Statement of Purpose

I was a student of ChangZhou University majoring in Business English, when I was doing my undergraduate degree in China. This major includes several main courses such as Business English Correspondence, secretarial practice, customs practices, as well as international trade base. My undergraduate school provided me abundant international trade English courses, which provided a solid background knowledge in Business English field.

During my college time, I joined a music club. I stayed in that club for my whole undergraduate years. Besides ERHU, a traditional Chinese instrument that I have already mastered, I learned to play the guitar and the drum. On behalf of our University, our club won the second prize of ChangZhou’s Music Festival. From the process, I realized the importance of teamwork. Sometimes, it’s hard for us to achieve success by our own. We had better respect each other and learn from other’s strong points to offset our weakness.

Although these extracurricular activities took much of my time, my studies did not fall behind. I still spent most of the time working on my major courses and got good grades. What is more, I did several internships during summer and winter breaks, such as school consultant, voluntary workers in children welfare association, and internship in transnational corporations. During my internships, I tried to apply what I have learned in school to the work, however, I found that I lacked many practical business knowledge, such as Accounting, Statistics, Advanced IT theory, Human Resource Management, etc. I felt that I still need further study to learn very systematically all the necessary courses in management field. And I do believe the MS in management program will allow me achieve my goal of being an excellent manager. According to my situation, my agency recommended me to apply George Mason University. On the one hand, it is a new and potential university in U.S. One the other hand, the school is close to Washington D.C. the capital of United States where provides us with lots of working opportunities.

As I mentioned above, during my internship, I realized the limitation of my current major. For example, our company is committed to real estate development projects. During this period I was exposed to a lot of professional knowledge, such as cost control and budget, performance appraisal system, marketing, accounting, and even some knowledge of engineering. I started to feel that to be a good manager, you have to acquire all kinds of knowledge in different field. You may not be required to learn as deep as professors in that area, but it’s vital for you to know about them. In order to make myself become the full scale development manager, after I graduated from Changzhou University, I decided to go aboard for further study in a graduate management program. Also, it’s a good opportunity for me to broaden my horizons.

As we all know, Pathway Program helps some trans-disciplinary students or students whose language grade doesn’t meet the requirement of schools. I believe the subject setting in pathway program is reasonable. For instance, EAP helps us to improve our ability of writing and doing research, and it makes our article more academic. PROV helps us to deal with some adjustment issues and learn how to make full use of the school resources. This course tries to make us realize social supports, which are around our life, so that we can do a better job both in study and our daily life. Moreover, our Pathway in management program has two major courses, Statistics for business and economics and Financial accounting. The INTO MASON considers that it’s difficult for trans-disciplinary students to put all BMGT courses together in their formal management program, so they let us learn some of these BMGT courses in advance in Pathway program. On the one hand, I could better understand my future discipline. On the other hand, Pathway program eases me of the burden of discipline study, so that I could absorb the knowledge better and have more spare time. During the last semester, I made effort in every course, and I achieved one A (Statistics) and two A- (EAP and PROV). In this semester, I do believe that I will get better grades in all courses.

Compared with modern Chinese education, America education pays much more attention on students’ critical thinking. We are trained to understand a subject from different perspectives and no standard answer is required. Students can answer the questions as they wish. In addition, in the class, professors try to solve the problems that students put forward, not professor. I am willing to participate in all the discussion in class, and I like this studying atmosphere.

I have a relatively clear career plan after I finish my master program. I am planning to find a job related to my major in America and work for approximately one year. Thus, I will acquire both precious American working experience and advanced management knowledge. After that, I will go back to China, gathering about 8 people and starting my own business related to consulting focusing on helping other small companies with early development (like incubate plan). I will be fully committed to tackling this career until it clicks into place. And then, I will help to get my father’s company to be listed on a Chinese stock.

I love the discipline of management, and I have confidence that I am a gifted manager. What I should do now is to implement my plans with courage and persistence. With those factors and motivation, I will be fit for MS in Management program and do a great job. Thank you for your consideration.