Master Finance & Economics at Oxford and LSE

International Students
1

Hi all,

S1 is working on his personal statements for a these two schools. He will be also be applying to 3 US schools.

There are so many talented and qualified applicants applying to these schools, so I am hoping he will nail his personal statement to increase his chances.

750 on GMAT

In May he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BSEE. He was allowed to participate in a 5 year bachelors/masters program for electrical engineering so this coming May his will earn his MSEE. His honors thesis advisor (also the head of the electrical engineering dept) he was thrilled with his work as it resulted in the prof publishing and presenting a paper on the subject. Son is a co author and therefore “published.” Prof said his recommendation will state S1 was one of his best ever students.

He has a second professor writing him a good recommendation.

Last year he interned at the second largest energy company in the state and CEO has promised him a stellar recommendation.

This summer he interned for a defense contractor and was able to add design and project leadership to his resume. He was always interested in finance, but experiencing first hand how the lack of financial understanding weakens the engineering design group (and the gov’t offices requesting the designs) he decided to pursue one more masters.

He knows he needs to show how his electrical engineering skill sets have prepared him to handle the finance/econ coursework and show how these are relevant to the program and that they will add value to his fellow classmates. As he said to me this morning when I was praising him for 4 levels of calc and physics…gee Mom in EE those are basically the easy pre major classes. So we know he has the quantitative and problem solving skills needed for the courses.

He believes that combining an engineering background with finance will make him a strong asset in the corporate world, a better investment manager in analyzing tech companies or someone to get inside the Federal Reserve and make sense of it all.

In his undergrad he took 2 econ courses and this semester he has a graduate level finance course. This is sad to say, but he has always wanted the finance degree, he just wanted to get the engineering stuff out of the way to please his father.

Sorry to ramble, but anyone who reads this now has the whole story!

Any input or guidance would be appreciated.

2

Actually, not really: his qualifications will speak to his preparedness and they don’t really look for what students will add in the way that US schools do. The important thing about the Personal Statement is connecting his goals and objectives with his academic interest in the course. This may sound like a fine distinction with what you wrote, but it is actually a pretty important one.

Based on that, I am not sure that the Finance + Econ course is the best fit, and more importantly he will want to refine his objectives for his PS. If he hasn’t seen [url=http://www.lse.ac.uk/finance/prospectiveStudents/FinanceMScProgrammesSummary.pdf]this[/url] table, he might want to look at it, to be sure that he is choosing the one with the best fit for his goals.