Undergraduate / Weddings, Baseball and Economics - U of Minnesota Essay [2]

Please review my essay
This is the essay question: In English, describe your educational interests and goals and what your plans are for when you return to your home country. Please include an explanation of why you would like to study the major you have selected.

I always disapprove of how education is delivered in my country, at least in primary and secondary level: rote learning is as prevalent as memorization of exact answers to match marking schemes. Critical thinking is non-existent in a rigid curriculum in which we have no privilege to defend their viewpoints on historical events. Standing at the receiving end of such system, my desire to study in ways which I could promote my personal understanding of the world did not diminish; it only grew stronger.

Economics is a fascinating subject which I continuously crave for more knowledge. As my range of interests expands from economic history to behavioral economics, I found myself

indulging in books written not only by the academia but also witty journalists like Robert Frank and Michael Lewis. I got the best of both worlds in that I could explain how financial crises could unfold, either by cheap credit-induced asset bubbles or market overreaction due to our irrationality through serious academic research, and also how to dissect odd occurrences in everyday life like an economist. Once, I observed that the weddings which I attend are full of displays of affluence such as massive number of guests and unnecessary yet frequent changing of barely used plates. Refusing to resort to simple answers like cultural difference, since I see us Chinese as statistically prudent spenders, I began looking for an alternative. And that is when I found 'Keeping up with Joneses' in parallel with this situation! Since comments to a wedding is likely dependent on its relative size and expenditure to the others, couples would eventually bid up the price of a wedding and only succeed in raising the yardstick of being 'decent' without feeling any better. If all couples agree to downsize, they (including me in future) would have nice yet affordable weddings altogether. Learning economics has been extremely satisfying and only more so when those 'Aha!' moments appear as I discovered the underlying pattern of life: economic thinking!

My awareness to numbers also improved, especially after reading Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness. I now become critical to the statistical importance of data presented to me. As a baseball fan, I wonder if the Fox broadcasters' claim that historically 80% of the teams who won first two games of the World Series went on to win-it-all would imply that Red Sox is a stronger team, or at least performed above average after consecutive wins. After all, the number does look daunting. However, after using a binomial distribution with a 50-50 chance for both teams and reaching to a similar probability, I could confidently conclude that having an 80% chance does not my initial hypothesis. I would have believed that though, had I been convinced by the face value of the statistics. Besides, watching Professor Schiller's lectures on YouTube has furthered my interest in mathematics. I could really appreciate how central limit theorem, suggests portfolio diversification and substantiates the folk wisdom of 'do not put all eggs into one basket', or how normal distribution is utilized in the Black-Scholes model.

Knowing that UMN is associated with two recent Nobel laureates who contributed to our understanding about the market inspires me to study here. I also look forward to experience the sports culture besides the diverse student body.

Upon graduation, I intend to serve in government bodies such as the Central Bank of Malaysia and The Performance Management & Delivery Unit. Having attended a scholar assessment by the former and spoken to a director from the latter, I realized I would be most gratified working and contributing directly to my country.