“Success is not final, failure is fatal: it is the courage to continue that count” – Winston Churchill
Ever asked the wind what struggle feels like? Coming from a lower-middle-class family, storms of scarcity never ceased to shadow my childhood. To earn a living, my father went on foreign employment whereas my mother used to work in the field. Later she started an agri-business where I used to keep financial records, manage expenses and savings, and so on. With that, I got good at mathematics and statistics and used to score full marks. During my sophomore year, my teacher made us familiar with the CA courses, and on researching, I found out about the influence of finance in business. Imagining the world of commerce, reading about professionals, and envisioning their journeys became an enjoyable pastime for me.
The struggle continued, and it was August 2017, when my life plunged into darkness. That fateful day, a flood swept through our region, leaving families displaced and communities shattered. We lost our only house and found ourselves without a stable shelter. Despite running a business, the lack of finances made our lives more difficult than ever. To overcome such adversity, I used to work in a retail shop nearby on daily wages, to somehow support my family. Slowly, I started realizing the importance of managing finances and making planned decisions in business, which I followed in the later year. Now, as the saying goes by Winston Churchill, after all those struggles, here I am, attempting for a Master of Science in Financial Engineering (MFE) at [University].
I’ve completed my bachelor’s in economics from XXXX. My time in college was relatively fruitful and productive as I learned both theoretical and practical aspects of economics. The course prepared me to understand individual and group decision-timbers, the structure of requests and husbandry, and the relationship between regions within the global frugality. This handed me a solid grounding in profitable propositions and history. Through lectures and group work, I bettered my communication and donation chops. It made me apprehensive about applying economics to policy issues and real-world problems which developed a habit of critical and creative thinking and also logical and problem-working capacities. Likewise, I also learned about different tools used in economics like Stata, R, or Python for data analysis, and Excel for modeling which taught me ultramodern economics exploration issues.
My final year project was XXXX where I along with my team XXXX. Subsequently, I did an externship at the XXXX where I got to work alongside XXXX. I did my internship in the same institution where I was assigned financial analysis, risk oversight, client relationship management, and regulatory adherence, with a focus on the influence of market, operational, and credit risks on business financial well-being.
While these experiences deepened my understanding of finance, I always felt the need for a different viewpoint on finance. So, in search of the missing puzzle piece, I found that obtaining an MS degree in an environment with diverse minds would give me a fixed perspective. This encouraged me to decide to study MSFE in the USA since it has universities with well-managed and focused curricula. Their priority on research provides a great deal in the latest research projects and experiments that support critical thinking and intellectual development of finance. Particularly, [UNIVERSITY] being STEM-designated prepares students to compete in the corporate world gaining experience through a rigorous curriculum, internships, and real-world projects. The most capable faculty with their objective [motto], gives access to student-managed portfolios where students pick stocks and bonds, manage money, and also compete against students at other schools, in stock trading, investment reports, and analyst presentations.
The program has many practical modules like Financial Economics that teach the application of economic principles to determine the value of basic financial instruments like stocks and bonds, as well as complicated derivative securities. Similarly, the Economics of Investments and Financial Management help in developing a deeper understanding of financial markets in the context of portfolio theory. Also, in addition to understanding how financial markets operate and relate to the broader economy, students will develop skills to analyze investment decisions and manage investment portfolios. Moreover, the Economic Growth module helps us examine contemporary theories of economic growth and apply them to help in present-day developing and industrialized countries, and to the advancement of developed countries.
Post graduating, I have plans and aspirations to cover. My ultimate goal is to become a Financial Analyst and work in one of the companies like XXXXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXXX, etc. Here, I will be responsible for analyzing financial data, conducting research, and providing needed findings to help in decision-making. I will manage financial statements to evaluate the performance and stability of companies, along with helping them develop and maintain statistical financial models to predict future results and estimate investment opportunities. After a few years of experience in this designation, I wish to work for the government of my country as a Government Economist where my role will be to analyze economic data, trends, and policies to provide valuable findings and suggestions to government agencies. I will also research various economic indicators, like inflation rates, employment figures, and GDP growth, to estimate the whole quality of the economy and identify points for improvement.
With gratitude, I am applying for the opportunity to acquire education, experiences, and growth with the qualified faculty of your university. Making reliable structures for minimizing the effect of degrading factors on the economy in my native Nepal is my dream and I am hoping for your generous support to make it a reality. Thank you.
