Hi everyone, I have viewed some threads here and I find this is a really great forum! Looking forward to your replies, comments and critiques!
My paper:
On the last Friday of Nov. 2014, I happened to enter the stock market when SSE Composite Index was still 2486, and the index rose so fast that my return incredibly reached 100% in two months. In March, as the index kept rising up, stocks became the hottest topic among students, professors and even doorkeepers, and even grade-12 students were reported to open stock accounts. But in June when the index eventually reached 5178, it suddenly crashed and dropped by 35% in only three weeks
What do I get from this experience? I have been long asking myself this question. Once I thought I had gained the ability to make money from this market, however the collapse, though only impacted my profit slightly, inevitably changed my optimistic thought and let me realize that there were too many unpredictable things and it could never be easy to survive in long run. Now, looking back, I find it turns out to be the friends I made at that time that are my genuine treasure. When the market was still hot, I launched a Wechat group and attracted over one hundred schoolmates. Some of them who shared similar interest and goal with me soon became my close friends and influenced me greatly.
Their influences were various. Many of them majored in finance, and with their recommendation I began to read more books about investment. Buffet's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders was probably the first and most vivid introduction to the fascinating world of accountancy and finance. And Grossman and Stiglitz first show me how fascinating the theoretical works could be, with the idea that the perfect informational efficiency could indeed make itself collapse. Furthermore, what influenced me most was two conflicting works: the prevalent A Random Walk Down Wall Street and A Non-random Walk Down Wall Street, especially how the former one criticizes those stock "experts" and the deep but approachable introduction of the later one. To be honest I still need further study to fully understand them, but all those things have already captured me completely.
In the meanwhile, it was them that taught me about the financial industry, about the internship, Big Four, investment bank, buy-side and sell-side and so on. They changed me from an outsider to a preliminary insider. I began to the typical career paths of a finance student, and the importance to start the path from a good internship.
Unfortunately, when it came to internship, my academic background turned out to be my biggest obstacle. Since my major was not finance, mathematics or engineering, I was kept away from the intern opportunities. Today's world has been so specialized that philosophy seems to become something too intellectual but way too "useless." There has long been a joke among the department of philosophy: philosophy involves everything, but a philosophy student can do nothing.
But, to be fair, the more I study philosophy, the more proud of it I become. Where else can one study those old great books that many people even haven't heard about? It, admittedly, is a rare road, however it is the road less traveled by that makes the difference. Besides the knowledge and cultivation, my academic training in philosophy also taught me how to be a down-to-earth man. Thanks to Prof. Tappenden at University of Michigan who seriously criticized my being too "impressionistic" and quoting too many irrelevant materials. He greatly woke me up, pulled me back to the ground, and helped me complete a paper marked as "very original and insightful." To me, being down-to-earth means to pursue quality instead of showing off, or like my tutor at Fudan University once said: "To work harder and to talk less." I believe this lesson will be with me no matter where I am.
Fortunately, despite the problem of major, I finally found as internship in Xinghang Investment Ltd., an equity fund based in Shanghai, and started to work as an analyst assistant as soon as I came back from Michigan at the end of 2015. More fortunately, my manager was willing to share and gave interns precious training every week on equity analysis, including financial statement analysis, income statement forecast, etc. This was my first systematic (though not academic) lesson on accountancy and finance. Also, this internship gave me opportunities to practice, which showed me many problems that existed in real valuation practice. For example, when trying to forecast the income of a real estate company, I found it extremely difficult to put an acceptable assumption on the estate price given the changing policy and the puzzling market. With regard to this, my manager taught a principle: it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. A precise but gratuitous forecast could be hardly helpful; instead, breaking down the statements into components as detailed as possible was what he really wanted to reach.
This six-month experience was my first step to get prepared to go further. With its help, in July of 2016, I successfully got the internship of Baker & McKenzie's leading transfer pricing group, or Transfer Pricing Management Consulting . To me, it is literally a great honor to work and study at TPMC and Baker.
The first thing I learnt was, of course, transfer pricing. Through translating files by China's State Administration of Taxation and a professional article by B&M on BNA, I got my foot in the door of hot transfer pricing topics, for instance, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and OECD's BEPS project. Also, during helping prepare the transfer pricing documentation, I was shown many concepts like value chain, arm's-length principle, etc., and how to apply financial ratios, like Berry Ratio, to reflect the actual economic substance of the tested company. All these things helped me better understand accountancy and finance. Besides transfer pricing, I have also received the close guidance from many formal employees, not only on working but also on the career path and future plan.
