Scholarship / Chevening Scholarship - Studying in the UK question - MSC Social Policy (research) [4]

Hi everybody. Thanks a lot in advance for your help. I'm hoping if you could give me advise on the content of the essay and also help me choose the more relevant things to include, since it exceeds the 500 words count. Now I have a 740/500 count.

Studying in the UK question

Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future.

What I expect from the courses that I have chosen is to further develop my skills in social sciences research, and to gain strong theoretical and methodological tools, so that I can enhance social policy research in my country. Additionally, I want to be able to broaden my network for this purpose.

For the said goal, I have selected the following three programmes: MSC in Social Policy and Social Research at University College London, MSC in Social Policy (Research) and MSC in Social Research Methods, both at London School of Economics. All of these courses have a strong emphasis in research methods, and aim for the student to be able to conduct a research on his/her own.

My choice of courses might seem, at first, unrelated to my career as a lawyer. However, I am truly convinced that having a degree of law and having practice in public law will give me a particular advantage in the analysis of public policy. I have worked for private clients who participate in very relevant regulated markets in my country, such as energy, water and telecommunications, among others, as well as in environmental matters. In this practice, I have witnessed the relation between companies and the State. I was also an intern in National Consumer Service, where I could see how consumers' problems were managed in this State institution. In these professional experiences, I have been able to appreciate the importance of law but, at the same time, I remain with a feeling of dissatisfaction, because I believe that, while necessary, law is insufficient to address and understand major social problems. I remember that, in my first work experiences, I would find myself troubled by the difference between what the law stated, what I had studied in college, and what I saw was actually happening in practice, this is, a very big number or factors would determine the final result, law was only one of them.

This is why I would like to take my career to a further and more academic level, where I can not only participate in relevant regulated markets and social policies as a representative of companies or interest groups, but I can understand them, asses them and propose solutions based on thorough studies. I am extremely passionate about public policy research, in fact, I resigned my job to carry a six months investigation for my graduate thesis, about the concession contracts of Transantiago, this is, Santiago de Chile's public transportation system that was implemented ten years ago and, to this day, is still evaluated by people as one of the worst public policies. I believe that my knowledge of law and my practice will be very beneficial for me, because I will have a deeper understanding of the role of law in social policy, and I will also be able to speak the language (law) of very relevant decision makers, such as, public administration officers and legislators. But, at the same time, I believe that I am lacking research tools and deeper theoretical knowledge, which I expect to gain by studying the aforesaid courses.

I also think that the universities that I have chosen can give me a more advanced and sophisticated knowledge than I could acquire in my country. One particular experience that leads me to believe this is that, in the context of the research for my graduate thesis, referred to in the paragraph above, I attended a seminary organized by a well-known think-tank in Chile that was presenting the work of several professionals in the topic of Transantiago. I was disappointed to find out that the paper they presented did not add a new perspective or new research to the work that I had already done. On the other hand, I have not found master courses in my country that emphasize academic work and research skills as much as the courses that I have chosen do.

In the future, I want to enhance public policy research on my country by carrying on academic research, by putting the skills I learn to the service of other investigators who could benefit from it, by organizing and promoting it, and ultimately to use my network as a lawyer to serve as a link between academic work and more practical matters.