Hi.I sent this statement of purpose for a specific scholarship program and it didn't work out. I don't know how to write a statement of purpose actually. I didn't ask any academic but just did some personal research on the web and managed to write this one. There is another scholarship deadline so I need some help write away!!!!!!!! I am thinking of applying at the department of 'International education' at a university in the UK. I think I had put lots of unnecessary information most probably! I am sorry if it looks like a complete mess but I did what I thought was right. I just want someone to read it and how does it look like. Please criticize as much as you need to improve it! To me, it's nowhere near appropriate. It doesn't stand-out.
I don't know. :( I am also providing with the instruction in bold letters.
So, here it is :
Personal Statement:
Describe in not more than 2,000 words, your reasons for applying for the course you wish to follow and explain how it will help you with the work you expect to do on your return to your home country.
You should include an outline of your intended profession, your ambitions and your career plan.
Describe also, your most outstanding non-academic achievement involving other people where you demonstrated leadership potential (you may describe an extra curricular/sport/community/professional activity or an assignment):
Not only do I like teaching but I also think it's the best way to be in a learning process for the life time. It's a great way to keep advancing one's knowledge. The education system always made me wonder if we could do things a bit differently. Having 3 separate system of school education have created different perspectives and values in addition to our own personal point-of-view. As a small child, a person learns only the very basic of things. To build that foundation, we need one single nationally accredited system which Bangladesh still lacks. That very system should have the proper concurrent syllabus to allow us to be in the global competition. Because of the lack of our current national curriculum that the children are used to now, the face a lot of challenges when they grow up and seek higher education. They are almost immediately able to understand the huge gap they have to fill if they want to acquire proper knowledge for pursuing higher studies. I would like to learn how to blend and unify all the different curriculums that are dividing the quality of our education and try to help in creating a possible model of a single unified national education system in our country.
Although I have majored in Literature, I have chosen teaching as my career out of my passion for the classroom environment. A classroom is the place where young minds are shaped and educated and there is a lot of learning going on for both teacher and student alike. I want to have a postgraduate degree in International Education because it will help me to better understand how the education systems in different nations are being conducted. Understanding what theories developed countries are applying in their current curriculum will update my knowledge as an educator. I would like to use this experience in my research. My primary focus will be the education system in developing countries such as countries in South Asia.
The fact that Bangladesh is very poor has affected its pace of literacy in many ways. There is a huge lack of qualified specialists to train the teachers. Furthermore, equal opportunity is still something we are struggling for. Also, education is spreading slowly but it is concentrated around the big cities. Creating more opportunities for girls and ethnic minorities is also crucial for the development of our country. New policies should be made regarding budgets, sufficient teaching staff, and allotting funds for very poor children who attends school, applying programs such as breakfast program or free education up till a certain grade will eventually help produce a more modern, scientific, and approved education system that will be recognized not only in our continent but also across the world.
I am already in the teaching profession. Teaching has always served me something very rewarding. Working with students of different background taught me how to interact with people as well as learn how to teach better.I would not say it was my ambition to be a teacher to be honest. I have always wanted to be a researcher, and possibly in some field related to development and thats why I am in this profession to acquire a hands on experience. Although I majored in literature, the ongoing system of education in our country and the policies that are behind it made me think about working on them. Many of the policies regarding primary education, creating or reforming the national curriculum, methods of recruitment or training teachers, and most importantly how the economical and political state is constantly affecting our education made me realize that not much work has been done in this particular field, which is why Im interested to work in it.
It's without a doubt that language plays a vital part in education since it is the base of what we learn. In our country there are three different systems under which millions of student sit for secondary and higher secondary school examination. These systems are operated in three different languages i.e. Bengali, English and Arabic. Bangladesh has quite a few ethnic societies and all of them have their own languages. It is crucial that what we learn as children should be in our mother tongue because that gives us the ability to fully understand the meaning of the things that we are taught. Realizing the proper meaning of our institutional education helps us achieve our aim more easily when the education is not in any other language than our own tongue. But people of the minor ethnicity are not being able to do that and are somewhat forced to learn everything in a different language without their willful consent. This is a very delicate issue which needs to be addressed as soon as possible as the number of these minor ethnics continue to grow. Policies need to be made fast to accommodate the growing number of native people enrolling in schools to receive proper education. Instead of operating two different sets of curriculum based on two different languages, a bilingual education can be introduced.
Bangladesh is a very poor country whose economic state causes instability in the field of education. Poverty is the major reason which keeps the number of literate people in country at the bay of illiteracy. It so happens frequently in a poor family that children are sent to work at a very early stage of their lives to support their families. Uneducated parents cannot bear even the minimal cost of education where they are striving to earn money for food everyday. To prevent that, the government has introduced some beneficial schemes in the primary level where free food is given to the children who attend school regularly. But even these schemes are not working to their fullest. Many children attend school and take the food home for their family. Young girls suffer the most in this case. Using religious values and sentiments, many people try to prevent girls from going to schools in the villages. To them it's not necessary for women to receive the same institutional education as men. They are taught that girls duties are at home as good wives to their husbands who will tend to all their necessities and provide them with what they need to get by in life. Therefore, uneducated parents reconsider sending their daughters to school because of such social pressure and hence girls are absent from schools in a large number of the population. This is causing our country to lose the already declining state of literacy even more. To prevent these things from happening strong policies should be made and enforced with strict regulations.
