Thank you for your attention, I appreciate your time and feedback. Is it the right angle, or should I focus more on future studies, program and plans?
Task:
This personal statement should be a narrative statement describing how you have achieved your current goals. It should not be a mere listing of facts. It should include information about your education, practical experience, special interests, and career plans. Describe any significant factors that have influenced your educational or professional development.
Statement:
"Are people really equal?" This provocative question of my professor was a beginning of Constitutional Law class and my continuing journey to explore issues, that don't provide easy answers. It was fresh, novel for me way of inquiry, that has awaked my curiosity and gave me uneasiness over the questions of equality and liberty, luck and responsibility, social justice and policy, that shaped my life thereafter. This search, refined and revised so many times, continues, with many question answered, but even more discovered.
Fascinated by complexity of these issues, and, seemingly, absence of correct answers, I was in constant, eager search of relevant information during my sophomore year. Books and translations on these topics were barely accessible, and, in order to read books and watch lectures on youtube, I started to learn English. At the same time, I entered ... Foundation as a volunteer, helping to organize and participating in different programs for young leaders. After some time, I introduced a lecture on theory of law and state in ..., organized by Foundation. I really enjoyed sharing results of my intellectual journey with participants of our programs - future leaders of academia, political arena and policy-making. Soon, I was asked to participate in many round tables, seminars, programs regarding student self-government, educational reform, urban policy, political issues, which started to interfere with my part-time work as a law clerk. One evening, creating a three-month plan for personal development, I observed that I am planning with much more enjoyment my activity related to civil society, rather than my professional progress in a law firm. That led to more general thoughts about long-term plans. It was an important founding about me - I gain enduring sense of fulfillment only working on problems, which constitute public interest, that have importance for the whole society. I decided to quit promising position at a leading law firm, after 2 years of work, despite wonderful career prospects, and fast professional progress, weird and inexplicable step for my peers and colleagues.
Education at the (university in my country) was inadequate to my aims, I needed to gain more complex and well-rounded education, that self-studying of pieces of available information could not provide, and ... Institute met my need with fellowship at the University of ... After finishing my fellowship, I decided to get hands-on experience in real policy analysis and applied for another competitive fellowship - ... and was selected out of more than 1000 applicants to work for DC-based think tank. Considering history of my region, I held some strong libertarian views, but during my work in libertarian think-tank, I realized inadequate and contradictory nature of libertarianism's social policy proposals. I worked in regulation reform center, and was fascinated to scrutinize regulations aimed to pursue social aims, and their effect. What a striking contrast! Unlike business regulations, where special interest groups where able to secure concentrated benefits, social policy is dealing with underrepresented, unable to organize, marginalized groups. Nevertheless, during my work there, I learned the importance of applying classic liberalism's cautions about need to take into account Hayek's "knowledge problem", insights of public choice school, secure place for competition and evolutionary discovery, need for decentralization of decision-making.
Gliding through night streets of DC, enjoying Potomac's embankment and old monuments, I couldn't escape thoughts about place of contingencies in our life, boundary of personal responsibility, and their effect for social policy. Ideas of T. Pogge, R. Dworkin, C. Beitz, F.A. Hayek, R. Arneson, L. Temkin interwoven in interesting paradigm, sometimes leading to intriguing, radical aims for social policy.
After my returning to ..., I was able to work on the new level at the ... Foundation, and, soon, I was elected the president of the Foundation. My plan to pursue Master's degree in public policy with concentration in social policy is the next step logical step, in order to take responsibilities and leadership on the new level.
Diversity of professional experience and interdisciplinary education makes me qualified for the Master's degree in public policy with concentration in social policy. Advanced professional degree is essential for effective public official, and, I feel a strong need to improve my analytical skills and unite my segmented knowledge from different fields into a single framework.
After completing Masters' program I am planning pursue career in public sector, governmental agency or think-tank. Also, I intend to teach and be involved in academia, in order to dissipate my knowledge to wider audience. Nowadays, social policy in ... represents a mix of blindly borrowed institutions, populism and remains of last century's erroneous system. Therefore, I am convinced that my project will be highly beneficial for ..., where will be a necessity for coherent ideal of social policy at the time of future reforms.