Yet what really impressed me were the professional staff and its high recruiting requirement of Baker. Almost all formal employees were from overseas top business schools with several years of working experience in Big Four before joining TPMC. Also, most interns came from top universities (mainly Fudan and NYU) with finance-related majors. It was the first time that I deeply felt the importance of a professional background, and it made up my mind to pursue a more solid and professional training in this field. To some extent this is an even deeper "career education."
Perhaps it is time to stop looking back and to look forward. Now my career goal is to receive higher education at LSE and try my best to work as a buy-side analyst after graduation. The riskiness and turbulence of finance market is attracting me to engage in this area, and I'd like to let the market is going challenge and examine my working results. Meanwhile, since Anthony Giddens' Capitalism and Modern Social Theory is one of my favorite books, through it I know the highly reputable London School of Economics and Political Science. One year is short, but one year at LSE is not. I believe in the Msc Accounting and finance program I can find what I exactly need. In specific, Financial Reporting in Capital Markets and Valuation and Security Analysis are the two courses that I am most interested in.
In the end, please allow me to explain my quantitative background. Usually my major does not require mathematics. Yet I have won the 2nd prize of National Mathematics Olympiad as well as many provincial prizes, which gave me a good understanding of math and helped me receive A and A- in my mathematical analysis courses. Meanwhile I was recommended by my friend, a Mathematics Ph.D. student, to be the lecturer of a calculus instruction course for pre-university students, which was challenging, especially in preparing handouts, but greatly helpful with my math ability. Therefore I have confidence to meet the requirement of LSE in quantitative background.
---------THE END---------
BTW, 1) there is almost no personal information, is it okay?
2) Is this paper too past-oriented?
3) About the academic interest, how long or how specific should it be? Though I know currently I mention too little about the academic interest, yet I'm not sure whether I should spend 500 or 1000 words on it.
4) Do I need to put the future plan into the 1st paragraph?
Thanks a lot!!
My paper:
On the last Friday of Nov. 2014, I happened to enter the stock market when SSE Composite Index was still 2486, and the index rose so fast that my return incredibly reached 100% in two months. In March, as the index kept rising up, stocks became the hottest topic among students, professors and even doorkeepers, and even grade-12 students were reported to open stock accounts. But in June when the index eventually reached 5178, it suddenly crashed and dropped by 35% in only three weeks
What do I get from this experience? I have been long asking myself this question. Once I thought I had gained the ability to make money from this market, however the collapse, though only impacted my profit slightly, inevitably changed my optimistic thought and let me realize that there were too many unpredictable things and it could never be easy to survive in long run. Now, looking back, I find it turns out to be the friends I made at that time that are my genuine treasure. When the market was still hot, I launched a Wechat group and attracted over one hundred schoolmates. Some of them who shared similar interest and goal with me soon became my close friends and influenced me greatly.
Their influences were various. Many of them majored in finance, and with their recommendation I began to read more books about investment. Buffet's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders was probably the first and most vivid introduction to the fascinating world of accountancy and finance. And Grossman and Stiglitz first show me how fascinating the theoretical works could be, with the idea that the perfect informational efficiency could indeed make itself collapse. Furthermore, what influenced me most was two conflicting works: the prevalent A Random Walk Down Wall Street and A Non-random Walk Down Wall Street, especially how the former one criticizes those stock "experts" and the deep but approachable introduction of the later one. To be honest I still need further study to fully understand them, but all those things have already captured me completely.
In the meanwhile, it was them that taught me about the financial industry, about the internship, Big Four, investment bank, buy-side and sell-side and so on. They changed me from an outsider to a preliminary insider. I began to the typical career paths of a finance student, and the importance to start the path from a good internship.
Unfortunately, when it came to internship, my academic background turned out to be my biggest obstacle. Since my major was not finance, mathematics or engineering, I was kept away from the intern opportunities. Today's world has been so specialized that philosophy seems to become something too intellectual but way too "useless." There has long been a joke among the department of philosophy: philosophy involves everything, but a philosophy student can do nothing.
