Manaaki Scholarship Essay: What skills and knowledge do you hope to gain from your proposed program?

Hi, everyone! I will appreciate if you can take a look at my essay and give me some feedback. I used this essay for the Manaaki Scholarship and I did not get through the next selection step so I plan to improve this on my next endeavour. Thank you.

What skills and knowledge do you hope to gain from your proposed study program?

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As a monitoring and evaluation analyst for the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) regional unit, I must provide solutions to tackle field challenges. However, to complete my tasks accordingly, I need to expand my capacity to promote community engagement in coastal management as their involvement in the regulatory process and implementation requires strengthening.

Thus, I choose the Master of Environmental Management at the University of Auckland as my first choice. This program offers various topics, including environmental governance, political ecology, and collaborative natural resource management. Gaining an in-depth understanding of the mentioned topics will prepare me to encourage community participation in Indonesia's coastal management actively.

As for my second choice, I choose the Master of Environmental Policy and Management at Lincoln University. From this program, I expect to gain skills in identifying solutions for resolving environmental problems from various discipline approaches. In addition, this program can equip me with fundamental keys in ecological governance, thus can prepare me to be a strategic planner and evaluator for the organization.

You cannot just explain the syllabus to the reviewer. You need to make a direct connection between skills development and knowledge importance. How will you apply these to your job? Do not just say you hope to learn, explain why it is important that you learn it. How do you plan to apply it? How will it make you a better professional? I do not really see any reason to accept you as an applicant with the responses that you gave. It lacks proper information in relation to your profession, chosen course, and how it can be applied to your work place. All you did was repeat the syllabus explanation, which does not tell the reviewer anything about the course applicability to your workplace.