Hello, I want to apply for a scholarship for master's degree and this is my statement of purpose. The instructions are the following:
My interest in South Korea first started almost 20 years ago, after watching the Korean Drama "D". I was captivated by everything: acting, scenery, costumes and soundtrack. But most importantly, it was telling a story that made me feel for the characters. Soon after that, I came across Korean pop music, with "T" opening the door to a whole new world. Two of my favourite animated shows "show1" and "show2" were done in collaboration with director X and some episodes were animated by Studio M. As I grew older, I learned more about South Korea and I became intrigued by the enormous economic growth that has happened during the last 70 years, with the country being home to massive conglomerates such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai. One of my favourite childhood computer games - TO - was developed by the Korean company NSoft. The harmonious blend between the audiovisual elements and the technical aspects made me become more interested in the fields of tech/ computer science and visual arts and research ways to mix them. I want to further my studies by pursuing a graduate degree in South Korea as the country has a strong focus on innovation, offering an education system that is ranked among the best in the world. Equally, I am interested in Korea's booming startup culture. In the following lines, I hope to show the committee that I am a suitable candidate for the GKS program.
My name is X and I was born and raised in the small city of Y, Z. After years of focused effort in high school, I was admitted to a tuition-free spot at the University of P, covered by the Z state, obtaining my Bachelor Degree in C. Through dedication and diligence I succeeded in maintaining this position for all of my undergraduate years, which helped me and my family ease the cost of studying in a larger, more expensive city. While being an undergraduate student I managed to master the fundamental principles of maths and computer science. Having studied courses such as mathematical and computational logic, geometry and numerical analysis helped me build a well rounded education, improve my critical and logical thinking, teaching me to take abstract problems, break them into smaller parts and resolve them. On the other hand, coursework in algorithms and data structures, data bases, advanced programming techniques and computer networks allowed me to later transition from university to the tech industry.
From my parents I learned the importance of perseverance ever since I was young. Both of them instilled the utmost significance of education in me which prepared me for the future, continuously striving for self-improvement. During high school, one of my teachers told the classroom to "go with the flow" which eventually helped me become more flexible and adapt easily to changes, allowing me to transition from my then all-or-nothing thinking to a more elastic one, but without abandoning my core principles and values. At the time of one of my internships, during the 1:1 meetings, my manager would often ask me about something new I have learned recently. Although at first I failed to understand the importance of that repeatedly asked question, I gradually recognised its significance, especially in the fast-changing tech industry, preparing myself for higher responsibilities. In April 2025, I first traveled to South Korea, after years and years of wanting to do so. Being my first time flying abroad, I can still remember the fatigue after an almost 24-hour trip. However, it was all gone the moment I arrived in Incheon airport, struck by my mere existence then and there. Thankfully, I was able to attend T's encore concert from the WB Tour in Seoul, on April 13th, which was beyond amazing. After that trip I confirmed my belief that I wanted to live in Korea for a longer period of time.
After finishing my first year of the undergraduate degree I had the opportunity to intern for "B", a multinational cybersecurity technology company. There I was responsible for storing, retrieving and manipulating data in order to make it more readable and organised. Also, I conducted research on malware classification with machine learning algorithms in order to stop significant threats that were compromising data integrity and facilitating unauthorized access. Unfortunately, during my 2nd year the COVID-19 pandemic became problematic in my country and I failed to secure employment as many companies renounced their internship positions due to the the economic uncertainty. After graduating, I worked as an intern for A, one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. There, I was in charge of migrating content from an older web application to another one by updating the codebase. On the frontend side, I made necessary changes from JavaScript to TypeScript, converting Class-Based Components to React Hooks. I worked on the backend by adding queries and mutations to GraphQL schema, implemented functions to resolve these operations and finally integrated the resolvers to the frontend. These updates were vigorously tested in order to provide objective, independent information about the quality of software and the risk of its failure, thus ensuring that the application functions correctly and meets user expectations. The updated application was more secure and was responding faster to the users' requests, boosting customers' satisfaction. Afterwards, I started as an intern for "H", a global IT services and technology company. I was responsible for developing a cloud native, microservices-oriented Java application, with a focus on backend functionality, designing a RESTful API and storing the app data in a MYSQL database. Then, I was offered a permanent role, with my responsibilities shifting a data-focused role, to match the business needs accordingly. I explored and analysed customer data to create a churn prediction model. For top KPIs I implemented analytics insights with graphical dashboards and used ETL tools from Microsoft Azure to simplify data management and improve data quality. At the same time, I improved the elapsed time of Informatica PowerCenter sessions by converting the old mapping to Oracle stored procedures.
I have developed stronger communication and interpersonal skills having worked on multiple team based projects (while being both a student and an employee). At the same time, having been part of international teams helped me learn new methods and techniques to solve problems that I might not have learned otherwise. Over the years, I have also become more mature and better at time management, thus improving my capability to manage the stress. I believe that this program is a great fit for my goals and an essential step in my career path. I am grateful for this opportunity and I am confident that with my abilities I can contribute to and benefit from Korea's learning environment.
