Personal Statement-MSc Financial Risk Management in UCL
Instructions:
- why you want to study Financial Risk Management at graduate level
- why you want to study Financial Risk Management at UCL
- what particularly attracts you to this programme
- how your academic and professional background meets the demands of this programme
- what programming experience you have
- where you would like to go professionally with your degree
Growing up in the developing country of China, I have witnessed the nationwide implementation of the Reform and Opening Up Policy, China's accession into the World Trade Organization in 2001 and how Chinese suffered from financial crisis in 2008. Having recognised the domestic need for technical talents and competent entrepreneurs to get the nation positively involved in globalization and gain an advantage, I made my career plan to gain techniques in global investment banks in the short term, and to start my own company to provide financial advisory services to Chinese enterprises in the long run.
As I explored into the field, I found that risk exposure was increasingly afflicting worldwide corporations. If I could assess and prioritise risks to assure that the overall risk were tactfully decreased to the minimum without greatly affecting profits, I would avoid a considerable amount of loss which might take place in the non-interfering state. Therefore, considering my skillset gained from my major in Quantitative Economics, I decided to serve as a quant in the field of risk management.
Due to the limited expertise and skills in programming and analysing as an undergraduate, I make up my mind to pursue further studies in UCL for its leading faculty and strong links with industry. I am thrilled to find the programme, MSc Financial Risk Management, is a desired fit for me.
The programme offers a professional knowledge system, perfectly combining core modules focusing on risk analysis with an abundance of optional specialised courses, which will enable me to deeply explore a specific area (i.e. Quantitative risk management). I plan to choose Stochastic Methods in Finance and Numerical Analysis for Finance in term one, and to take Applied Computational Finance and Quantitative Modelling of Operational Risk and Insurance Analysis in term two, equipping myself with advanced statistics as well as modelling and programming techniques. Besides the ideal curriculum, I am particularly attracted by the summer project, which will directly introduce me into a challenging industrial environment, so I will have the opportunity to gain practical techniques in a real-life setting and build supportive social networks.
Fully aware of the demanding requirements to materialise my goal, I have been making efforts to distinguish myself through academic achievements. Impressed by my exceptional performance in coursework, Professor Yen-Teik Lee from the School of Finance invited me to join his project of investigating the impact of compensation clawback on corporate performance. Driven by curiosity about how theoretical models would be applied to assess real financial regulations, I got actively involved. Based on the course learning of Software of Economy Data Analysis, I technically used SAS to design a programme, which helped me roughly filter through the original database and get a collection of over three thousand filings containing terms associated with clawback adoption. Then I manually inspected each filing to verify that the terms referred to a compensation clawback policy, and accordingly built a clawback sample, which was used for quantitative modelling. Elatedly, we demonstrated that there was a significantly negative causal relationship between voluntary clawback adoption and firm innovation.
Last semester, intrigued by the increasing number of car restrictions for environmental protection, I decided to lead a group project to study whether traditional cars imposed a negative impact on air quality. I self-studied Stata to do programming to test feasible models with a sample of thirty-one cities collected from the Statistical Annual Reports and Yearbooks. Especially, to solve the potential endogeneity in our regression, I tried four possible instrument variables and changed the codes accordingly to find the most eligible one. Successfully, we built a solid quantitative model and empirically proved the negative causal relationship between air quality and car usage.
Thanks to the course learning and research experiences at SHUFE, I have been well prepared with expertise and techniques for my graduate study. I believe I can quickly adapt to your programme and put on outstanding academic performance afterwards. With world-leading faculty and top-notch resources, your programmes, I am convinced, will offer me a worthwhile learning journey.
Signature: Yuanxia Zhang Date: 2015/10/27
For paragraph four, I don't think that you need to mention the courses in UCL. Brief explanation about why you apply to UCL is enough, I think. For the rest, I like your idea, especially in paragraph five.
