Hello, this is my personal statement for Fulbright, but I need serious help. I put some ?? for the sentences that I am not sure, if you help me for these sentece also I will be appreciated. Thanks for your help.
"Personal Statement"
Kirikkale, the city with the highest crime rate in Turkey (this is the city where I was born??). I remember my childhood days as being generally happy without being aware of faulty beliefs of my society. When women smoke, these women were shammed by society, smoking with men or in street is especially unthinkable. Until midnight, women spent time outside and terrible something happened to them, people generally thought that it was a little of her fault. After leaving my hometown for university education, I started to realize that I grew up with the perception of world where accepting wrongs as truths.
In 2014 university entrance exam, I achieved to get a result which corresponding to 0.1% among 2.5 million students. With these results, I was awarded with fully funded scholarship and achievement grant. When I was a college freshman, I met the field of behavioral economics and ideas of Daniel Kahneman who is psychologist and, also Nobel prized economist. I decided to move forward with the point where Kahneman and Thaler draws attention. In order to better understand thoughts that underlie people's economic behavior, I started to do double major in Psychology while pursuing my major in Business Administration.
As a result of my graduation from business and psychology departments at the end of four years and with the knowledge I gained about behavioral economy, I came to the conclusion about my society, that is impossible to change all wrong norms in society but it is possible to achieve great results from small behavioral changes with idea that underlying the philosophy of behavioral economics.
In addition to my compulsory courses that has given me insight into both psychology and business administration, I also have taken elective courses to be able to analyze human behavior better. In the course of behavioral neurobiology that normally seems irrelevant from economics, however, I learned how the evolution of human genes and survival instinct determine the erroneous economic behaviors of modern people. I also enrolled in international economics and finance class taught by Dr. Atılım Murat whose have special interest in behavioral finance. My goal for this course were to develop deeper understanding of a comparative evaluation of implications in Turkey's and world's economy. In particular, I have gained (a?) greater understanding of reasons and consequences for the situation currently happening in Turkey. I have strengthened my knowledge of economics by discussing in the class what structural reforms can be made for economic problems of Turkey.
My motivation to study in this area direct me to search behavioral economics practices in Turkey. Although this field has been awarded several times with the Nobel prize, I observed that this area has not been attract the expected attention by both academies and organizations in Turkey. Fortunately, I reached out to the newly established Behavioral Public Policy department at the Ministry of Economy and have done an internship in there for 6 months.
During my internship, I have helped in adding behavioral elements to e-mails sent to experimental groups, and also have assisted in keeping data of groups nudged with behavioral messages, and statistically analyzed the effect of these messages on groups.
We organized Nudge Bootcamps with World Bank in both Bosporus University and Middle East Technical University in order to increase awareness of behavioral and experimental-based policies among university students. During these bootcamps, where I took part (??), the students were asked to propose public policies supported by behavioral elements. Besides my theoretical knowledge, I gained experience in real world behavioral and economical practices, I was also becoming more aware of limitations and implications. (??)
In recent years, Turkey's economy is struggling with various problems such as high rate of inflation, unemployment, erosion of Turkish lira, etc. I strongly believe that evidence-based and behavioral policy perspective can be an important step in solving the problems in Turkey's economy.
This study area can lead to significant change not only in the national economy, but also in the town where I was born. From the perspective of behavioral economics, the nodes that cause serious problems can be solved by small nudges as Richard Thaler suggested. However, we are not sufficiently aware of importance of this issue in Turkey. This field, bringing a whole new perspective in the economy, is not given in our universities as a course, also there is not enough scientific research done by our academicians. Therefore, I have a limited access to gain knowledge on this subject as a result of these circumstances(??). As a business student both interested in economics and finance, as well as a successful student of psychology who is interested in studying human behavior closely, I believe that taking education in USA where the country has some of the best universities in the field of behavioral economics, would be beneficial for me and that I hope that I will be helpful in filling this knowledge gap in the academy when I return to my country as a competent academician.On a technical angle, start with reviewing your grammar usage. You had run-on and hanging sentences. There were a couple of instances wherein you dragged sentences longer than they should have. Let's look at your first paragraph. Study punctuation, demonstratives, and conjunctions. These three (true - even with most cases I have read here) are where most ESL learners struggle with.
I would have phrased your second to the last sentence as:
Women who have tragic events happen to them because of staying out late are subjected to scrutiny.
This is a more straightforward approach to relaying your story than adding unnecessary parts. Apply this method to your essay.
I also suggest looking into shortening your conclusion or last paragraph. There were instances wherein you dragged sentences longer than you should have. Omit what you can omit.
If you plan to talk about the influence of Daniel Kahneman into your career decisions, talk more about his work. Do not be afraid to go into details. Show enthusiasm about the field that other people may not even think about.
I also suggest merging paragraphs six and seven because they are directly correlated. It would better the structure of the essay. This is also because the thought from the sixth paragraph is still incoherent.
Also, look into rephrasing your last paragraph. Or if you want to retain the content, choose to add one paragraph that will expound more on what makes the education system of the United States better in terms of this field. What can this other country offer that your home country cannot?
Best of luck to you.
