I write this personal statement in PyeongChang, Korea, where I am working as a volunteer for the 23th Winter Olympic Game. The purpose of this statement is to describe my wonderful personal experiences, motivation for postgraduate study and the career aspiration to support my application for MSc in Risk Management and Financial Engineering (RMFE) in Imperial College London.
As an enthusiast in travelling & backpacking, I have ever been to sixteen countries in four continents since I was a child. In June 2016, I attended thesummer school in UCLA to learn Psychology and R Programming. During the twomonths, I visited Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Yellowstone National Park in the spare time with several new friends that I made in class. After thesummer session in the US, I flew to Brazil alone, devoting myself into voluntaryservices for the 31th Summer Olympic Game held in Rio De Janeiro. I was grouped into a four-member team, exclusively offering operational support for ChineseTaipei Delegation which consisted of nearly one hundred athletes and officersin total. I was the only team member who can speak Mandarin and the other threewere from Qatar, United Kingdom and Greece. Thus I behaved as a team leader to coordinate various issues among the organizing committee, the delegation and myteam. In these four short weeks, I had run into lots of random problems that I did not even know were possible to be problems. What really makes it such anexperience is that there was a real mix of people involved. I made many newfriends aged from their twenties to fifties from all over the world. It was this unique experience that earned me the opportunity for being a winter Olympic Game volunteer in Korea in this month. I have grasped short dialogueand conversations of daily use in Portuguese and Korean. What I saw and heardand who I met oversea have made me become a global citizen with cross-cultural leadership, communication skills and international vision. It will be my core competitive edge to work in a multinational financial institution in London.
I am a self-driven and creative student who embraces change & innovation and proactively explores newly emerging and promising industries. I have been thinking about which field I should specialize in when I enter the workplace with degrees in Math and Finance. For this reason, I took three internships indifferent sectors of the financial industry, including digital marketing &analytics for retail banking, private equity investment in healthcare andmarket making & proprietary trading for financial derivatives, to look formy career interests. For the details of my responsibilities in each position, please refer to the CV attached. During the internships, I realized that I am passionate about turning financial data into actionable insights and enjoy the sense of achievement for problem solving and value creation. In consideration of work-life balance and getting advice from graduates of Imperial College, I have set one possible post-MSc career goal to be a Market Data Analyst in Bloomberg LP London. The role is responsible for collecting, analysing, processing and publishing financial data in one particular financial market sector (Equity, Fixed Income, FX, IPO and M&A). It requires a strong knowledge and understanding of the financial markets and various asset classes as well as programming-related skills in VBA, Python and SQL.
Not limited to derivatives pricing, algorithm trading and risk measurement,quantitative methods and tools are being widely employed in the financial industry for data-driven decision making, such as portfolio construction, credit scoring, accounting data analytics, fraud detection, AML and the emerging robo-advisor services. My motivation to purse MSc in RMFE is very simple – not for the purpose of being a quant or mathematician for pricing and trading, but to further hone quantitative skills that are frequently used in the industry and to gain deep understanding of the market, instruments as well as different sub-sectors & asset classes. In addition to core modules, I wouldlike to select “Big Data in Finance”, “C++ for Finance”, “Amplify TradingWorkshop” in Spring Term, and “Computational Finance with C++”, “Topics inFinTech”, “Macroeconomics and Finance for Practitioners” in Summer Term as electives. I also want to audit “International Finance” to learn the asset class of FX. I will work closely with Career & Professional Development Service to apply for full-time graduate positions or summer placement in London. The realization of this dedicated study plan, however, depends on whether the admission committee offer me a place on this programme.
I am confident that my academic background in mathematics and finance enables meto succeed in this highly quantitative programme. I have achieved an overall average grade of 71% in the last two academic years and 72% in all quantitative modules, which meets the first-class degree requirement in British higher educationsystem. I have learned or will learn courses in statistical methods, probability theory, operational research, numerical analysis, differential equations and network theory. They prepare me adequately for studying Financial Statistics, Stochastic Calculus, Computational Finance and Risk Management at Imperial. As a Chinese student who are now studying in the UK, what I can contribute to Imperial Community is to assist fellow students from mainland China to quickly adapt to British higher education.
My international experiences and the innovative mindset can benefit Imperial College Business School and are a perfect match with school’s mission &vision as well as the spirt and characteristics of the metropolitan city – London. I look forward to meeting high-calibre peers in the coming September at Imperial. This one-year journey will be the next opportunity for me to experience the world.
