and games that were more persuasive and easy to understand. This activity was the most meaningful experience in my life which taught me the importance of persuading, influencing and motivating team members.
One my greatest achievement was write custom statistical programs by using Stata and Eviews for my first conferenced paper which is titled "capital structure puzzled revisited: Evidence from Indonesia" and my undergraduate thesis which is titled "Day of the Week Effect and Volatility". This program made data management more efficient and open the opportunity to do an extensive research in finance. For example, I can run the same program that I built before to identify a specific stock trend in a shorter event window or predict the price movement on daily basis by using historical data. This programming skills has taught project planning, integrated thinking and problems solving. In addition, learning excel macros and VBA also help me to contribute to the community. An excel spreadsheet which include personal spending, investment valuation, and travel budgeting was made by me to help them managing their money. Despite meeting the current industry challenge in financial industry, I look forward to bring a real social impact as my role in my society which can bring benefit for them by learning in Imperial College London Business School.
Hi Asri, it is indeed interesting to read your personal statement. Actually the idea is adequately addressed clearly to the reader, but your grammatical inaccuracies that you have, somehow, have distracted the meaning. You can see what I've found below.
- ...also fit to me, because it enables me to to prepare (comma needed)
- ...of these theorytheories can... (singular plural problem)
- ...I can compare how the the financial...
- became one of the tipping pointpoints ...
- This experience has sharpened my skills and learn how to.. (read again, confusing eh? how about this
------This experience has sharpened my skills, which triggers me to learn how to...
- To bring another betterment to...
- my first conferencedconference paper which is titledentitled ...
- This program made data management more efficient and opened the opportunity.. (parallel sentence)
- This programming skills / these programming skills
However, you also suggested to impress the reader by composing a catchy introduction, especially at the first sentence.
instead of this:
- I want to enroll in the master of finance program at Imperial College London Business school because of its excellent reputation in industry knowledge and experience with cutting edge-academic research.
how about this:
- Enrolling in Master of Science in Finance Program at Imperial College London Business School embodies my professional enhancement as a ........................... in Indonesia.
So, you mention the benefits that you can possibly get, especially for your future career. It indicates that you are a person who has a broader vision.
That's it Asri, I hope my feedback and insights will be valuable for you. Good luck for the application that you are going to send :)
