The prompt for the MSc in Financial Economics is a fairly typical personal statement for an application. There are two parts to the prompt and both portions need to be addressed within the essay, split roughly equally in terms of the word count. The prompt for the program can be found below.
How do you hope to see your career developing over the next five years? How will the MSc in Financial Economics assist you in the development of these ambitions? (500 words)
The wording that stands out to me when reading this prompt is the word hope. Based on this word, I would encourage you to think about your ideal career over the next five year. What do you want to achieve? What are your interests and motivations? How will you be able to draw upon what you enjoy studying and transform those passions into a career? Answering these questions requires self-reflection about your professional goals that will follow your first job immediately after the MSc program. In five years, regardless of your career path, you would be expected to gain in responsibilities either with a promotion or a lateral change to a new role or company. You would want to show that you already have a clear idea of how you would grow in your career. Having direction is a way of showing your drive and hints at your ability to be successful in the MSc program.
I would caution that when you speak about what you would ideally like to accomplish in your career, you still need to be realistic. Your goal should be related to the MSc in Financial Economics in order to demonstrate a logically reason for pursuing the degree.
As you move on to describing how the degree will enable to you to achieve your goals, this is the portion of the essay where you can show that you have researched the program and you understand why you would be a good fit to the program. You should be able to pinpoint different aspects of the curriculum that you think will be beneficial to your learning. Instead of listing what you will take advantage of, you should explain how you plan to fully utilize those experiences. You can make connections between the unique offerings of the MSc and the skills that you need to develop in order to be successful after the program finishes.
The goal for this essay is to demonstrate that the MSc program is exactly the type of program that you need to achieve your goals. As it is only a 9-month program, it is important to have done your research into the curriculum and your career choices. Once you enter the program, time will go quickly so you will want to immediately take advantage of all of the program’s offerings and the best way to be do this is by being prepared ahead of time and demonstrating this preparedness.
Rona Aydin is the founder of Oriel Admissions and she holds an MBA degree from the Said Business School. Rona has helped many prospective applicants complete their applications to Said Business School. If you would like to learn more about our services, please contact Rona at rona@orieladmissions.com.