"Move Forward' My Letter of Self-Introduction for KGSP

Hello, My name is Nics from Thailand. Obviously, English is not my first language and I need some help on my essay for KGSP 2017.

Here is the requirement for the task
- course of life, your view of life, study background, your hopes & wishes, etc
- education and work experience, etc., in relation to the KGSP program
- motivations for applying for this program
- reason for study in that country

Thank you all in Advance.

Ps. This essay is exactly 1 page long with the font Times New Roman size 10 in the application form. I do think it is still too long but not sure where to cut.

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"Move Forward"

Day after day, I traveled back and forth between Bangkok and Southern Thailand. As an irrigation project planner, my job is to study the area, talk to local people, and purpose a project to help local communities. There are couple things that I proud of this career and it was all about my journey to achieve my future goal and my passion for helping society.

I was born in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. Over the course of my life, I was always a person with a natural inclination to learn new knowledge. During primary school, I was always the second person to enter the library after the librarian herself. I love most books about sciences, especially the one that was about the relationship between different things. This is why topics such as ecosystem, urbanism, psychology, economics, and engineering are always my favorite.

Putting things into practice is also what I love to do as well. At the secondary school, I cultivated earthworm to sell the worm and its byproduct using the technique that I had learned from English website, 5 years before this technique become popular. From time to time, I always have little projects that arise from what I have read such as writing technology blog, cross-breeding fern from spore, video editing, and programming.

I studied at Mahidol Wittayanusorn School which was a young research-oriented high school inspired by Korea Science Academy of KAIST. This is the first time I began to read about the success story of South Korea and 'The Miracle on the Han River'. Couple this with the fact that I was originally growing up in a drug infested community before moving out later. These built up my personal motivation toward social issues and led me to engage in the off-campus clubs such as Ma-dee and ALA which focuses on activism and social entrepreneur during the university years.

At Chulalongkorn University, I studied Civil Engineering which includes broad range of subjects relating to understand the nature such as hydrology or geology as well as the application of science and technology to deal with or get the best result out of surrounding condition. My favorite subjects during the time were on logistics and transportation engineering where I fell in love with the elements of system analysis and planning within them. During my junior year, I took a step toward my passion by securing the position in a program by the Thai government which allow me to work as project planner at Royal Irrigation Department (RID) right after my graduation.

At RID, I learned first-hand how one of the biggest government organization plan, study, and initiate the infrastructure projects while also got an insight on government's perspective and the limitation on the structure and practitioner level. During my career, I work with mapping, spatial analysis, and hydrological modeling software as well as interacting with local communities. Despite a lack of experience, I worked hard to contribute to the team by reorganizing GIS databases for practicality while also teaching English to my coworkers on a daily basis.

I became the youngest member in RID's Young Professional (YP) on irrigation after a competition and the interview with top level officers. I then join YPs for International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) and attend the 2nd World Irrigation Forum. In this event I work in an international environment while also broaden my view on development situation in different countries from the perspective of both senior professionals and the younger generation.

Now, I aimed to move forward to the research path on planning, infrastructure, and economic development. This will allow me to utilize the experience I learned throughout my career, while also address both my passion in addressing social issues and explore the unknown. Master's degree with extensive research environment will be a significant stepping stone toward my research career. Thailand was not there yet especially in this specific area while South Korea is always among the top on my list. One example apart from Korean success story and academic reputation is Korea Development Institute (KDI) which, in the recent decade, risen to become one of the top think tanks globally in the area of development policy.

Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, founded with a principle to utilize multiple disciplinary to solve the issues involve planning and development. The program in Urban and Regional Planning comes with a number of elective courses and professor from various background, from urban theories to geography, economics, engineering, etc. which is unique compared to the same program from other places. I am truly confident that by getting Korean Government Scholarship Program, I will receive an invaluable experience that will help attain my ambitions and reach my true potential in the future.

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Hi Nics, nice to meet you. As far as I can tell, the reason that your essay is running too long is simple, you are ignoring the rest of the facts required in the essay and focusing solely on your academic background. You need not be so specific about your academic background. A simple overview of your college studies and your related accomplishments there would be sufficient enough. Cut out the discussions about your elementary education. Instead, expand on the discussion about your interest in activism when you were in High School. That will help to explain your point of view about life, which is under represented in the discussion at the moment. It also shows how you developed your early interest in Korea as a country and place of culture.

