A doctor on the formidable plateau in China’s Qinghai Province, I have been hankering for graduate studies for almost ten years. The wish has had to be buried until now because I, as the oldest child of poor family, needed to work, and work hard, to put my brother and sister through all their education. With my duties of the first born finally discharged, I would now like to start pursuing my own dream, a big part of which is to obtain a Ph. D. degree in a quality medical school in the United States.

Born into a small village in the mountainous Guizhou Province, I went to the Lanzhou Medical University, the leading medical school in the country’s Northwest, on the strength of my outstanding scores in the 1984 National University Entrance Examinations. To build up a solid foundation for my career, I concentrated my studies on the courses of my major, achieving an academic record that was one of the best in the university at the time. My GPA ranked me among the top five per cent of the 350 students in my grade in the first three years and the top two per cent in the last two years.

My strong academic performance won me honors and scholarships every year during the five years of my undergraduate studies. These included the Excellent Undergraduate Scholarship, awarded to only three of the university’s 10,000 students a year. Compassionate and responsible, I was elected the monitor of my class, which made me a leader to some thirty students. In recognition of my tremendous help to my classmates in their studies and everyday life, the university named me the Excellent Student Cadre in 1985, 1987 and 1988, respectively.

Unique among my classmates, I started to enjoy substantial lab experience in my second year, thanks to the opportunity that Professor Li bestowed on me in appreciation of my academic strengths. He inducted me into the magical filed of experiment physiology my making me part of his research team, in which I found I was the only undergraduate. Working under Professor Li’s guidance, I not only enjoyed the lab experimentation thoroughly but also learned to think and solve problems independently.

To top off my fruitful undergraduate studies, I won an offer of acceptance into graduate studies at the same university without the normally mandatory admission exams. But I turned down the offer, upon agonizing consideration of my options. My family, still stricken with poverty, had had a hard time coping with my university education. As my brother and sister grew up, the cost of their education was exploding. It fell on me, the eldest child of the family, to take charge of the family finances. In a family spirit that dates back ages in China, I gave up my chance of graduate studies in favor of a job that could immediately help me pay the bills.

The choice did, however, turn out to be the right one even from a professional perspective, as it allowed to acquire rich and colorful hands-on experience, with which I have not only enhanced my professional expertise continuously but also built up a solid foundation for advanced studies. In the nine years since my graduation, I have matured as a clinical doctor and a medical researcher. After joining the Department of Ophthalmology at Lanzhou Railway Hospital in 1989 upon my graduation, my career advanced at a steady pace. After finishing up the required basic training for a clinical physician in the first year, I served as a resident doctor between 1990 and 1992. In these two years, I learned to deal with common eye-diseases and other frequently occurring illnesses. I also handled a number of serious diseases and conducted quite some basic operations.

During this period, I became a profuse medical writer in order to synthesize my clinical practice. I wrote A Clinical Analysis of Dioptric Situation in the Patients with Senile Cataract, which was later rated as a first-grade article at the Qinghai Province’s annual medical symposium. Another article, A Clinical Observation of Treating Optic Atrophy with Composite Citicoline, received a first-grade rating at the annual symposium in our hospital.

To further tap my professional talent, the hospital sent me to undertake special studies and research at the Tianjing Hospital of Ophthalmology, one of the best of its kind in the country, for a period of two years. Here, I not only acquired a more solid grounding in medical theories but also perfected my surgical skills. I did research on the Use of Perfluorocarbon Liquid in Complicated Retinal Detachment Surgery, and found that exposure to perfluorocarbon liquids has demonstrated an effect to improve the anatomic and visual outcome for complicated retinal detachment.

Encouraged by the praise other medical professionals heaped on me for my research, I still wrote a thesis Changes in the Blood Rheology, Thromboxane and Prostaglandin in the Blood of Patients with Primary Angle-Closure Glaucoma, published in The Journal of Ophthalmology. At this Tianjin hospital, I took part in many complicated operations, such as Cataract Extraction and Intraocular lens Implantation after Vitrectomy, Micro-vitreoretinal Surgery and Silicone Oil for Treatment of Perforating Injuries with Retinal Detachments, and others.

After returning in 1994 to my own hospital, I was quickly promoted. Named a leading doctor, I have taken charge of the treatment of some serious and complex diseases. Over the last few years, I have performed many complicated operations, including the Primary Posterior Chamber Intraocular Lens Implantation of Posterior Capsular Rupture with Cataract Extracted by Phacoemulsification and the Foldable Intraocular Lens Implantation through a Small Clear Corneal Incision, and others. My responsibilities also include teaching theoretical courses to interns and other resident doctors, and supervising them in the performance of operations.

In my practice of the last few years, I have developed a strong interest in Pathology and Physiology. To keep myself abreast of the latest developments in this filed, I subscribed to Basic Medical Sciences and Clinics, Chinese Journal of Pathophysiology, Chinese Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology, Foreign Medical Sciences, and many other professional journals. With my extensive reading in this field, I believe that this discipline is both the basis and the crux of clinical medicine. As a clinical doctor, I need to not only learn it but also learn it well so that I can keep scaling higher professional heights in my practice. Hence my decision to go back t school.

Going back to school means that I have to put my career in the hospital on hold for a while, but I believe that my enhanced expertise will more than compensate for any lapse in my practice now. many of my friends object to my decision, pointing out that I am already an established physician enjoying good professional status and handsome monetary benefits in China. But I feel that I now must pursue my career in accordance with my personal interest, which I take to be a driving force behind any real professional success. Once I get to arm myself with more advanced theoretical frameworks and clinical techniques, I should be able to enjoy even more professional respect and financial benefits than I am getting now.

With my family out of the wood now in financial matters, I must seize the chance t upgrade myself. Studies in your program will not only catapult me into a higher domain in my professional practice but also give me the rare chance to pursue my career according to my own academic interest. I am sure that, with such studies, my intellectual prowess will be better taken advantage of to the benefit of many patients.