Task:
This personal statement should be a narrative statement describing how you have achieved your current goals. It should not be a mere listing of facts. It should include information about your education, practical experience, special interests, and career plans. Describe any significant factors that have influenced your educational or professional development.
Statement:
"Are people really equal?" This provocative question of my professor was a beginning of Constitutional Law class and my continuing journey to explore issues, that don't provide easy answers. It was fresh, novel for me way of inquiry, that has awaked my curiosity and gave me uneasiness over the questions of equality and liberty, luck and responsibility, social justice and policy, that shaped my life thereafter. This search, refined and revised so many times, continues, with many question answered, but even more discovered.
Fascinated by complexity of these issues, and, seemingly, absence of correct answers, I was in constant, eager search of relevant information during my sophomore year. Books and translations on these topics were barely accessible, and, in order to read books and watch lectures on youtube, I started to learn English. At the same time, I entered ... Foundation as a volunteer, helping to organize and participating in different programs for young leaders. After some time, I introduced a lecture on theory of law and state in ..., organized by Foundation. I really enjoyed sharing results of my intellectual journey with participants of our programs - future leaders of academia, political arena and policy-making. Soon, I was asked to participate in many round tables, seminars, programs regarding student self-government, educational reform, urban policy, political issues, which started to interfere with my part-time work as a law clerk. One evening, creating a three-month plan for personal development, I observed that I am planning with much more enjoyment my activity related to civil society, rather than my professional progress in a law firm. That led to more general thoughts about long-term plans. It was an important founding about me - I gain enduring sense of fulfillment only working on problems, which constitute public interest, that have importance for the whole society. I decided to quit promising position at a leading law firm, after 2 years of work, despite wonderful career prospects, and fast professional progress, weird and inexplicable step for my peers and colleagues.
Education at the (university in my country) was inadequate to my aims, I needed to gain more complex and well-rounded education, that self-studying of pieces of available information could not provide, and ... Institute met my need with fellowship at the University of ... After finishing my fellowship, I decided to get hands-on experience in real policy analysis and applied for another competitive fellowship - ... and was selected out of more than 1000 applicants to work for DC-based think tank. Considering history of my region, I held some strong libertarian views, but during my work in libertarian think-tank, I realized inadequate and contradictory nature of libertarianism's social policy proposals. I worked in regulation reform center, and was fascinated to scrutinize regulations aimed to pursue social aims, and their effect. What a striking contrast! Unlike business regulations, where special interest groups where able to secure concentrated benefits, social policy is dealing with underrepresented, unable to organize, marginalized groups. Nevertheless, during my work there, I learned the importance of applying classic liberalism's cautions about need to take into account Hayek's "knowledge problem", insights of public choice school, secure place for competition and evolutionary discovery, need for decentralization of decision-making.
Gliding through night streets of DC, enjoying Potomac's embankment and old monuments, I couldn't escape thoughts about place of contingencies in our life, boundary of personal responsibility, and their effect for social policy. Ideas of T. Pogge, R. Dworkin, C. Beitz, F.A. Hayek, R. Arneson, L. Temkin interwoven in interesting paradigm, sometimes leading to intriguing, radical aims for social policy.
After my returning to ..., I was able to work on the new level at the ... Foundation, and, soon, I was elected the president of the Foundation. My plan to pursue Master's degree in public policy with concentration in social policy is the next step logical step, in order to take responsibilities and leadership on the new level.
Diversity of professional experience and interdisciplinary education makes me qualified for the Master's degree in public policy with concentration in social policy. Advanced professional degree is essential for effective public official, and, I feel a strong need to improve my analytical skills and unite my segmented knowledge from different fields into a single framework.
After completing Masters' program I am planning pursue career in public sector, governmental agency or think-tank. Also, I intend to teach and be involved in academia, in order to dissipate my knowledge to wider audience. Nowadays, social policy in ... represents a mix of blindly borrowed institutions, populism and remains of last century's erroneous system. Therefore, I am convinced that my project will be highly beneficial for ..., where will be a necessity for coherent ideal of social policy at the time of future reforms.
