Prompt: The personal statement is all about YOU. We expect to find in your personal statement your strength, your passion, your interest, your future goals, or any information you feel will be of interest to the selection panel.
Sitting in front of me on the computer is the one-year investment mandate of a real client. The client is 45 years old, expecting a 6% return rate while tolerating only a 5% drawdown, and my job is to balance safe, low-yielding government bonds with high-risk, high-reward equities to achieve his investment goal without breaching his risk limit. This internship experience at China Everbright Bank introduced me to risk management. It amazed me with the realization that making financial decisions under risk is not just a gut feeling, but something that can be quantified and calculated. It is this very fascination that has led me to RMBI today.
Although the internship did give me a basic overview of the mechanisms and risks of many financial assets, it also exposed one of my weaknesses. I can make basic financial recommendations, but I lack the quantitative skills to assess my decisions. So, to build this foundation, I took AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, which provided me with a structured overview of how policies and firms interact to affect markets. However, I did not stop at passive learning. As the Economics Teaching Assistant, I explained complex economic concepts to my peers, transforming my understanding of economics from pure memorization into logical reasoning. To fill the gap in my quantitative skills foundational to solving complex algorithms in risk management, I took AP Calculus BC and AP Statistics, allowing me to analyze data and make decisions based on statistical evidence rather than intuition. In a statistics project, I analyzed variables ranging from genre to title length, using historical data to make recommendations for a hypothetical film. This project deepened my understanding of how statistics are analyzed to aid in decision-making when facing uncertain situations.
I believe that financial knowledge must be accessible to the general public. This belief led me to compete in the Impact League of the World Series of Innovation, where I led my team in designing a board game simulating a person's life. Players begin as young professionals making decisions regarding financial products, while experiencing random events ranging from injuries to market crashes. Our project secured second place globally, but more importantly, it taught me the importance of financial literacy for the future of sustainable financial development in Asia.
Beyond the classroom, as the Vice President of my school's sustainability club, I led a fundraising campaign for FORRU, a sustainability organization at Chiang Mai University, and participated in their sapling-planting project. With FORRU, I learned that deforestation can disrupt supply chains, threatening a company's financial performance. In fact, this very trip had to be delayed due to forest fires. I saw how sustainability can mitigate those risks and create long-term stability. Concurrently, my participation in the Thailand International Model United Nations, where I earned an Honorable Mention representing the USA in the Economic and Social Council, has honed my ability to listen, research, and find common ground to communicate effectively. I strengthened my interpersonal skills, which are essential for risk analysts. A key part of the job is communicating complex risk concepts to executives and managing risk by collaborating across departments. Together, these experiences have given me a nuanced understanding of risk management and business intelligence. I now know that while numbers make up the foundation of risk analysis, it is also about human empathy and morality. This is a perspective that I look forward to further developing at HKUST's RMBI program.
HKUST's location in Hong Kong, the region's wealth management center, allows me to understand the unique financial markets of East Asia and to put my studies into practice. It is a city where differences in worldview and financial practices clash and intersect daily, as nowhere else in the world does the English common law system operate alongside Chinese regulations. Hong Kong's clients include both Mainland investors seeking to diversify their portfolios offshore and global investors seeking to enter the Mainland market. My experiences in the Thailand International Model United Nations have already pushed me to solve problems from a global perspective. With Hong Kong's diverse cultural environment, I can further develop my ability to create financial strategies that are both culturally aware and incorporate international practices.
One important reason I chose the RMBI program is its interdisciplinary nature, reflecting the reality of risk management, which requires mathematical, statistical, financial, and technical perspectives. Beyond the curriculum, RMBI's Advisory Board Committee, which consists of senior executives working in risk management, and mentorship programs will provide me with direct exposure to real-world problems. Ten years from now, I see myself working as a risk analyst, helping clients evaluate potential threats. This career will be best supported by the networks, bonds, and friendships I would establish through the industry connections and mentorship programs RMBI provides.
My goal is to become a risk analyst who identifies financial threats while ensuring my risk management strategies are aligned with long-term sustainability for the environment and society. HKUST's RMBI program, emphasizing quantitative risk analytics, interdisciplinary nature, and diverse perspectives, is the ideal place to further refine my experiences in mathematics, statistics, finance, economics, and ESG into a solid foundation for my career. I hope to both contribute my perspective on sustainable finance to HKUST while benefiting and gaining insights from students and faculty who share the same goals as I do.
