Statement of Intent for Master of Management (Finance) for University of Melbourne

Hi All,

I wanna apply for Master of Management (Finance) for University of Melbourne, I need your help to point out mistakes and weaknesses of my Statement of intent

As a member of a family that making living by running a small business makes me have a lot of attention about SME development in Indonesia. SMEs may be regarded as backbone of Indonesian economy, due to the fact that 99% businesses are represented by SMEs, which contributes greatly towards the revenues of the economy. SMEs represent more than 50% of Indonesia's total GDP and employ 97% of the labor force.

Most issues that Indonesian's SMEs currently face are ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) that applied from January 2010 and ASEAN Free trade Agreement (AFTA) applied from January 2015. By the application of those agreements, Indonesia's SMEs need to increase their competitive advantage in order to compete with products and services from China and other ASEAN country. From financial perspective, one of the ways to gain more competitive advantage is optimizing the capital structure by measuring most ideal combination of equities and debts and choosing the best investment tools.

As a management graduate, I have a goal to become a researcher that could assist in Indonesia's SMEs development on capital structure specialization. Even though my bachelor degree unveiled the mask of some instruments, theories and methodologies in the field of finance, I feel my understanding is superficial and lacks in-depth comprehension on pursuing my goal. For this reason, I would like to further my education in the Master of Management (Finance) program at University of Melbourne.

A Master of Management (Finance) program at University of Melbourne will provide me an opportunity to widen my knowledge in a dynamic and academic environment. Furthermore, studying in Australia is a chance for me not only to challenge myself by studying and living in a new country, but also to discover a new culture and to make friends with many people all around the world. I believe that invaluable knowledge and experiences studied from great professors in University of Melbourne would be a stepping stone for me to achieve my goal. I really appreciate your time considering my application and I hope that this information has depicted my personal motivation to take a further study in Finance.