I was into sports since school until my graduation from university. But I was always a part of the team under the instruction of a qualified captain. But in academic affairs I did not have a leader figure in particular other than the course instructors and lecturers. When I was a student in the 3rd of my university we were given an objective to come up with an outline of a proposed idea of how an assignment should be completed. It was a group project, each of which consisted of 10 students, 1 being the leader. After our course instructor gave us a general idea, our job was to collect every single detail relating to that topic. As the group leader, I had to go through the topic of the assignment over and over again. All the members in my group had to do a personal research on the topic for a day or two and then we organized a group discussion as to how we should proceed. Everyone had their own idea as to how we should approach the assignment and meet our deadline. I listened to 5 different methods of how we can do it from my group. After we shared our ideas we chose the best ones randomly. It was my job to organize the whole team. I asked them to work as pairs as that would increase our group's efficiency. I gave a pair to search for the necessary reference books available in the university library and another pair to go to the public library. Another pair took up the job of collecting data from journals. The rest of us started studying our class copies, scrutinizing for important information. We were given 2 weeks to complete this work. There was much to be done. After 5/6 days of intensive research we came up with a plan to write the whole assignment. I thought it was a better idea to split the whole subject into smaller parts after which we could join them up to create our first complete draft. I divided each group to write something different i.e. one group was given to write the general background information relating to the topic. Another team was writing about the author himself and about the core idea of the assignment or the structure etc. I had to sum up everything in the end which seemed like a feasible idea at first but after a while I figured it was the hardest part of all our efforts. Every pair wrote something from their own perspective, even though they were given a general outline. To unify and assemble that many ideas seemed like a mammoth task. In addition to that, I had to provide all the foot-notes and a list of reference books and journals at the end of the assignment. After making a draft I had a discussion with all my team-mates and listened to what they had to suggest for further changes or improvements. Afterwards, I wrote down the final draft of the assignment with every ones contribution. The easiest part was to have it spiral bound in plastic cover to be presented as per instructed by the lecturer.
From my experience as a leader I have learned that leading a team is far from easy. A group member has someone to instruct him if he has a problem. But for the leader he is on his own to make his decisions. And if he cannot lead his group successfully or seems doubtful of his own decisions then he loses the respect of his team members. In a group it is very important for a leader to project the confidence that exudes authority and assurance to his team members. Because unless a leader commands respect, he only has a group of reluctant subordinates and not willing and helpful ones. My personal experience from the leadership of my team has taught me that the true rank of leadership has to be earned through the love and respect of your team-mates. While my temporary leadership was a bit hard it was also very rewarding in the end when my team obtained the highest mark on the said assignment. The successful completion of our objective gave me much confidence that I could well operate as a leader under stress and manage a group.
I only read your first two paragraphs, and I found grammar errors and boring cliches.
^Whats wrong with different curriculums? In the UK, some schools follow the IB program, others A-level etc.
Personally, I think this essay lacks your focus. Perhaps it is rash of me to base that judgement on the first paragraph alone, but please attempt to support your statements if you are going to make any
Like I said, its no where near a personal statement and it's a mess. I actually didn't get the idea what should be written. I saw in some samples that people put stories of their lives as to how this and that motivated them etc. Should I have done that more? Since it's a for a scholarship, I needed to show what can I contribute to my country after getting this degree.
Well thanks for your help and pointing out the self-contradictory parts. I will try to write something more meaningful.
I feel so grateful to you two for the good work you do here...
kusanagi, you should look at the contributor page (link at the bottom of the screen). It's a club for really cool people like Faisal. :-)
Oh, I see that she was harsh about your essay! Sorry, don't mind her meanness. She is a mad genius.
I agree that you can do something more intriguing than this: Not only do I like teaching but I also think it's the best way to be in a learning process for the life time. It's a great way to keep advancing one's knowledge. ---You can do better, because this is a little typical... it is so true, though!
Okay, we have to stich all the pieces together. Look at the sentences below, and see if they seem like a lot of unrelated, random ideas:
What I think you should do is have a word or phrase that you use as a THEME. Introduce it in the first paragraph. Maybe it will be an assertion that literature transforms societies. You should have some kind of theme like that, and IN ALMOST EVERY PARAGRAPH remind the reader of the theme.
You write well, and you are impressive because of your seriousness about this path you have chosen... so, it's an impressive essay. But to make is better, try to think of the theme that best represents your outlook, and add mention of that theme to almost every paragraph.
:-)
...and I found an error:
But for the leader he the leader is on his own to make his decisions.
But actually, I am afraid this is boring because it is a truism... something the reader already knows:
But for the leader he is on his own to make his decisions. And if he cannot lead his group successfully or seems doubtful of his own decisions then he loses the respect of his team members.
You have a great writing style, and obivously a lot of potential. With this essay, you just need to get it focused on one excellent idea, one fascinating concept... something that is really worth writing about.
For example, when Thoreau wrote "Civil Disobedience," that was an intriguing concept... a powerful concept.
I think I will rewrite the whole thing. Might take some time though. I myself is confused because I am changing my major. It's a bit difficult but I will try my best.
Thanks for your help EF_Kevin. I am quite inspired by your kind words!
