Graduate / Personal statement (LSE MSc Acc&Fin), kind of unsure about how to write [4]

Thanks for the advice and quick response! I'll sum it up and add a more detailed academic interest.

Just one more thing, is this structure okay for a past story? Like, will it be boring or something?

BTW the words limit is actually 1000 - 1500, really unusual :) I forgot to say this in the beginning

Graduate / Personal statement (LSE MSc Acc&Fin), kind of unsure about how to write [4]

Hi! I've finished a new version. Could anyone give me some advice? Thanks a lot

1. Personal Statement

On the last Friday of November, 2014, I made my first foray into 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. That March, as the index kept rising, stocks became the hottest topic among students, professors and even doorkeepers, and grade 12 students were reported to have opened stock accounts. But in June, when the index eventually reached 5178, it suddenly crashed and dropped by 35% over a period of three weeks.

Once I thought I had gained the ability to make money through the stock market, however the collapse, which inevitably changed my optimistic view even though I didn't lose much, helped me realize the complication of the market and the difficulty to survive in the long run. Now, looking back, I find that my friends I made during my playing in the stock market have been my genuine profit. 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 goals with me soon became my close friends and influenced me greatly.

Their influences were varied. Many of them majored in finance, and thanks to their recommendations I began to read more books about investment. Buffet's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders was probably my first and most vivid introduction to the fascinating world of accounting and finance. And Grossman and Stiglitz first showed me how fascinating the theory of finance could be, with the idea that perfect informational efficiency could indeed make itself collapse. Furthermore, what influenced me most was two conflicting works: 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 latter. To be honest I still need further study to fully understand them, but all of these elements have already captured my attention.

In the meantime, it was the communication with them that taught me about the financial industry, about internship, the Big Four, buy-side and sell-side, and the importance of good internship experiences. They changed me from an outsider to a preliminary insider and helped me set up my goal to work in a buy-side firm. I began to switch on the typical career path of a finance student.

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 many opportunities. Philosophy is often viewed very intellectual but also "useless," but the more I study it, the more pride I feel for it. Where else can one study those great old books that many people haven't even heard about? It, admittedly, is a rare road, however it is the road less traveled by that makes the difference. Besides the knowledge, my academic training in philosophy has also taught me how to be a down-to-earth man. Thanks to Prof. Tappenden at the University of Michigan who seriously criticized my being too "impressionistic" and quoting too much irrelevant material. 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 stay with me no matter where I am.

Fortunately, despite the problem posed by my major, I finally managed to find an internship at Xinghang Investment Ltd., an equity fund based in Shanghai, and started to work as an assistant analyst as soon as I came back from Michigan at the end of 2015. Even 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 estate prices given the changing policies and the puzzling market. With regard to this, my manager taught me a basic principle: it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong; and analyzing the operation and risks through breaking down the financial statements into components could be much more helpful than a precise but gratuitous forecast.

This six-month experience was my first step in preparing for my journey into the world of finance and accountancy. With its help, in July of 2016, I won an internship at Baker & McKenzie's leading transfer pricing group. To me, it was an enormous honor to work and study at Baker.

The first thing I learned was, of course, transfer pricing. Through translating files from China's State Administration of Taxation and a professional article by B&M on BNA, I got my foot in the door on hot transfer pricing topics, for instance, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and the OECD's BEPS project. Also, while helping formal employees with the transfer pricing documentation, I was shown a number of new concepts like value chain, the arm's-length principle, etc., and how to apply financial ratios, like the Berry Ratio, to reflect the actual economic substance of the tested company. All these things have helped me better understand accountancy and finance.

What were more impressive were the professional staff and the high recruiting standards of Baker. Almost all formal employees were graduates of top business schools with several years of working experience in the Big Four before joining Baker. 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 helped me make up my mind to pursue more solid and professional training in this field. To some extent this is a realistic "career education."

Perhaps it is time to stop looking back and to start looking forward. Now my career goal is to become a buy-side analyst after graduation. The riskiness and turbulence of the finance market is attractive to me just as it was and it will be, and I'd like to be able to let the challenges of the market motivate me to work smarter.

For this goal, I'd like to pursue a higher education to sharpen my knowledge and skills in security analysis. Specifically, my academic interest is the valuation of securities and, more importantly, the relationship between the actual market price and the theoretical valuation. It is said that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could beat those "experts." Neither the "expert" on television who knows no more than dogmas nor the blindfolded monkey who simply relies on its luck and the randomness of the market is acceptable. I believe the way to beat both the monkey and the expert is to go beyond the dogmas and to fully understand the application, limitation and core thoughts of different theories, which is exactly what I'm looking for in the my graduate education.

Here comes the Msc Accounting and Finance program at LSE. As Anthony Giddens' Capitalism and Modern Social Theory is one of my favorite books, I always view the highly reputable London School of Economics and Political Science as my first choice for graduate education. Also, I am attracted by the courses of this program, especially Financial Reporting in Capital Markets and Valuation and Security Analysis. One year is a short period of time, but one year at LSE is not.

Finally, please allow me to explain my quantitative background. Usually my major does not require mathematics, yet I have won 2nd prize at the National Mathematics Olympiad in China, 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, for a position as a lecturer for a calculus instruction course for pre-university students. It was challenging, especially in preparing handouts, but greatly helped me develop my math skills. Therefore I have confidence that I can meet the requirements of LSE as to my quantitative background.

In short, I believe that both my personal experience and natural talent in the fields will be of benefit to the program and that joining LSE will give me the opportunities I need to achieve my goal. Thank you for your consideration.