I feel like some of the things that I mentioned in the personal statement is slightly generic, but I don't know how to fix it. A couple of things also feel like a far stretch.
Sitting in front of me on the computer is the one-year investment mandate of a real client. The client is 45 years old, expecting a 6% return rate while tolerating only a 5% drawdown, and my job is to balance safe, low-yielding government bonds with high-risk, high-reward equities to achieve his investment goal without breaching his risk limit. This internship experience at China Everbright Bank introduced me to risk management. It amazed me with the realization that making financial decisions under risk is not just a gut feeling, but something that can be quantified and calculated. It is this very fascination that has led me to RMBI today.
Although the internship did give me a basic overview of the mechanisms and risks of many financial assets, it also exposed one of my weaknesses. I can make basic financial recommendations, but I lack the quantitative skills to assess my decisions. So, to build this foundation, I took AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, which provided me with a structured overview of how policies and firms interact to affect markets. However, I did not stop at passive learning. As the Economics Teaching Assistant, I explained complex economic concepts to my peers, transforming my understanding of economics from pure memorization into logical reasoning. To fill the gap in my quantitative skills foundational to solving complex algorithms in risk management, I took AP Calculus BC and AP Statistics, allowing me to analyze data and make decisions based on statistical evidence rather than intuition. In a statistics project, I analyzed variables ranging from genre to title length, using historical data to make recommendations for a hypothetical film. This project deepened my understanding of how statistics are analyzed to aid in decision-making when facing uncertain situations.
I believe that financial knowledge must be accessible to the general public. This belief led me to compete in the Impact League of the World Series of Innovation, where I led my team in designing a board game simulating a person's life. Players begin as young professionals making decisions regarding financial products, while experiencing random events ranging from injuries to market crashes. Our project secured second place globally, but more importantly, it taught me the importance of financial literacy for the future of sustainable financial development in Asia.
Beyond the classroom, as the Vice President of my school's sustainability club, I led a fundraising campaign for FORRU, a sustainability organization at Chiang Mai University, and participated in their sapling-planting project. With FORRU, I learned that deforestation can disrupt supply chains, threatening a company's financial performance. In fact, this very trip had to be delayed due to forest fires. I saw how sustainability can mitigate those risks and create long-term stability. Concurrently, my participation in the Thailand International Model United Nations, where I earned an Honorable Mention representing the USA in the Economic and Social Council, has honed my ability to listen, research, and find common ground to communicate effectively. I strengthened my interpersonal skills, which are essential for risk analysts. A key part of the job is communicating complex risk concepts to executives and managing risk by collaborating across departments. Together, these experiences have given me a nuanced understanding of risk management and business intelligence. I now know that while numbers make up the foundation of risk analysis, it is also about human empathy and morality. This is a perspective that I look forward to further developing at HKUST's RMBI program.
HKUST's location in Hong Kong, the region's wealth management center, allows me to understand the unique financial markets of East Asia and to put my studies into practice. It is a city where differences in worldview and financial practices clash and intersect daily, as nowhere else in the world does the English common law system operate alongside Chinese regulations. Hong Kong's clients include both Mainland investors seeking to diversify their portfolios offshore and global investors seeking to enter the Mainland market. My experiences in the Thailand International Model United Nations have already pushed me to solve problems from a global perspective. With Hong Kong's diverse cultural environment, I can further develop my ability to create financial strategies that are both culturally aware and incorporate international practices.
One important reason I chose the RMBI program is its interdisciplinary nature, reflecting the reality of risk management, which requires mathematical, statistical, financial, and technical perspectives. Beyond the curriculum, RMBI's Advisory Board Committee, which consists of senior executives working in risk management, and mentorship programs will provide me with direct exposure to real-world problems. Ten years from now, I see myself working as a risk analyst, helping clients evaluate potential threats. This career will be best supported by the networks, bonds, and friendships I would establish through the industry connections and mentorship programs RMBI provides.
My goal is to become a risk analyst who identifies financial threats while ensuring my risk management strategies are aligned with long-term sustainability for the environment and society. HKUST's RMBI program, emphasizing quantitative risk analytics, interdisciplinary nature, and diverse perspectives, is the ideal place to further refine my experiences in mathematics, statistics, finance, economics, and ESG into a solid foundation for my career. I hope to both contribute my perspective on sustainable finance to HKUST while benefiting and gaining insights from students and faculty who share the same goals as I do.
I feel like some of the things that I mentioned in the personal statement is slightly generic, but I don't know how to fix it. A couple of things also feel like a far stretch.
