Personal Statement
  Applied Program: URP

As a member of the third generation after founding of the People’s Republic of China, I grew up as a witness of the rapid economic development of China as a result of its reform and opening up policy. I consider myself more fortunate than people of my previous generations because today China is experiencing dynamic development and facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges brought by its accession into the WTO and deepening economic globalization.

I was aware of the importance to study economics and management in a diversified cultural environment early in my undergraduate study in business administration. After I started working, I felt more deeply in the urban planning and construction projects I undertook that the rapid development of public transportation boosted material expansion and accelerated the inherent instability in urban life. Endless segmentation has been seen in an extensive range in rapidly emerging residential areas and community construction. This is no doubt the result of the serious lack of scientific planning in urban expansion in China.

As a young man of the largest developing country in the world, I’m more oriented to observation and reflections everyday. I long for opportunities to learn more about western societies and study in an environment that is disparate with China in beliefs and habits because in the mirrors of differences, I will be probably more capable of reflecting on the culture and beliefs of my own nation.

It is because of the above reasons that I’m applying for pursuit of further studies in urban and regional planning (URP) in the University of XX. I hope I will be able to learn from the experience, ideas and methodologies of the XX in the field I’m so interested in and combine them with the actual circumstances of China to change the inappropriate practices and concepts in urban planning in China. With the marriage between more internationalized cultures and Chinese traditions, I hope I will be able to find a balance between China’s traditional culture and the modern trend in urban planning and development. I think I already have a clear motif and I have also equipped myself with all the qualities required for successful study and research at your university.

I’m proud to say that I have built for myself a sound specialized theoretical foundation through my four years of study in business administration in XX University. With an average GPA of 83 in four years, I ranked the third in all 100 students of the major. I received Scholarship for Excellent Students many times and I was honored an Excellent Graduate in 2003. I was a top student in the courses of Economics, Management, Statistics, etc. At the same time, I read extensively after class and I studied a full set of curricula offered by XX Business School. I had the notion that economic business is but business competition-based independent practice using pure economic theories or models. But with my deepening of study, I found it is a discipline that incorporates profound philosophical ideas, cultural differences and a wide range of natural sciences. This certainly echoes a well-known saying in XX Business School: doing business is like being a man.

Moreover, I have shown competent research ability in the two specialized academic papers I published. In writing my graduation thesis entitled XX, I investigated thirty state-owned enterprises and foreign-invested enterprise and conducted 500 tests and data analysis. Based on a study on the human resource management models in XX and XX enterprises, I have summarized the peculiarities and discrepancies of Chinese enterprises through comparisons. The 25,000-word thesis analyzed moot points including the autonomous power of talents and psychological contract from the perspectives of strategic management, mathematical statistics and cultural operation models. The thesis received a high score of 95 from the assessment panel and was published in XX, a core national academic journal. My another thesis entitled XX, which discussed the role of personnel tests and evaluation in human resource management in a market economy system from the perspectives of the screening, promotion, training, optimal allocation of personnel and salary package design and pointed out the wrong concepts in personnel evaluation in China and proposed solutions, was published in a top provincial-level journal.

A theory will find its life only in practice. I accumulated more experience in my specialized field of interest in every internship and assignment. During my internship at the Bureau of Forestry of XX City of XX Province from June to September 2002, I collected data and produced statistics on the livestock husbandry and aquiculture of the entire city and made a significant contribution to the 2003-2007 five-year livestock husbandry and aquiculture planning program of XX City. In my internship in the Construction Committee of XX City of XX Province from February to May 2003, I took part in the planning project for a 200,000-square meter XX Residential District. I was specifically responsible for statistical calculation on compliance with national standards of noise control, compliance with national standards in mosquito and fly density and garbage bagging, classification and designated disposal, occurrence of criminal cases, etc. The residential district was honored a “National Leading Residential District” because of its outstanding planning. During this period, I also took part in many other public projects and construction administration. Since my graduation in July 2003, I have been working as a manager of marketing in XX Metal Industry Ltd Company. I successfully fulfilled my responsibility for the processing and selling of 400 tons of refined copper imported from XX and XX. I was also responsible for some personnel management work at the company.

Based on my large amount of observation and deepened reflections on a wide variety of issues in practice, I think that China has many wrong concepts and rooms for improvement in URP, e.g. mismatch between autonomous administration of residential areas and government function transformation, lack of attention on community construction in urban-rural connection areas and the unrestrained expansion and irrationality in residential space and communities in urban development planning. While China has its own peculiar circumstances compared with western countries because of its historic and cultural reasons, the learning of more advanced ideas and technologies in the field of urban planning will play an important role in solving the above problems.

The University of XX has a long esteem in URP and it is known widely for its strong faculty. The URP Program is nearly-sufficient with its own planning library and exclusive computer laboratory. I especially extol its efforts to conduct and disseminate research on the “theory and practice” of urban society to plan for more equitable and sustainable communities. I’m equally interested in areas of land use planning, land management, planning process theory, regional planning and economic development and transportation planning. After studying at your university, I will return to China and make more contributions to the prosperous development of China in first decades in the new millennium. I confidently believe that I will become an expert in URP and will have a much more successful career in this field with the amalgamation of the western and oriental cultures deep within me through studying at your university.