I am ready to pursue a higher academic degree - Personal statement

Personal Statement (500 word limit)
How have your background and life experiences, including cultural, geographical, financial, educational, citizenship status or other opportunities or challenges, motivated your decision to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Michigan?

Do not repeat your Academic Statement of Purpose.

Master Application at the University of Michigan

My interest in Materials Science came from my childhood experience. At the age of seven, I was given a little radio by my grandfather as a gift. My young mind became enthralled with this magic device: it received the invisible signals from the outside and then translated them into sound that humans can hear. I was even amazed that I could tune into different channels as I wished. At that time, I was merely a naive child who knew nothing and just believed that there must be something magic inside. When I took apart the radio and was about to look it into, I only found a small circuit board and a copper ring: nothing special as I had thought. I was a little disappointed but more curious. I asked my grandfather, "what is the circuit board made of?", and heard from my grandfather, "Silicon".

I was especially intrigued by the work carried out at the front line and later I realized that behind these products it is the properties of materials and physical principles that make the "magics" happen. This fascination continued well into my adult life and manifested in a desire to explore new materials and find their potential applications. The passion for materials science has led me to study the science subjects in high school and microelectronics in college.

My motivation for further study and research has something to do with my travel to an industrial village -- Guiyu in China. During my visit to this village, I saw the tremendous discarded electronic devices. Some electronic waste even blocked the main roads and caused troubles to my journey. In addition, I was told that due to a large amount of chemicals within the discarded electronic devices, the average blood lead level among the children there was 200% higher than the reference level set by US. It has since been one of my career goals to improve the quality of people's life through making daily products safer and easier to recycle. Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) plays a key role in exploring renewable and safe materials. I believe that this dream can come true if I get to undertake advanced studies in materials at your university.

I want to continue my education in MSE so that I can become a more effective materials specialist. I am interested in pursuing studies that will increase my professional knowledge and skills to participate in materials exploration and optimization. The course work and research in the MSE department, especially research areas in xxx, are the reason why I am particularly interested in pursuing a master degree of MSE at University of Michigan.

Jin, this is still an academic related presentation that relates to your statement of purpose. You were asked to avoid doing that in the original prompt and yet to somehow, accidentally repeated it when you wrote this essay. For the personal statement, you need to look only into your personal life for the development of your essay. What road did you have to travel in order to get to this point where you are ready to pursue a higher academic degree? Focus on delivering the following information:

1. Cultural challenges - is this line of work or study something that is accepted in your culture? What kind of support or non support did you get? If it was non-support, how did you overcome that challenge?

2. Geographical - If you are an incoming foreign student, explain why you want to study abroad and how you hope this can help you broaden your personal and professional horizons.

3. Financial challenge - Are you financially prepared for this course of study? If not, will you require a scholarship? What makes you think you should qualify for one?

4. Educational challenge - have you ever been faced with a difficult academic situation that might have affected your grades? Discuss that here and include how you overcame the challenge.

5. Any other challenges that you have overcome that you feel will help your application.

Your revised essay should respond to the questions I posed above in order to create a better draft response, more appropriate for the requirements of the essay. You may find yourself writing more than 500 words at the time. Don't worry about it, you can always edit it to fit the word count. You can only effectively do that though if you first, put all the necessary and relevant information into the essay.