But, to be fair, the more I study philosophy, the more proud of it I become. Where else can one study those old great books that many people even haven't heard about? It, admittedly, is a rare road, however it is the road less traveled by that makes the difference. Besides the knowledge and cultivation, my academic training in philosophy also taught me how to be a down-to-earth man. Thanks to Prof. Tappenden at University of Michigan who seriously criticized my being too "impressionistic" and quoting too many irrelevant materials. He greatly woke me up, pulled me back to the ground, and helped me complete a paper marked as "very original and insightful." To me, being down-to-earth means to pursue quality instead of showing off, or like my tutor at Fudan University once said: "To work harder and to talk less." I believe this lesson will be with me no matter where I am.
Fortunately, despite the problem of major, I finally found as internship in Xinghang Investment Ltd., an equity fund based in Shanghai, and started to work as an analyst assistant as soon as I came back from Michigan at the end of 2015. More fortunately, my manager was willing to share and gave interns precious training every week on equity analysis, including financial statement analysis, income statement forecast, etc. This was my first systematic (though not academic) lesson on accountancy and finance. Also, this internship gave me opportunities to practice, which showed me many problems that existed in real valuation practice. For example, when trying to forecast the income of a real estate company, I found it extremely difficult to put an acceptable assumption on the estate price given the changing policy and the puzzling market. With regard to this, my manager taught a principle: it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. A precise but gratuitous forecast could be hardly helpful; instead, breaking down the statements into components as detailed as possible was what he really wanted to reach.
This six-month experience was my first step to get prepared to go further. With its help, in July of 2016, I successfully got the internship of Baker & McKenzie's leading transfer pricing group, or Transfer Pricing Management Consulting . To me, it is literally a great honor to work and study at TPMC and Baker.
The first thing I learnt was, of course, transfer pricing. Through translating files by China's State Administration of Taxation and a professional article by B&M on BNA, I got my foot in the door of hot transfer pricing topics, for instance, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and OECD's BEPS project. Also, during helping prepare the transfer pricing documentation, I was shown many concepts like value chain, arm's-length principle, etc., and how to apply financial ratios, like Berry Ratio, to reflect the actual economic substance of the tested company. All these things helped me better understand accountancy and finance. Besides transfer pricing, I have also received the close guidance from many formal employees, not only on working but also on the career path and future plan.
Yet what really impressed me were the professional staff and its high recruiting requirement of Baker. Almost all formal employees were from overseas top business schools with several years of working experience in Big Four before joining TPMC. Also, most interns came from top universities (mainly Fudan and NYU) with finance-related majors. It was the first time that I deeply felt the importance of a professional background, and it made up my mind to pursue a more solid and professional training in this field. To some extent this is an even deeper "career education."
Perhaps it is time to stop looking back and to look forward. Now my career goal is to receive higher education at LSE and try my best to work as a buy-side analyst after graduation. The riskiness and turbulence of finance market is attracting me to engage in this area, and I'd like to let the market is going challenge and examine my working results. Meanwhile, since Anthony Giddens' Capitalism and Modern Social Theory is one of my favorite books, through it I know the highly reputable London School of Economics and Political Science. One year is short, but one year at LSE is not. I believe in the Msc Accounting and finance program I can find what I exactly need. In specific, Financial Reporting in Capital Markets and Valuation and Security Analysis are the two courses that I am most interested in.
In the end, please allow me to explain my quantitative background. Usually my major does not require mathematics. Yet I have won the 2nd prize of National Mathematics Olympiad as well as many provincial prizes, which gave me a good understanding of math and helped me receive A and A- in my mathematical analysis courses. Meanwhile I was recommended by my friend, a Mathematics Ph.D. student, to be the lecturer of a calculus instruction course for pre-university students, which was challenging, especially in preparing handouts, but greatly helpful with my math ability. Therefore I have confidence to meet the requirement of LSE in quantitative background.
---------THE END---------
BTW, 1) there is almost no personal information, is it okay?
2) Is this paper too past-oriented?
3) About the academic interest, how long or how specific should it be? Though I know currently I mention too little about the academic interest, yet I'm not sure whether I should spend 500 or 1000 words on it.
4) Do I need to put the future plan into the 1st paragraph?
Thanks a lot!!
