AAS Scholarship: Why did you choose your proposed course and institution? - Master of Public Policy

AAS application essay

Hi all, I currently applying for the AAS. I need your help to review this essay. Thank you in advance

As a procurement analyst at Ministry of Finance, my work has a lot to do with public procurement regulations and policy, ranging from policy making, policy analysis, translating them into action and finally evaluate their impacts. I choose Master of Public Policy as my proposed course because I wanted to gain an in-depth knowledge on public policy including policy analysis and policy implementation. Additionally, Master of Public Policy gives us the ability to examine policy and governance from interdisciplinary perspectives. Those skills are needed to achieve public procurement goal as well as for my current career goal as a public procurement manager.

I chose Master of Public Policy and Management at University of Melbourne offers diverse set of discipline, from law to economic and finance and flexibility to choose classes that suited to our needs. The program also has a core subject in public budgets and financial management help me to achieve public procurement goals and a core subject in crisis management which will help me to understand better on how to respond and to recover from extreme events such as pandemic from the public policy perspective.

On the other hand, Master of Public Policy at Australian National University has a well-rounded public policy program with a wide range of specialization including public finance. This specialization helps me to understand better on public finance and spending policies, cost/benefit analysis as well as how to manage public expenditures so I can develop better procurement policy and strategy in the future.

Which is? You don't need to discuss it in detail here as you will do that in the career goal prompt. But, you can make mention of it here as a preview of that essay. The mention will help keep your response essays connected.


Specific goals will always help. Remember, these goals represent the reasons you chose the course. The course in relation to thegoal will set the tone for your application. Be more open to explaining these things. Do not be reliant only on the course descriptions from the university Web pages.


Your explanation there is too general. The basis of all your responses are good, but need to focus more on application reasons. The end results will be part of the career goals essay.

Open up to the reviewer. Sure there is a limit to your character count. Don't let that scare you. Learn to summarize your responses with immediate details instead.