Melbourne University Personal Statement for finance: 500 words maximum

Personal Statement

When I was 12, I was captivated by my father's stories about his work as a financial manager when he analysed the market demand to offer investments and maximise profit. These stories evoked my interest in the business from a young age.

After attending the best high school in Vietnam, a notion came to my mind: "How can I utilise my academic knowledge to gain profit?". From this, I realised that a challenging obstacle for participants is the shortage of school entrance exam questions. Therefore, I gathered a group of 6 students to arrange all the exam questions and the answers we have done into 3 books for 3 different subjects and sold them online. As a result, we have sold over 1700 books and earned 2000 dollars. Thanks to this occasion, I can not only improve my leadership and teamwork skills but also understand how to analyse and tackle a business problem.

After having a financial foundation, I was trying to invest in the stock market which was much harder as at that time I could not even distinguish between stock and bond. Therefore, I engaged in self-learning from basic to complicated rules of investing through YouTubers like Steve Miller. As well as reinforcing in-depth knowledge about reading financial reports, I was also advised by my father to make small investments to gain more experience in this field. After one year with both failed and successful investments, I had gained knowledge to analyse the financial report, used my mathematical skills in probability and statistics to predict the graph tendency. As a result, I have gained 3000 dollars in revenue due to investments in this field. After this problem, I have learned a valuable lesson about the importance of experiences instead of just theoretical knowledge.

Studying at Melbourne university would offer me an in-depth foundation of knowledge in business. The bachelor of Commerce would allow me to study a wide range of courses such as Business Statistics taught by incredible teachers like Dr Laszlo Konya which could help me gather and analyse the data more precisely to give sustainable solutions to any problem. The clubs and societies like the FSA at the UniMelb would help me cooperate with talented students which would improve my teamwork and communication skills or even find some long-term business partners for the future.

In Vietnam, doing internships is a novel concept so studying in the UniMelb would help me gain experience through doing internships in big companies such as ANZ bank which could allow me to understand how they can create and distribute investments to make bigger profits than other competitors. These kinds of internships would not only give me opportunities to deal with various business problems in a short time to improve my problem-solving and decision-making skills but also give me insights into the business industries.

I believe studying at UniMelb would facilitate both my in-depth knowledge and experiences in business to be a professional financial manager in the future.

The development of your interest in Finance and Investments definitely has a solid and successful foundation. However, the influence of your father in your choice of career is presented in a too simplistic method. Personally, I would use my father as the primary form of influence in the development of my interests, totally avoiding the mention of the YouTuber since his influence cannot be as strong as the personal lessons that your father would have given you. It creates a more personal connection between you, your father, and your course major. It brings the story of his influence on you full circle.

The discussion of the university choice is not as impressive as it can be. It sounds more like you are just enumerating facts you have learned about the course and university instead of having an actual interest in the course through your academic considerations and career path benefits. While these are mentioned in the essay, the simplicity by which is was discussed creates a less than memorable discussion approach. You need to make a mark regarding the choice of university. Something as strong as the insight you provided for your course choice / course considerations.

@tientran
I think it is good, it needs some modifications.