當我寫下這篇個人陳述的時候,我正在韓國平昌擔任第23屆冬季奧運會志愿者。這篇個人陳述旨在描述我豐富多彩的個人經歷、攻讀碩士課程的動機,以及我的職業抱負,來支持我申請帝國理工學院的風險管理與金融工程碩士課程。
作為一個旅游愛好者,從小時候起我已經游歷了四大洲共計十六個國家。2016年6月,我參加了加州大學洛杉磯分校的暑期課程,修讀了心理學和R語言。在這近兩個月的課余時間里,我和幾個在課上新認識的幾個朋友一起游玩了洛杉磯、舊金山、紐約和黃石國家公園。在美國的課程結束之后,我只身從北美洲飛往了南美洲,來到巴西里約熱內盧參與了第31屆夏季奧林匹克運動會志愿服務。我被分在了一個四人小組,為包含近一百名運動員和官員的中華臺北代表團提供專屬運營支持服務。我是團隊成員中唯一一個會講國語的,其他三人則來自于卡塔爾、英國和希臘。因此,我主動擔當了團隊領袖的角色,在奧組委、臺北代表團和志愿服務組之間協調工作。在這短短的四周,我遇到了許多難以預見的困難。各種各樣的人參與其中,使得這次志愿者活動成為一次精彩難忘的經歷。我認識了許多來自世界各地的朋友,有的和我年齡相仿,有的則是忘年之交。正是這次獨特的經歷使我贏得了這個月擔任冬奧會志愿者的機會。通過兩次奧運志愿活動,我已經簡單掌握了葡萄牙語和韓語的基本對話。我在海外的所見所聞所認識的人把我塑造成了一個具有跨文化領導力、溝通能力和國際化視野的全球公民。而這一點恰恰是我未來打算在倫敦的跨國金融機構工作的核心競爭力。
我是一個自我驅動且有創造力的學生。我積極擁抱變革與創新,并樂于積極主動地探索新興的有前景的行業領域。我一直在思考,當我拿著金融數學的學位進入職場的時候,我應當專注于哪個細分領域和具體業務?為此,我嘗試參與了金融行業三個不同業務板塊的實習,去探索我的職業興趣,包括商業銀行的零售銀行營銷分析、醫療健康產業的私募股權投資、金融衍生品的做市與自營交易。對于我在每一段實習中具體的工作內容和職責,請您參考申請中附上的我的個人簡歷,此處不再贅述。通過這些實習,我意識到,我對將金融數據轉變為有價值的洞察很有熱情。我享受這一過程中解決問題和創造價值的成就感。考慮到工作生活的平衡,同時也從帝國理工畢業生校友那里討教了一些經驗和建議,我初步樹立一個碩士畢業后的職業目標,就是在倫敦的彭博擔任市場數據分析師。這個職位主要負責搜集、處理、分析和發布一個特定金融市場板塊的數據,比如權益、固收、外匯、IPO或者并購。這一職位要求候選人對金融市場和各個資產類別有深入的理解和扎實的專業知識,并且具備一定的編程和數據處理技能,比如Python、VBA和SQL。
不僅限于衍生金融工具定價、算法交易和風險管理,量化的方法與工具正在被日益廣泛地應用在金融行業做數據驅動的決策制定,比如投資組合構建、信用評分、欺詐檢驗、反洗錢和智能投顧。我攻讀風險管理與金融工程碩士學位課程的動機并不是成為一個quant或是一個專注衍生品定價交易的數學家,而是打算夯實一些業界常用的必備的量化技能,并且更深入地理解市場、金融工具以及各類業務和資產類別。除了必修課外,我打算在春學期修讀“大數據金融”、“金融C++”、“Amplify交易”,在秋學期修讀“C++計算金融”、“金融科技選講”、“實踐中的宏觀經濟與金融”。我還想旁聽“國際金融”這門課,來幫助我了解外匯市場。我將會充分利用學校提供的優質的職業發展服務,積極申請倫敦各大機構的全職和暑期實習工作機會。這一詳細的學習計劃最終能否實現,取決于招生委員會是否給我這個機會來倫敦求學。
我很自信我在數學和金融方面的學術背景能夠使我在這個很量化的課程項目中取得成功。在過去兩個學年里我取得了總平均71%的成績,并且在所有量化課程中獲得72%的均分,這滿足了英國高等教育體系中一等榮譽學位的要求。我已經學了或是將要學習統計方法、概率理論、運籌學、數值分析、微分方程和圖論。這些課程使我準備充分來學習帝國理工這個專業中的金融統計、隨機微積分、計算金融和風險管理等課程。作為一個正在英國讀本科的中國學生,我能為帝國理工學習社區做出的貢獻是積極幫助來自中國大陸高校的中國學生盡快適應英國高等教育的風格。
我的國際化經歷和創新思維模式能夠使帝國理工商學院受益,并且也和倫敦這座國際化大都市的精神和特征以及帝國理工商學院的愿景和使命相契合。我期待在今年九月在帝國理工結識一群高素質的同學。這一年將會是我體驗這個精彩的世界的又一次機會。
