Personal Statement

An English proverb goes to this effect: Many people have not had a chance to sing the songs in their hearts even when they are on the verge of going into their graves. In 19--, when I was enrolled by xxxxxx University to specialize in Economic Management at the School of xxxx Management in my capacity as the top student in the area where I took part in my university entrance examination, I assumed that I would be destined to be a businessperson who would spend the entire lifetime in the business world, a prospect that chilled me somehow. However, I now congratulate myself on having made a more appropriate choice in the best time of my formative years, a choice that may enable me to sing the song in my heart with total freedom. The choice, a degree program in educational economics, combines my early interest in economics and my increasingly fervent love for the noble cause of education.

The choice was made as a result of my undergraduate internship project. When our research team arrived in a remote mountain area, which can be described as the most poverty-stricken of its kind in China, to undertake our survey studies, the scene presented to our eyes was that of abject poverty beyond the conception of urban citizens. Talks with the local teachers, pupils and the drop-outs convinced us that they were plunged into a kind of vicious cycle: economic poverty leads to educational deprivation and educational deprivation further aggravates economic poverty. The innocent faces and the eyes thirsty for knowledge of those children wrought an indelible impression in my mind. The drop-outs represented innumerable children in China who have been deprived of their right to education. The question that obsessed me that night was what I could do for them, what I could contribute to education in modern China? I found myself writing in my diary the night that "I am determined that one day I would bring with me all my wealth-my money and my knowledge-to come to the remotest and most impoverished part of the country to devote myself to providing education to the poor." With those thoughts in my mind, I made relentless efforts in my studies and, by distinguishing myself from the rest of my class in xxxxxx University, the most prestigious university where elitist students concentrate, I acquired all the necessary qualifications for undertaking a Master‘s program, waived of entrance examination. I chose to major in Educational Economics for my program, my motivation being apparent.

My undergraduate scholastic aptitudes have helped to lay a solid foundation for my studies in economics, mathematics and administrative science. In the course of my systematic study of educational economics, educational history, and educational statistics, my prominent performance resulted in my being accepted as a member of a research project The Income Differentials Among Graduates of xxxx Universities and xxxxxx Universities in China. In undertaking this project, I applied the educational statistical approaches and the SAS software I have assimilated. By exercising my knowledge in educational economics, including two analytical approaches (the descriptive approach & the differential approach), I analyzed the differentials in terms of the annual income and the income growth between the graduates of national key universities and ordinary universities and investigated into the underlying causes for these differentials. The research paper based on the findings of this project has been collected into the book Economics xxxxxe of xxxxx University, USA. Subsequent to this project, I participated in another project A Case Study: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, a project sponsored by the United Nations Development Program. In this project, my responsibility was to carry out positivistic surveys by means of interviews, symposiums, and questionnaires, to collect, sort out and analyze data, to design mathematic models, and to compile relevant documents. An in-depth discussion was conducted concerning how the introduction of reform measures to the factors that inform vocational education could enhance the enrollment rate in rural obligatory education and its impact on the elevation of the income of local inhabitants. This research has special implications for changing the backward educational conditions in China‘s poor rural areas. The successful completion of those projects has helped me accumulate abundant methodological experience, apart from augmenting my confidence for high-level academic research.

Upon my graduation, I chose to work in a field that is most closely and widely related with teachers, students and teaching-administration and research assistant at the President‘s Office of ---- University. Over the past two years, I consciously applied my professional knowledge to educational practice, including conducting surveys of various faculties, colleges, and functional departments, submitting evaluation reports to the President‘s Council, taking part in the research project The Effect of Scientific and Technologic Advancement and Industrial Restructuring on the Changing Patterns of University Students Composition and on the Model of University Education. The most rewarding part of this project is my heightened awareness of the status quo of China‘s education: the evils of test-oriented education and the so-called elitist education have become increasingly conspicuous, together with the serious regional imbalance in the distribution of educational funds, the challenges presented by the new mode of economic growth in the age of knowledge economy to the way universities educate their students. There are numerous problems in the field of educational economics awaiting to be solved: what is the new role of schools and universities in the information age? How to education our young people for their future? how to better finance better education? How to make education more cost-effective in emerging knowledge society?

To seek solutions to those challenging questions, pursuing further studies in the United States becomes a necessary condition for me. My motivation is simple enough. The United States has the most developed educational system, with a long-standing educational tradition. There I will have opportunities to have dialogues and exchanges with the best minds of the education profession from whom I can assimilate advanced education concepts, derive inspirations from its education policies, and acquire scientific and systematic research methodologies. All those valuable experiences would be applied to transforming the relatively backward educational conditions and to promoting the development of China‘s educational enterprise.

Today, the words that I noted down in my diary several years ago still serve as my career guideline, which will also constitute the objective of my lifelong pursuit that I shall never regret. The future as I envision will be one in which economic poverty and intellectual unenlightenment would be eradicated in every corner of our country and all innocent children shall be eligible for their inalienable education.