You need to expand the discussion of your professional experience as well. You can't place that at the start of the essay. Be as specific as you can about your professional accomplishments as those will show your level of preparedness for a masters degree course. It sounds like you are holding back on your professional side. Don't do that. Your professional abilities are more important to present in a masters degree application than your college achievements. That is because you are applying to school, this time, based upon your professional needs. You want to fill in any weaknesses that you might have in your field of work. Enrolling in a masters course helps to remedy that problem. So make sure that you accurately represent your professional experience.

Present the information in the essay in the manner that prompt requirement indicates. It will also help the reviewer keep track of the discussion in your essay. In my opinion, you can safely remove the second paragraph to shorten the education part so that you can cover the related educational experience instead.

Don't worry about the length of the essay. It is supposed to be one page long. As long as you can fit all of the required information, as stated in the prompt, on a single page, your essay is well within the required presentation expectations. If your essay does not fill a single page, then you should worry. All I want you to do at this moment is better align the content of your essay with the prompt requirements.

@Holt
Thank you very much. My job experience was really being underrepresented.

I will revise my essay very soon but I do have one question. Since I will apply to university track which means I will have to apply to one specific university first, I am not sure how specific should I say about the courses or program at the university.

Thank you

Nic, use the actual university choice to represent your prompt about why you were encouraged to study in Korea. The reasons for your desire to study there could be based upon the information about the university. Consider the connection between your degree and the course curriculum that is offered under the masters course. What notable courses relate directly to either your education or professional experience? What does the university offer in terms of academics and training that you cannot receive in your home country universities? How the project that you plan to complete for your thesis can be used by both Korea and your home country. Don't just enumerate the classes, pick only a few that directly relate to your profession and connect the two. You basically have to sell the reviewer on the idea that you are passionate about learning at this university in particular for a number of reasons. All of which can be considered reasons why you wish to study in Korea.

@Holt
Another thing. Maybe I am not present it clear enough in my essay, but my Master did not base on my professional need. In fact, I took this career specifically to learn how public utilities were planned and implemented in action.

In the other word, I chose my current professional base on my academic need.

My plan after study is to work in either think tank or non-profit organization in my country. I will try to interpret it better in the next revision.

Thank you again

Hey Nic, you definitely have to make that clearer in the essay. You see, masters students normally follow a study path that better promotes a professional future for himself. Since that is not the case with you, it would be best if you explain why you are studying a course that is not related to your current profession. Are you planning a career change? If that is so, then explain what the motivation is in the essay so that you can clarify the situation with the reviewer. You will need to adjust the motivation and reasons for study portion in your current version in order to better represent the explanation of those parts. Make sure that you are crystal clear because if there is a disconnection between the career path and your studies, which you do not properly explain, then you could lose the scholarship consideration on a technicality.

@Holt
Thank you again.

I try to avoid this program at first since 'urban planning' does not make much sense for someone from civil engineering background.

However, an area of interest of some professor was in infrastructure planning which is exactly what I was looking for and also directly related to my professional experience (and semi-related to what I studied in my degree). Some of the courses as well as professors are also engineering or studied in engineering. So I will try my best and be laser-sharp on everything.

Really don't know how to thank you enough for this.

Paragraph 6 is unnecessary. If it has not happened yet, then it will not help your application. Just remove that reference for now. Instead, try to build on the idea regarding why you chose to study this course in Korea. Look up information about the advancements in this field, specifically related to the university you want to enroll in. Use that information to further strengthen your motivation and desire to study in Korea.

Speaking of your desire to study in Korea, you should combine the paragraph about your principal who introduced you to Korean culture and society with the content of paragraph 6. The removal of the course you have yet to complete can be replaced effectively with the information from your principal. The rest of the essay seems to work well so far. So the next posting you should make must deal only with the changes in the paragraph I mentioned. The other parts don't really require any changes at this point. We may need to adjust something later on, after we fix paragraph 6.