Personal statement for Master degrees - Essay Example

Personal ment Figuring future After completing my undergraduate studies, I did not know where to start building my career. However, after securing an internship last summer to work as a trainee trader, I finally realized which path I was going to take to advance my career. Working and receiving training from experienced traders; my eyes got caught by graphics and trading actions. I spent most of my days in the office conducting trade on trial accounts as I learned how it is done. After some time, I realized that this was where my passion lies; thus I wanted to become a trader, and later advance to an analyst.

Decisions made and Ambition As my interests of becoming a trader have intensified, I have decided to choose Financial Maths as one of my option this year. This is attributed to the fact that I enjoy Mathematics. I have never been extremely eager to discover something as I am with Maths. I answer questions in class, I read books in my leisure time, I am keen on discussing it with my colleagues, I love solving difficult problems on it, I do research on relevant stuff, which are not covered in lectures, just to mention but a few.

These entire efforts enable me attain full marks in every assignment I am assigned. I became an asset to my colleagues who sought for assistance in Financial Maths. This always excited me as I ventured into my looks in pursuit of the unknown. I never thought anything could give me confidence as it does. I do not study when under the exam pressure anymore, instead, I desire to learn about Maths every day. Pricing, hedging, arbitrage, options, forwards.all this terms excite me since they give me the desire to do real trades.

However, in as much as I am good in Mathematics; I need to prepare myself since trading is a highly intense and risky industry. That explains my decision to pursue Finance related course for my Master degree. I am confident that additional knowledge in that field would enable me develop skills of statistics and computation. I believe that I will not only be a qualified trader, but also an individual who develop his own analysis of the trading methods. To enter the finance industry, there are lots of different routes.

Diversity backgrounds are being considered, but why do I choose Mathematical trading and Finance ? Mathematical skills are needed to build up finance. Since Markowitz claimed payoff by random variable in 1952, the top financial articles are difficult to tell from Mathematics dissertation. After that, in 1973, as a result of the invention of Black-Scholes formula, mathematical methods are used to value options, as well as replicate portfolio and duplicate derivatives. Mathematical skills are extremely crucial to both the understanding and invention in finance industry.

Besides, highly quantitative skills are needed in being an analyst, which is my career plan. Therefore, Mathematical Finance and Stochastic Calculus, Quantitative Asset Pricing, Numerical Methods in VBA module in this course will be extremely useful to my career. This implies that by seeking a chance to study Financial Maths, my actions are not pegged following what other people are doing, but following my heart’s desire. I have got several both A*s in Maths, an A in physics in A-levels along with the undergraduate study in Maths with an exceptionally high quality pass at UCL.

I believe that I have built quantitative skills that are compatible to the course’s requirement. Moreover, I have already studied Binomial model, Brownian motion, Stochastic calculus, Black-Scholes equation, Ito’s lemma and Feyman-kac in the current financial Maths module which will help me with the further study. Academic achievements I did not do well during my first two years as a student, and I attained an overall score of 58. However, achieving a second-class upper division for my first degree was not a problem.

This is attributed to the fact that I gave lots of concentration in the third and second year. In order to prepare myself for the further study, I have fully developed the basic skills in analysis, algebra and mathematical methods such as the curriculum setting in the undergraduate study. I am also equipped me the quantitive and analytical skills to cope with the further study. I would love to pursue these modules; Logic, International Business, Computation Methods, just to mention but a few.

My major would be Mathematics since it will help me in my thinking when studying for other subjects. This is because mathematics is not only a subject with quantitive skills, but also a qualitative subject teaching people how to think in logical ways. This helps people to remember knowledge, as well as solve problems independently. Having studied management briefly, I am trained to co-operate with others in group work, as well as perform as a leader who can direct and allocate jobs for members with different abilities.

Therefore, I believe my interests are compatible with this master course. Work experience As I have already mentioned, I went on an international financial trainee programme in the past summer. During the first 2 weeks, I got a trainee position by an academic department in AXA Group Hong Kong, the following 2 weeks being an intern in AXA insurance Ltd., Hong Kong and 4 weeks being an intern in Emperor Financial Service Group Hong Kong, which is one of the biggest financial service company in Hong Kong with their own trading platform being listed in Hong Kong stock exchange market.

In the first 2 weeks, we learnt an intense course on finance, including mortgage, fund, stock market, currency, interest rate, trend lines and chart analysis and stochastic. During the 2 weeks at AXA insurance Ltd, I was working in a group to analyze the existing investment insurance products of AXA which include, researching performance of funds in product portfolio concentrated on those from Picket funds, Barings equity management and Fidelity investment; analyzing profit or loss of both of the company and customer.

Moreover, I had some training on marketing skills and also did a presentation of products to customers. The following 4 weeks at Emperor, I had an extremely valuable experience as I was allocated a current employee who needed to be trained on the trading skills specialized in gold futures. With the chart analysis, mainly using Trend lines and channels, Wave theory and Fibonacci series combined with different trading strategy. I was awarded a third place of a mock account competition on the trading platform with a roughly 20% profitability, and earning/loss ratio of a single transaction was 4:1.

Which was a healthy profit earning way, proves that I was not only able to make a profit, but also had a reasonable risk management ability. Little extras I was selected by CSSA (Chinese Student and Scholar Association) of UCL as a committee in my first year. However, I could not bear due to their working by favoritism, clique and misuse of authority, among others. I established a private organization with friends and organized activities which favored by many Chinese students. The most successful one was a party visited by more than 600 people and made nearly 10,000 pounds profit.

Therefore, I worked as a cooperator with CSSA thereafter, produced other profitable parties, charity concerts and Chinese New Year Gala. I am confident that I am ready to move on to the next stage of my academic career. May you consider my application by judgement of achievements and abilities in all aspects. I will prove myself in case Cass Business School offers me a chance to study MSc Mathematical Trading & Finance. I earnestly look forward to hearing from you. Yours Sincerely, Xueer Wang