PERSONAL STATEMENT TO UNIVERSITY - BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Hi I have done my PS but have no one to review it. This PS is too long and I want to shorten it but dunno where to cut. And please tell me if I should add something in PS.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

' Eat more! When I was your age, I did not have such delicious food to eat like you now'.
This was what my mom always told me when I just ate one bowl of rice for lunch and I believe most of us have heard this kind of sentence when we were young. And of course, like every child, I had to finish my lunch with a stomach full of food. At those moments, I really wanted to know what she ate in those old days, why she repeated that sentence day after day?

Until there was a time my mom received a call from her deskmate in high school, all of the memory suddenly came to her head and she told her story. My mom was born in 1969 when Vietnam still had been fighting for independence against the U.S. Having been a colonial country for hundreds of years, the economy of the country had always been war-drained. Furthermore, the wrong economic policies had sharply deteriorated our economy so much that we used to be one of the poorest countries in the world. My mom said that in those years, she could go to school only after feeding five other siblings, washing clothes, cleaning the yard, threshing rice, climbing mountain to cut grass to feed cows. They did not have enough rice to eat and had to eat kudzu instead. When she finished high school, she passed the entrance exam to the university but she had to give up her dream and got married because her family was too poor to pay for her tuition fee. As my dad's family was much richer than that of my mom, my paternal grandmother looked down on her and forced her to work heavily, and usually nagged her for no reason. After a long time putting up with a heavy workload and being scolded, my mom decided to go to college because she knew it was the only way to escape from poverty and stress. She studied hard and got into an agriculture college when she already had a six-month baby. Although she had to earn money to pay for tuition fees while studying and taking care of her child, she never missed any lessons in college and successfully graduated. Moreover, she got into the Department of Veterinary of our district. T Then, with her vast knowledge of animals and medicine, she rode her bike to every house where people needed a veteran to diagnose and cure their castles and poultry. Those two jobs helped my family get over the poverty, finally, my parents and my sister could eat rice. However, after many years having worked as government officials, she realized that the salary she got could just ensure a permanent income but would never give her enough money to buy her own house and pay for her children's study. Therefore, she took a risk to drop her job in the Department of Veterinary and started her own business. She used all the money she had saved to open a small store selling animal feed and medicine. It was that small store that buys us a house and lets us eat what we want.

For the first time, I was so much impressed by one thing and I was really curious about business. That time I asked my mom what I had to do to run a business and she said that I had to learn Math well. Therefore, during my secondary school, I was a permanent student in the gifted Math team of my school. I had taken part in many Math competitions and gained over 10 prizes in Math. In high school, I scored the highest Math GPA in my class for the first two years.

The more I learn about business the more I realize that business is composed of many aspects not just about Math itself. When my book club started a campaign for a week to sell mooncake on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival to raise funds to support an excellent student in a different school who was in poverty and unfortunately had suffered from a serious accident, we could just sell several mooncakes for the first day. As the leader of the club, I had to come up with a solution to solve the problem, or else this campaign would fail in a week. I realized that just a few people knew about our campaign as we just posted a status on our Facebook fanpage. Then, I divided the club's members into groups of 2 to 3 people and gave them a mission to go to every class of our school to introduce our campaign. After a morning, there were more and more students bought mooncakes and even some teachers in my school helped us by telling it to their students. In this position, I could not only achieve leadership skills but also many other important skills such as management skills, problem-solving skills, teamwork skills, and so on.

While having been a leader of a newbie club for nearly two years, I still managed well in studying as I got the highest GPA in my class during those times. For that, I believe I can work under high pressure and easily adapt to the new environment.

Besides, I also took part in several Model United Nations where participants play a role as a delegate from one country joining sessions to discuss their country's issue and together come up with effective solutions towards 1 to 2 matters of concern all over the world. This opportunity gave me a chance to demonstrate my public speaking skill, communication skills as well as writing skill. From the first time attended when I could not understand how the Committee and sessions work until the late MUNs, I persuaded many other delegates to join my block and together complete the draft resolutions.

By gradually conquering all the needed skills for business and management, I hope my career journey will start with having a chance to study business and management at your university. Then, as Taiwan is one of the countries that have the most developed economy in Asia, it is my goal to get deeper sight into business in Taiwan by taking part in your business course and working in a Taiwanese company. An MBA degree should also be my most consideration after graduating from university.

What is the prompt of the personal statement? Were there any writing guidelines for you to follow? I am not certain how to review the paper for you with regards to length and content because of the lack of instructions for the writing. However, I will do my best using only the general guidelines for PS writing. I hope it will be helpful to you.

The story focuses too much on your mother and very little on yourself. Your mother is not the applicant to the university so why are you so focused on her story? The reference point you are using to show the development of your interest in business administration is not really applicable as it discusses your mother's development, rather than your own. Refocus the story to a shorter extent and this time, use it only as a reference point for the development of your own interests. The reviewer doesn't need to know your mother's backstory, just how certain aspects of it relates to your own, in summarized form.

@Holt
The length of the required PS is from 1-3 pages and ahould include ( seft introduction, what motives and what you plan to do in the future). Thank you so much for your review, it really helped me bcz this is the first time I do a PS. Can I ask you how to brainstorm a PS ? The university I am applying require both PS and SOP from students so what should I do with the SOP as well ? Thank you 😊