Personal Statement

Prompt #1:

1. Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

During my freshmen year, I was accepted into a program called Wall Street Wizards. This was a program that taught financial literacy to minorities. I was excited for the first class, but when I walked into the room, I saw that I wouldn’t fit in. Everyone in the room was African American and came from low income families and single-parent families. They were complete opposites of me.
Over time, I was adopted into the “tribe” by my two teachers, Bill and Alex. I learned that both of them were completely dedicated to teaching and enriching the students in their program. Unlike many others, they don’t simply talk like they will help us; they actually put their energy and effort to give us huge opportunities that we would never have if we had no connections. They put countless hours in our monthly classes and pulled in many favors to get us into shareholder meetings and meeting CEOs of companies such as Pandora and Jamba Juice. They taught us skills that we would need not only in the business world, but in our futures no matter what career we plan to go into.
An opportunity that I hold especially close to my heart is when I was chosen to be a judge at a competition called the Ashoka Contest. During this competition, I judged with many experienced people in various different fields of work. The judges were separated into three different groups to evaluate four groups each. The judges in my group were one of the contestants last year, a woman who started her own company, and a teacher at San Francisco University. During deliberations and breaks, I grew especially close to the woman who started her own company. This woman helped me realize a skill that I possessed, one that will drive me to strive for my ambitions later on. As we talked, she commented the level of the questions I had been asking the different youth groups.
Throughout the various presenting groups, I continued to ask questions because after a while of asking and analyzing the finalized business plans and budgets, I realized my own interest in business. After I asked a question, the woman took the microphone from me and proudly announced to the crowd “When this girl talks and I close my eyes, she sounds just like a girl who came out of business graduate school.” You can imagine how surprised I was.
Throughout the day, I had people asking me what grade I was in. My reply was “I’m a sophomore.” Preceding this answer, a particular man asked “Oh really? What college do you go to? Berkeley?” I was stunned. Later, Bill and Alex both informed me that people were asking what grade I was in and how old I was. I was absolutely stunned.
These past years, I embraced my skill and my love for business by taking time to study up on stocks, follow, analyze and stay up to date with the business world. Most frequently, when I’m in the car heading to school in the morning, I would turn up the station where the talk show host informed the listeners about today's stocks and where they stand. Never before has getting a compliment on something that I had no idea I had a passion for, awaken the love for business I had. This is why I want to be a financial analyst. I want to be one because I love looking at numbers and businesses. They absolutely fascinate me. But above all, I want to be someone in the financial world because then, I can go back to my community and help youth realize the importance and the joy that they can have in the business world.

This is my goal, my dream, and my aspiration. I want to be able to make a difference in this world through enriching the youth. The difference I want to make in the youth, is firstly, the perception of business and stocks, and most importantly, helping those who many have a passion for it, realize that they have it.

Prompt 2: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

My decisions and my life are deeply shaped by my personality. For the most part, I am unafraid to take reasonable risks, I’m very open minded and I’m told that I care too much about others and how they feel. But the trait that I feel shapes who I am the most is my perseverance and my undying drive to win which originated from my father’s teacher that ultimately became my motto in life.
Winning isn’t everything and I realized that long ago. Still, when I fail to reach a goal I aim for, I am disheartened at first, but I always pic myself up, learn from my mistakes ans start over again. With this, my confidence was built and I was able to maintain the thoughts tha told me that I can do it. As a child, my dad always told me “It’s not over until it’s over.” Basically, fight to the end because you don't know what may happen if you never try your hardest.
This became my motto in life. It also held true and strong in a city-wide speech contest I participated in in my sophomore year. I was confident with my speech all along, but just four days before the citywide contest, my teacher, who was a judge at the school wide contest, gave me all the scoring and comment sheets from that round. Turns out, the speech I was so proud of wasn’t as good as I thought. I spent the next two days editing and editing my speech to death, trying to say what I wanted while keeping within the three to five minutes requirement. When I was done, there were only two more days until the contest. Now, all I had to was was practice and that’s what I did. Because of practicing so much, I nearly lost my voice, but it seemed to pay off because when I walked up to the podium the day of the speech, I was confident. All the practicing paid off and I won first place at the contest.
I won because of my strive to never give up and the motivation drove me to keep trying till the end. I will forever remember and cherish what my dad’s lesson to me was because this led me to success on more levels than just winning something.