Financial Engineering Master, Personal Statement Example

If people look at my educational background and compare it to the program I am currently applying for, they have the tendency to look at my paper twice and wonder whether I am applying for the right program.Growing up in China with parents who were university professors and believed in security within ones profession, I was always encouraged to use the natural abilities to be able to resolve scientific issues in a more practical manner. I was taught to become more realistic in valuing matters that basically allow me to resolve my problems both the life-based ones and the ones that are usually academically challenging. Every new beginning presents a determinable value of development, and every point of development pushes one to be more concerned about how he personally embraces the adjustments that are needed to be applied and monitored accordingly. Relatively, this thinking brought me into realizing the real worth of my capacity to face life’s most quaint adversities and rise to the challenge of gaining victory from such turning point in my life.

I came to America by myself at the age of 19, and double majored in chemistry and chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. During the time I armed myself with solid math and logical thinking abilities studying science and engineering, I was also preparing myself for a finance-related future pathway. Though under extremely heavy course load from both majors [while doing intensive undergraduate researches] I decided to broaden my insights on the concepts of Math and finance.With a strong interest, I took courses in microeconomics, corporate finance, probability and statistics, and advanced calculus, which are not required by my academic curriculum. I also got straight A’s for all my undergraduate calculus and physics classes. As a result, I ended up earning 149 credits upon graduation from University of Minnesota, while the required number is only 108. Nevertheless, I did enjoy having the chance to achieve all that were accomplished and credited into my record. These points of academic achievements marked my capacity to focus and be driven well by what best improves me in a personal manner.

With two published research papers during my undergrad, I received continuing education programs [forPhD] offers from highly reputable programs such as Carnegie Mellon and New York University. I accepted a position at NYU as a chemistry Ph.D. student in the field of crystallization mechanisms applied to medication, where we model molecular dynamics using computational tools. Getting deeper into the academic field, my passion and desire to pursue a more finance-related career kept increasing exponentially. As a result, though making my parents a bit uneasy, I made the decision to step down into the master’s program in chemistry in order to pursue my graduate degree in financial engineering in fall of 2015.

Upon making my decisions, I registered for several graduate courses in both chemistry and math department at NYU that could help me further develop my math and computational skills. My Quantum Mechanics and Spectroscopy class had a great emphasis on students’ computational background of matlab, and to keep good pace with the course, I started from zero and learned matlab coding myself. For one of course projects, we were asked to perform time-dependent discrete variable representation (DVR) analysis using matlab to numerically model chemistry or physics quantum mechanics systems and spectroscopy observables. The project was challenging to even computer science or physics majors. However, through hard work I successfully modeled and analyzed a defected system of carbon nanotube, wrote an informative report and gave an excellent presentation. Though the content of the course was barely related to finance, I found great interest in the application of mathematical modeling in solving real-world problems and became further determined in my risky decision.Though making a big change now, I do not regret taking up chemistry and chemical engineering in the past. In fact, it is a valuable six-year experience that I am extremely thankful to. With all the intensive data analysis, conference presentations, and paper publishing, I am now able to proudly call myself a mature analyzer and researcher.

In terms of my future career path, I’m hoping to making more use of mathematical modeling and work in fields related to trading structuring research, or more precisely the development and testing of model-implied trading strategies.That’s why I am eager to achieve professional trainings and practice through the Financial Engineering program at XXX. At the same time, what I can bring to the program is my analytic and innovative thinking. Therefore, it is with great anticipation and excitement that I look forward to taking my next step in academic and career path as a student at XXX University. My desire to become more effective in embracing the path of professional growth I have started to establish allows me to become more concentrated on how well I am willing to further my studies to achieve more at present and become more effective in achieving my professional goals in the future.