Please submit your statement of purpose. This one- or two-page statement states your reasons for undertaking graduate work and explains your academic interests, including their relation to your undergraduate study and professional goals. Include your full name and your proposed field of study at the top of each page.
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During my undergraduate study, I became interested in the issue of employee retention from my own experience. Retaining elite employees not only saves the cost of operation but also keeps the core competencies in-house. However, from the employee's point of view, their choices are either to jump ship or to stay. I encountered a jump ship situation myself during a shopping website development project. My teammates who were in charge of technical support jumped ship to another project without informing me in advance. This experience strengthened my determination to further study economic behaviors and individual choices because they are as important as techniques in related to the success of an organization.
To analyze the jump-ship scenarios, I started to consider using game theory which is a powerful management tool that can be used to calculate the highest outcome of an employee's decision. We can thus make a prediction by using the payoff matrix or game tree in a simulated situation and change our stimulation mechanism accordingly. However, as I am not sure whether the employees choose their moves without being sure of the firm's move or not, both sequential and simultaneous games have to be taken into consideration. So there may be several decisions for several different scenarios instead of a single solution based on the overall picture.
I would love to better understand this issue. But my undergraduate study only introduced some general solutions to employee retention and the game theory I learned by myself is not enough. Your program provides courses such as Behavioral and Managerial Decision Making which will help me understand how to best organize and motivate the human capital of the firm. There are also courses about research methods and the proper use of statistical data which are vital in setting up the right model for analysis. I believe your program will help me look at this issue from a comprehensive view with a deeper insight into the behaviors of employees.
As an accounting major student, I gained a comprehensive mastery of fundamental principles of finance from courses including Macro-Micro Economics and Financial Management. To ensure that my mathematical skills would be at the desired level, "level A" was applied for all my mathematical classes including Advanced Mathematics, Linear Algebra and Statistics. Normally, I prefer to lead by full participation in a project and act on my ideas rather than wait for other's instructions motivated me to learn Support Vector Machines (SVM). I learned the use of MATLAB on SVM by myself and my thesis "prediction of the return on investment based on SVM" was published on Global Information Guide No.XXX. Aiming to access a full understanding of how business operates, I deem internships and group works as critical components for realizing my career goals. My first internship at AAA Security taught me to prepare for product promotion. My second internship at BBB allowed me to learned accounting principle by generating accounting entries and filling financial documents. My last internship at CCC Futures taught me to advise customers to make investment decisions by processing financial data and benchmarking.
Although I am confident that my solid academic and professional background will help me find a position as a consultant in China, I want to solve my long held puzzle in retaining employees. Combined with a passion for academia, I was seeking a master's program in behavioral finance. Your esteemed program, with specialization in behavioral finance is perfectly aligned with my educational background and specific research interests. While my intention is to obtain a position as an consultant, my long term goal is to be a researcher and take this field to a new level. Therefore, with an environment of a diverse group of people who are all striving to live up to the same high-standard that you are being held to, XXX is the place for me to find my career peers and realize my goals.