Respectfully,
X
My interest in South Korea first started almost 20 years ago, after watching the Korean Drama "D". I was captivated by everything: acting, scenery, costumes and soundtrack. But most importantly, it was telling a story that made me feel for the characters. Soon after that, I came across Korean pop music, with "T" opening the door to a whole new world. Two of my favourite animated shows "show1" and "show2" were done in collaboration with director X and some episodes were animated by Studio M. As I grew older, I learned more about South Korea and I became intrigued by the enormous economic growth that has happened during the last 70 years, with the country being home to massive conglomerates such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai. One of my favourite childhood computer games - TO - was developed by the Korean company NSoft. The harmonious blend between the audiovisual elements and the technical aspects made me become more interested in the fields of tech/ computer science and visual arts and research ways to mix them. I want to further my studies by pursuing a graduate degree in South Korea as the country has a strong focus on innovation, offering an education system that is ranked among the best in the world. Equally, I am interested in Korea's booming startup culture. In the following lines, I hope to show the committee that I am a suitable candidate for the GKS program.
My name is X and I was born and raised in the small city of Y, Z. After years of focused effort in high school, I was admitted to a tuition-free spot at the University of P, covered by the Z state, obtaining my Bachelor Degree in C. Through dedication and diligence I succeeded in maintaining this position for all of my undergraduate years, which helped me and my family ease the cost of studying in a larger, more expensive city. While being an undergraduate student I managed to master the fundamental principles of maths and computer science. Having studied courses such as mathematical and computational logic, geometry and numerical analysis helped me build a well rounded education, improve my critical and logical thinking, teaching me to take abstract problems, break them into smaller parts and resolve them. On the other hand, coursework in algorithms and data structures, data bases, advanced programming techniques and computer networks allowed me to later transition from university to the tech industry.
From my parents I learned the importance of perseverance ever since I was young. Both of them instilled the utmost significance of education in me which prepared me for the future, continuously striving for self-improvement. During high school, one of my teachers told the classroom to "go with the flow" which eventually helped me become more flexible and adapt easily to changes, allowing me to transition from my then all-or-nothing thinking to a more elastic one, but without abandoning my core principles and values. At the time of one of my internships, during the 1:1 meetings, my manager would often ask me about something new I have learned recently. Although at first I failed to understand the importance of that repeatedly asked question, I gradually recognised its significance, especially in the fast-changing tech industry, preparing myself for higher responsibilities. In April 2025, I first traveled to South Korea, after years and years of wanting to do so. Being my first time flying abroad, I can still remember the fatigue after an almost 24-hour trip. However, it was all gone the moment I arrived in Incheon airport, struck by my mere existence then and there. Thankfully, I was able to attend T's encore concert from the WB Tour in Seoul, on April 13th, which was beyond amazing. After that trip I confirmed my belief that I wanted to live in Korea for a longer period of time.
After finishing my first year of the undergraduate degree I had the opportunity to intern for "B", a multinational cybersecurity technology company. There I was responsible for storing, retrieving and manipulating data in order to make it more readable and organised. Also, I conducted research on malware classification with machine learning algorithms in order to stop significant threats that were compromising data integrity and facilitating unauthorized access. Unfortunately, during my 2nd year the COVID-19 pandemic became problematic in my country and I failed to secure employment as many companies renounced their internship positions due to the the economic uncertainty. After graduating, I worked as an intern for A, one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. There, I was in charge of migrating content from an older web application to another one by updating the codebase. On the frontend side, I made necessary changes from JavaScript to TypeScript, converting Class-Based Components to React Hooks. I worked on the backend by adding queries and mutations to GraphQL schema, implemented functions to resolve these operations and finally integrated the resolvers to the frontend. These updates were vigorously tested in order to provide objective, independent information about the quality of software and the risk of its failure, thus ensuring that the application functions correctly and meets user expectations. The updated application was more secure and was responding faster to the users' requests, boosting customers' satisfaction. Afterwards, I started as an intern for "H", a global IT services and technology company. I was responsible for developing a cloud native, microservices-oriented Java application, with a focus on backend functionality, designing a RESTful API and storing the app data in a MYSQL database. Then, I was offered a permanent role, with my responsibilities shifting a data-focused role, to match the business needs accordingly. I explored and analysed customer data to create a churn prediction model. For top KPIs I implemented analytics insights with graphical dashboards and used ETL tools from Microsoft Azure to simplify data management and improve data quality. At the same time, I improved the elapsed time of Informatica PowerCenter sessions by converting the old mapping to Oracle stored procedures.
I have developed stronger communication and interpersonal skills having worked on multiple team based projects (while being both a student and an employee). At the same time, having been part of international teams helped me learn new methods and techniques to solve problems that I might not have learned otherwise. Over the years, I have also become more mature and better at time management, thus improving my capability to manage the stress. I believe that this program is a great fit for my goals and an essential step in my career path. I am grateful for this opportunity and I am confident that with my abilities I can contribute to and benefit from Korea's learning environment.
Respectfully,
X
