I will apply for Chevening Scholarship soon for master degree in UK. For the Scholarship, I wrote essay about leadership and influencing skills below. My main idea about leadership is to make a new challenge which others around me have not done before me. it was not easy to write about leadership for me. Anyway, please check my essay and give me a feedback. Thanks a lot. ^^
Q. Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influences in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.
I have started several challenges ahead of anyone around me with my strong belief that a challenge spirit is the most important quality to be a good leader, who influences on others not only for their personal development but also the improvement of the group they involved in.
For the first example of my challenges, before the end of my middle school, I decided to go to a famous high school in big city to enhance my competence for my future. No one has studied there before because it was far from my hometown, where most my friends spent all their childhood, and nobody wanted to take a risk of competing with new people in very strange place. Moreover, teachers in my hometown didn't recommend the high school without exact information and every parent also didn't want their boys and girls to live separately. However, I made up my own decision for my future in spite of their anxieties. In fact, it was my first own decision against my parents. After I enrolled in the high school and studied well there, from one year to another, the number of students who came from my middle school increased steadily. It showed obviously that my challenge and outcome made the junior students and the teachers in my middle school change greatly.
In addition, I was the first person among my high school alumni to be qualified with Certified Public Accountant(CPA) before my college graduation. Although most people agreed that the role of CPA, which conduct an audit the financial statement of listed companies, will be much more crucial than that of today in accordance with the growing capital market in Korea, nobody around me engaged in the CPA exam because it was not easy to study for, at least, two years for the exam. To tell the truth, I also was worried about same things but I was sure that it was worth enough investing my time and efforts. Thus, I demonstrated to overcome a challenge with our own best by making my successful results. I shared my experience with my friends and junior students who consider of CPA. Whenever I met my friends or junior colleagues, I told them that working as a CPA is beneficial for us not only to find job opportunity but also to make our own professionalism. Thus, some of them work as CPA in accounting firms and appreciated my helps to relive the uncertainty.
In conclusion, I have shown the strong decision for my future such as the experiences above. At this moment, I hope to find a new challenge which can make me a real leader in the future. I don't want to stay with my stable position to lose a great opportunity. I continue to challenge for what I've never experienced before.
Hi Kwajini. I am confused as to why you are discussing what the qualities of a good leader are in this essay when you should be presenting various situations and explanations regarding your development as a leader. That is a prompt deviation that can cost you the scholarship. If you take the time to review the other Chevening scholarship samples in this forum, you will get a better idea of what the prompt expects you to present to the reviewer and scholarship committee. Trust me, it does not include your high school experience as you have mentioned here. Although, with the correct presentation, maybe you can use the high school experience to highlight you influence skills. I'm just not sure if the reviewer will accept that as a valid example because it was so long ago and not related to your current profession or social skills.
The essay is quite specific with its requirements, you need to provide examples of your leadership qualities and ability to influence people. The high school experience that you have related does not really fall under these considerations. I did not see any real leadership role nor ability to influence people. The reason behind that is because you were simply too young to do such a thing. The most effective examples of leadership that you can offer can be related to some college activities such as leading a school organization, founding a school organization, work done as an intern, or any part time jobs that required your to lead and influence others.
Applicants for Chevening scholarships have some of the most impressive leadership qualities and influence abilities that can be found in future masters degree students. They take the essay very seriously and try their best to promote themselves as current leaders with the potential to become even more influential in the future. That said, the essay can never be about your future ability to become a leader. It is about your ability to lead at this very moment in time.
Do you have any relevant work experience that you can use to highlight your leadership and influence skills? It does not have to be a major event that you were involved in. Simple leadership and influence stories will suffice. What matters is that you can present current examples of your leadership skills. High school experience does not count at this point. A masters degree student must have more impressive leadership experiences than that which relate to their current occupation or socio-civic involvements.
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There you have it Kwan, as you can see there's quiet a lot of corrections made on the essay, I believe you have made your research on the Cheapening Scholarship and now that the competition for this scholarship is extremely high, there are several students here on EF who are applying for the same scholarship so I suggest that you take time to read them so you can get some advice and essay differentiation, this will also give you a heads up on what to expect out of this application.
Overall, the essay needs improvement, this are just my suggestions and if you have anything else to add such as other leadership experience it will definitely help.
