Hi everyone, I am applying for the Master of Finance program and need some advice. All comments are welcomed. Thanks!
Here is the instruction of the essay:
Your personal statement should:
Explain your motivation for undertaking the programme(s)
Describe your academic interests, strengths and background relevant to the programme(s)
Outline your ambitions and/or research interests
Include other relevant information, such as additional reading or research, work or other relevant experiences that have informed your decision to apply for the particular programme(s)
Master of Finance program application essay
My draft:
Bull and bear market, commission fee, cash dividend, exit right, earnings per share......All these terms easily jump out in my family conversations since childhood, arousing my interest in stock investments. When I entered college, I started trading stocks myself and made a fortune in the 2015 Chinese bull market. At this point, I deem it an unprecedented opportunity to deepen my expertise in Finance in this fast changing capital markets and fulfill my life ambitions in the future.
Studying in XX laid a solid foundation in knowledge and learning ability. I am always striving for academic excellence, obtaining A-level grades in both financial theory courses such as Investments and Corporate Finance and courses requiring strong mathematical background, for example, Probability Theory and Statistics and Operations Research. Additionally, I completed R and Java programming courses to enhance coding my skills. In the near future, I can make full strength of my scope of knowledge to reinforce my competence in the business world.
I spare no effort to pave the way for career development. In the summer of sophomore year, I interned at a local bank as an credit manager assistant. Beginning with balance sheet checking, and then conducting face-to-face inquiry to the entrepreneurs about their business models and future prospects to evaluate their cash flows, finally I was able to carry a 2 million RMB loan review. It was the first tryout to orient my future career and let me realize I have more ambition than just doing standard and routinized work. More conspicuously, the status quo of Chinese banks relying on margins of deposits and loans should be reversed. That was when I confirmed my determination to gain a global insight into the capital operation in mature markets.
In the last two years of my college, I accumulated internships in a big four company and famous securities in China, quickly aligning myself to industry practice. During the internship in XX auditing department, I was involved in a public firm's annual audit procedures. Thanks to the mutual collaboration in our team, I got a much deeper understanding of firms' three financial statements and successfully handled 5 working papers for 5 accounts. Moreover, I was fortunate to participate in a research project investigating correlations between sell-side analysts' characteristics and their forecast, reading a profusion of academic periodicals and collecting background data of security analysts in the domestic market. Through this experience I found myself more interested to be an industry practitioner that combines abstract theorem with practical situations, rather than an entirely academic-based researcher. In the meantime, it cast light on the role of security analysts and prompted me to do the internship as a security research assistant. The thrill of discovering potential values of a stock and the logic displayed in a professional investment report are what I am always pursuing. After tryouts in various fields, I hope to devote to the field of fund management. There are two considerations for choosing this field. First, the asset management sector is growing steadfast these years and still has great potential to explore. Second, my skillsets in investment analysis, accounting basics and risk management in buy-side firms will promote my competence when making decisions as a fund manager. My vision in the future is to apply the fundamental & quantitative strategies to develop products that really meet the needs of ordinary people, thus fueling the advancement of Chinese asset management industry.
The Msc Finance program at LSE serves as the essential next step toward my future. Through 4 years of college study, I find undergraduate curriculum is comprehensive to some degree. I would like to go deeper based on what I have studied. Base in the world's financial hub, London, it is closely connected with financial firms and provides students opportunities to communicate with outstanding industry practitioners. More importantly, the curriculum is well-designed and caters to my needs. The synthesis of the valuation techniques acquired in Corporate Finance and hedging methodology in Financial Engineering enables me to better combine fundamental and quantitative methods. I am strongly drawn to the emphasis the program places on empower students to participate in empirical applications. For example, in the course Topics in Portfolio Management, students can mimic the case of constructing a portfolio and implementing dynamic investment strategies. Meanwhile, the program assembles people with brilliant minds and rich experience that would often share similar career orientation, so we can unite together to prepare for interviews and encourage each other when seeking for employment. In addition, the story sharing of different culture would embellish my extracurricular life.
My short-term plan is to become an investment analyst in an asset management company or a large security broker in UK or China, which provides me with quick growth opportunities and allows me to expand my business networks. I am planning to pass CFA level1 in next summer and hoping to pass CFA level 2 after graduation from the program. Simultaneously, I will always prepare to be a fund manager in the long term, thus fulfilling my long-term goal to independently undertake investing decisions and unearth alphas relative to proposed benchmarks. If blessed with the chance to be part of the program, I would introduce my classmates to the market dynamics in China, the second largest economy worldwide, and share unique insights on how to do business in this evolving world. Never ceasing to striving for a better self, I cherish the hope to be admitted to your program, where I will nourish my aspiration with effort, and from which I will set out for my journey to become someone making an impact in the financial industry. Equipped with a strong foundation in analysis of finance and strong interpersonal skills, I believe I can quickly adapt to your program and put on outstanding academic performance afterwards. With world-leading faculty and top-notch resources, your program will offer me a worthwhile learning journey.Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,797 
4780 Zhang, you should remove the last part of the final paragraph that speaks of your hope to be admitted into the program at this university. You are using the word count unnecessarily when you still have not clearly outlined your motivation for applying to study in this program at this university or a similar program at a different university. Personally, I believe that what is missing from the essay, in relation to the motivational aspect of the presentation, is a narrative regarding your current career status. If your parents introduced you to the world of stock and you gained an increasing interest in the field from then on, then you should depict that interest development in the essay as well. The best way to showcase the development of that interest is by informing the reviewer as to how your career has been so far. The motivation should be dictated by how well your career has been doing up to the present. What experiences have you had at work that provide evidence of required advanced knowledge on your part? Your career goals, objectives, current path, or desire to change your path is always what serves as the motivation for higher learning so you should consider how you can highlight that part in relation to the motivation response. You have more than enough word count to do so, provided you remove the part that I told you was not relevant to the essay response. Or, you can revise other parts of the essay in order to shorten these paragraphs and allow for a longer motivational discussion presentation instead.
