Hi,
I am applying for GKS- Undergraduate 2022 and this is my personal statement. I really want to hear how can I improve it, what I am lacking and where should I delete unnecessary information. Thank you so much for spending your valuable time reading my PS. Have a good day!
Essay prompts
- Motivations with which you apply for this program
- Family and Education background
- Significant experiences you have had; risks you have taken and achievements you have made, persons or events that have had a significant influence on you
- Extracurricular activities such as club activities, community service activities, or work experiences
- If applicable, describe awards you have received, publications you have made, or skills you have acquired, etc.
PERSONAL STATEMENT
'Which gifted school are you in ?'
This is the first question I got on the first day at the International Vietnam Model United Nations. And as expected, I was totally surprised and a little bit annoyed. There was a question that came to mind: 'only students at gifted schools are able to take part in this honor conference ?'. For a moment, I just looked back on my journey to the day I could take part in such an event.
I was born in a normal family, my parents have a small store to sell food products for cattle and poultry as we live in a rural area where people do farming for a living. Like all my friends, I went to a public primary school near my house. Then, with a great performance in studying, I had a chance to attend many academic competitions throughout my primary and elementary years. However, while many other outstanding classmates chose the gifted high school in the city center, I decided to study in a public high school in my district. I used to think that because we would all need to take the entrance exam to the university, we would still be in the same position and yes, I was wrong. From the first day at high school, I realized that there were only 2 clubs in my school and extracurricular activities were not popular at all and were not extremely supported by the school's administrators. And I took my first risk in my life, I wanted to open an absolutely different club where I can help other students to take their first step and gain more knowledge in how to do extracurricular activities. Talk the talk walk the walk, I and my best friend co-founded the first book and action club in my school. The first thing we have to do is attract students to participate in our club. Seeing that the other clubs had a small number of members, I tried to think of a special way to draw students' attention and I found out that the other clubs lacked digital communication. Then, we set up a Facebook fan page for our club and started posting status to promote our club. What's more, we created a Google form for students to register to be a member of the club and make it easier to contact and advertise more to their classmates. After a hard-working time on the fan page, I got the first achievement in my school life. We had over 30 students apply and it was the highest number at that time. This event let me have the first thought of how important digital communication is.
Taking such a big leader position, I tried to think as creatively as possible. Establishing such a huge club, I did not want to follow the path of other clubs in my school where members only join in some club's meetings and do the same thing every week, what I dreamed of is to give my members a hand to experience many aspects in building one project. Therefore, I divided my club into 4 departments: communication, content, logistics, and HR, and as we are 'book' and 'action' club, we would not only create projects about the book but also many other meaningful social projects. One of our first achievements is founding a free library in our school to bring about other new book categories as well as raising reading book habits in our school's community. The more I led the club, the more significant the communication I saw. Due to the shortage of budget, we could not buy many books as we expected and thanks to the social networks' promotion, we received a huge number of donated books and were able to run our free library. There was also one more remarkable event we made that really enhanced my soft skills. We started a campaign for a week to sell mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival to raise funds to support an excellent student who had suffered a serious accident and was living in poverty and we sold only a few cakes the first day. As the leader of the club, I had to come up with a way to prevent our campaign from failing within a week. I realized that we were lacking in traditional communication. What we did was only posting the campaign on social networks and we did not promote it in person. Then, I worked with our communication and media team to divide the department into groups of 2 or 3 and gave them the mission to go to every class in our school to introduce our campaign. After our first morning promoting, more and more students bought mooncakes, and some teachers helped us by telling their students about our project too. Now I recognized that communication is not only about the media as I usually see but we also can transmit information in person but we may sometimes neglect this way. Through the campaign, I not only acquired problem-solving skills, leadership skills, management skills but also aroused my interest in communication.
During these busy years, I managed to achieve the highest GPA in my class in grade 10 and 11, which has shown me that I can work under high pressure and be able to adapt to new situations. Due to my excellent learning performance, in grade 12 I was proposed to move to the top 1 class in the school. Moreover, at the same time, I was selected as 1 of the 3 best students in the whole grade to participate in the English provincial competition and achieved the consolation prize. My potential in learning language was also demonstrated by gaining the second prize in English in HSE Global Scholarship competition and successfully achieving IELTS 7.5.
As my curiosity for communication grew harder, I took part in the media team of some projects to get insights and experience more on this aspect. I also participate in several Model United Nations where each participant plays a role as a delegate of a country to discuss rising issues in the world and together come up with draft resolutions which consist of solutions to solve the problems and engagement to work on it from all of the countries members. Playing a role as a delegate from one country, I can see the importance of communication in solving the world's issues. Every country needs to raise awareness of their citizens about the problems and they can never do it without media and communication. These honor events not only boost my public speaking skills, communication skills, negotiation skills but also give me a hand to think clearer about my mission when learning communication - that is to help the students in normal public high school like me can approach more extracurricular activities. Now, the above question that I wonder has its answer, it is not only students from gifted schools can attend such events, but it is because students from rural high schools are not encouraged to take part in extracurricular activities, hence, they do not approach such information.
From a lot of scholarships I have known, the Global Korean Scholarship has all aspects that can help me pursue my long life goal. Firstly, Korea is one of the most famous countries for communication teaching. Communication programs in Korean universities really focus on practice and advance in applicability which rarely other developing countries such as Vietnam can bring about. Moreover, it is not only about teaching but I can see how their students apply their knowledge effectively in the communication industry. The fact that K-pop and K-drama are now leading Asian entertainment is one of the model successes of communication teaching in Korea. In addition, the 'senior and junior' culture in the university environment makes me feel that I can be supported from the first day in university and learn a lot about manners and communicating. Secondly, like GKS is giving students opportunities to pursue better education, my goal shares the same objective as I want to help students in the rural area enhance their soft skills through the transmission of communication about extracurricular activities. By learning and working in communication major, I can easily promote the cultures of both countries and with my long life goal, students from rural areas are able to complete themselves which contributes to a better world. Thirdly, I have had a destiny with Korea since a young age. When I was born, the drama Glass Slippers (유리구두) was aired and it became famous all over Asia. As the drama is about two sisters and my parents also have two daughters, I was specially given a nickname 선우 (seon-u) and it makes everyone remember me. Therefore, I have a huge love for Korea and I believe I can develop myself well when I study in the environment that I am in love with.