The proseminars in particular attract me. Seeking an advice on Personal Statement for MIT Sloan MFin

Hi,

I am currently applying the Master of Finance program in MIT. I need to submit a statement answering the 3 questions below, and they have set a word limit for 500 words. I drafted my personal statement but I found it hard to reduce it to 500 words. Do you have any suggestions on what part I should cut? And in general do you have any advice on the content in the personal statement? I appreciate if you could give some advice on my essay. And sorry for that as I dont want this application to be searchable so I hide some names of some relevant institutions.

Thank you and happy new year!

Essay: The mission of the Master of Finance program at MIT Sloan is to create the next generation of principled, global financial leaders with state-of-the-art training in modern finance theories and methods. Our program attracts the best and brightest students who go on to advance financial management practice and improve the world. Please draw upon experiences from the past three years. (...)

practical experience opportunity in MIT program

My draft:

Dear Sir / Madam,

I have been fond of making investment since I was young. One of the aspects of investment, especially in the area of proprietary trading, that I find most interesting is its application of knowledge from other areas of discipline like statistics, mathematics or even politics. This reinforces my belief that my excellent exposure to different aspects of knowledge and strong logical thinking ability make me well-suited to this industry.

During my undergraduate years, I have been awarded 5 scholarships and Students' Academic Excellence Award, passed the CFA level one exam, and got excellent grades in all the courses. One of the major accomplishments in my undergraduate degree was that I was selected as a portfolio manager of the [name of the school fund], managed a US$1 Million portfolio. With the efforts of me and 4 research analysts I led, I beat the market by 20% in terms of annual return. The systematic learning and experience cultivated my logical thinking ability, and they had laid a solid foundation for my further study on finance.

While my hard work and critical thinking ability have brought me to a higher level of academic accomplishment, my work experience will surely enhance my candidacy for graduate studies at MIT. In 2014, I spent three months in [name of a property research company], a company providing research of mainland China property sector for both buy-side and sell-side clients. As an intern there, I am enlightened on investment research by the team and it was my first time to publish a research report to sell-side and buy-side clients. After graduating from [name of a university], I began my career in finance field in [name of an Big 4 audit firm], and joined a CNY10 Billion Chinese fund afterwards, accumulated experience in financial accounting and investment research. The successful execution of every task allowed me to have a more profound understanding of investment, broaden my horizons and strengthen my confidence.

I aim to join a proprietary trading firm or the trading department of a bank as a trader after graduation. Within 3 years, I target to achieve more than 30% of annual return, which is the industry average. In the long-term, I aim to improve in the return to 50% in 5 to 10 years and have a bigger portfolio to run. As my academic and work experience focus on the fundamental research side of investment, I relatively lack the knowledge on the quantitative research side to be a successful trader. The courses in the Capital Markets or the Financial Engineering concentrations of the program will certainly be beneficial.

People around the world often misunderstand traders as the greedy ones who just buy and sell on market and contribute no real production to society. But in fact traders are contributing to one thing that is of utmost importance to society, which is market efficiency. The investments reward good companies and penalize bad companies, allocating monetary resources to better places. I believe my aim of being a trader, together with my leadership skills shown in my management of my school fund mentioned above, are consistent with the mission of MIT Sloan.

The outstanding academic reputation of MIT, mingled with its diverse environment, creates an opportunity for growth that is second to none. The proseminars in particular attract me as they will equip me for practical experience and enable me to build industry network with all the leading experts participated in the seminars. In all, I'm looking forward to embarking upon this rewarding and insightful academic pursuit and contributing my unique and diverse experiences to this vibrant learning environment. I believe that my commitment qualify me as an excellent candidate for your program. Thank you for your consideration.

Yours faithfully,

[name]

Ng, I see two paragraphs that can be removed from the essay because they do not really help to enhance the responses to the 3 questions posed in the prompt. I advise you to simply delete paragraphs numbered 1 and 5. Also, you can remove the letter type introduction at the beginning of the essay. This is supposed to be formatted as a straightforward essay because of the prompt requirements. This is not a motivation letter but rather, a statement of purpose. Therefore, the formatting to be used is not that of a letter. By the way, if you complete the removal of the previously mentioned paragraphs, along with the letter formatting (salutations and closing greeting), the essay will be reduced to a word count of 464. So you will go comfortably below the maximum word count. The overall content of your response is applicable and direct to the point. The reviewer will definitely appreciate your short, informative, and verifiable essay.

Thank you for your advice Holt. The 1st and 5th paragraph seem unnecessary. And do you think the 3rd questions about the mission is well-answered? And if you dont do you have any advice on that, I find it quite difficult to get this one well-answered.

Yes Ng. Like I said, there is no problem with the later part of your essay. The only parts you need to pay attention to are the paragraphs that I indicated above. Since you agree with me regarding the removal of those paragraphs, then you do not need to make any formal content revisions to the essay. From my response, you can tell that the essay works quite well in terms of prompt responsiveness and only needs to be adjusted in terms of format in order to prepare the essay for a final draft review. Can you tell me why you find it hard to answer the third part of the prompt? Maybe there is something I am missing here or perhaps I can clarify your concerns regarding what troubles you in that paragraph? This essay will not be finally ready to use until you are actually satisfied with the response you developed. So I will work with you until you feel comfortable with the overall essay content.

Thank you Holt, happy new year!

1. Please discuss past academic and professional experiences and accomplishments that will help you succeed in the MFin program. Include achievements in finance, math, statistics, and computer science as applicable.

2. Describe your short-and-long-term professional goals. How will our MFin degree help you achieve these goals?
3. Share personal qualities that will enable you to contribute to the advancement of our mission.

These are the questions I need to answer. The first 2 are well-answered. For the 3rd one it is about the mission.

My 1st concern:
MIT Sloan gets its mission of " to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice."

While the MFin program seems to get its own mission of "to create the next generation of principled, global financial leaders with state-of-the-art training in modern finance theories and methods. " (the bold part above)

I don't know which one I should refer to. I think I should refer to the Program one since it is on the essay questions as well. But I have seen some other applicants using the Sloan one. (Last paragraph of https://essayforum.com/graduate/incoming-generation-innovative-leaders-66200/ )

My 2nd concern:
I haven't adequately answer on how I contribute to the advancement on both missions since I keep talking about my career plan and academic/work experience.

Ng, my question for you is this, why would you want your essay to sound like all the other essays that you have read? Granted that more of the previous applicants wrote about the same topic, don't you think that you should be going in the opposite direction so that your essay will be different from theirs? Your essay should sound unique and try to create a different response from everyone else. Don't let your essay be influenced by the ones that you have read as examples. As far as I am concerned, this essay portrays your thoughts, ideas, and sentiments. It is original and stands apart because of your method of discussion.

As for the mission of MIT Sloane, you actually respond to it through your future career goals and plans. The essay asks you how you will embody their mission and vision. You actually do this because you have solid plans for your short and long term goals. If you would like to be specific, then you can tie in specific keywords from the prompt into your essay so that the reviewer will get specific markers regarding prompt number 3 responses. I do not feel that is necessary though since that part seems to be a fluid part of the discussion. You don't really need to be highly specific about it. But then, that is my opinion, we should work on the essay based upon yours.

Thanks Holt, I agree with you. I think I have already shown what I need to show.