Top Chinese Studies MA Personal Statement Advice

Chinese Studies MA Personal Statement Advice, Professionally Edited Samples

As a cosmopolitan young woman from Italy, at just twenty-three, I am making decisions that will shape my future. I have chosen to apply to your esteemed Chinese Studies program at the University of XXXX because my passion lies in Chinese language, culture, and society. During my gap year in 2010, I spent six months in London working as a server and improving my conversational English. However, I returned home after six months as I found London overwhelming, vast, and chaotic. In contrast, when I visited Scotland for your Open Day last month, I fell in love with XXXX because it reminded me of home with its green fields and tranquility.

Your program is my top choice for graduate study for several reasons, particularly because my second passion and current academic focus is linguistics, an area where your university excels. I am eager to take one or two elective courses in linguistics as part of the Chinese Studies Program. My strongest skill is my proficiency in languages. My Spanish and French are as strong as my English, and my background has enabled me to make significant progress in Chinese, allowing me to communicate fluently. I have also mastered the basics of Turkish.

I am currently writing my dissertation thesis and will complete my undergraduate studies in European Languages and Culture in April 2015. This program also included non-European languages. I am ranked in the top 10% of my class, graduating with 202 credits instead of the required 180. A significant aspect of my undergraduate education was the opportunity to study in Turkey through an exchange program. While there, I not only learned Turkish but also discovered a fascinating linguistic phenomenon that inspired my thesis: many Turkish words are derived from French. I read C.B. Bozdemir's research (1999), which suggests there are up to five thousand French-derived words in Turkish. My thesis explores the relationship between France and the Ottoman Empire from 1500 to the early 1900s to explain how these terms entered the Turkish vocabulary. This project combines my love for linguistics with my interest in history.

My long-term goal is to teach Chinese language, history, and culture. Therefore, I view the Chinese Studies Program at Edinburgh University as the ideal platform to launch my career. Given the strength and distinctiveness of your program and Edinburgh University as a whole, I am confident that excelling in your program will open the necessary doors for my future, especially regarding China.

I am adaptable, humble, generous, and empathetic; I cherish my volunteer work in a hospital, feeding patients who cannot feed themselves. However, it is at the university where I feel most at home, surrounded by knowledge and interesting people who share new insights daily. Moreover, I aspire to be more than an ordinary language professor; I aim to be a life coach as well.

In addition to studying in Turkey, I won a scholarship competition at my university, allowing me to spend another semester in China (Shaoxing). I hope to return to China during my second year at Edinburgh and study at Fudan University in Shanghai. At the Open Day in XXXX, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. XXXX, the program director, and Ms. XXXX, a Chinese professor, who encouraged me to apply. I left convinced that your intensive language focus is exactly what I seek, as my primary goal is to achieve fluency in Chinese.

Ms. XXXX informed me that typically 25 students enroll each year, with twenty being beginners, leaving the intermediate group quite small. Having already extensively studied Chinese, I hope to contribute to your program by assisting the beginner students. I have a deep affection for China and miss it greatly. Being accepted into your program will enable my return.

Thank you for considering my application.

Top Chinese Studies MA Personal Statement Advice