Writers, Essays, Topics and a Modest Proposal

What kind of writing best describes the writer? Some might argue a memoir, some an autobiographical poem, but for those who are seeking a place at selective universities it is the personal statement.

"Personal Statement" is a vague term and it can be misleading. For those who apply to schools in the US, the personal statement most often means the essay one writes for the Common Application. Some schools have their own questions, but the growth of schools that use the Common App has been dramatic and with just a few exceptions the most selective schools use it.

Personal statements are also required in the UK, at least to the most selective universities. The kinds of questions they ask are far different and so are the approaches students take.

In addition, graduate programs also require personal statements or statements of purpose which again often differ from what undergraduate applicants need to write for either the US or the UK.

What follows is the personal statement written by a student for a Masters program at the prestigious London School of Economics. The prompt asks  the students to address his or her interests and experiences that make them well-qualified for the program.

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While working as a research assistant in a molecular neurobiology laboratory, I realized that the adolescent brain is more “plastic” than it will ever be again, capable of remarkable adaptability to many social and intellectual challenges that this developmental phase brings¹. This is also the peak time for clinical onset of most mental illnesses as one in five adolescents have a mental illness that persist into adulthood¹. Strikingly, mental illnesses that emerge before adulthood are known to impose a 10-fold higher cost than those that emerge later in life and are the highest single source of global economic burden in the world^2,3.

Understanding the economic implications while identifying the causal biological factors proved to me that medical intervention, alone, cannot ensure efficient management of childhood mortality due to mental illness. This led me to search and identify other external factors that either cause or/and affect the childhood onset and progression of mental disorders. Above the biological and psychological factors, society, policy, population, and poverty are identified interacting factors that acts directly to influence the disease onset, progression, and death. Being born in India where 25% of population still lives under poverty⁴, I soon gathered the importance of economic burden and society over the biological determinants of childhood mortality. This has led me to apply for two closely related MSc programmes at LSE- MSc in Health, Population, and Society, and MSc in International Health Policy.

My primary objective to undertake this MSc programme is to develop a thorough understanding of the influence of socioeconomic status in developing economies on childhood mental illnesses. Secondly, to study the role of policy making in such economies that addresses poverty, ethnicity, disability, and geographical location of a population. Underlying these objectives, is the question of how childhood mortality due to mental illness regulates the population structure and growth of a country. This is important to know as mental illness and poverty are linked in a vicious circle. Since mental disorders generate long-term treatment and loss of productivity, it can be argued that such disorders contribute to poverty. On the other hand, low education levels, financial insecurities, and malnutrition have all been recognized as contributing to mental illness. This course will further allow me to understand the efficacy of existing alternative approaches in public health care and to analyse if there is a need for a shift in the delivery services from a hospital-centric to a community-centric model of care. Living in India has made me realise the many socioeconomic problems that challenges the Indian health sector. Through the MSc programme at LSE, I plan to utilise my training to addresses some of the challenges. As the socioeconomic status is inversely proportional to the childhood mortality, the challenge will be to develop an effective health policy for the developing economies that considers this phenomenon. I believe that this MSc programme will also provide insights towards ethnic diversity, GDP, health expenditure, public versus private models of finance, income inequality and structural differences in health policy that regulates population health. This would enable me to address the issue of how the most at risk and in need of health care services are the least likely ones to access those services.

Combining my interest in evaluating the extent to which population and society affect the mental health, my research experience in understanding the biological mediators of mental disorders in childhood and adolescence provides an ideal base for me to pursue an MSc programme in Health, Population, and Society. Further, my Masters in Biotechnology have taught me important concepts of biostatistics and mathematics that will benefit me in undertaking relevant courses during MSc like the Quantitative Analysis I and II, Social Epidemiology, and Statistical Methods in Health Care Economic Evaluation.

In addition to my educational background, my previous experience involved conducting experiments, performing statistical analysis, drafting manuscripts, and communicating it to peer-reviewed journals. This process of collecting data, interpreting the findings and designing follow-up experiments has enriched my skill of analysing datasets and drawing implications from the study. Moreover, the lab environment has fostered in me the ability to implement ideas, to work independently as well as in a team, and to accept and build up on criticisms. Our weekly lab meetings provided an ideal atmosphere to develop my presentation skills while conveying my findings to lab members, courage to ask questions and express opinions. More importantly, living in a populous and highly diverse country like India has made me approach problems from different perspectives and thus reach a more objective overview. Therefore, I am certain that pursuing my studies in an internationally recognized university in UK will be an excellent investment for my future professional career in the health sector.

In summary, I anticipate that my future studies will flow logically from my current interests and fit my career trajectory as a research scientist interested in health expenditure and health reforms in developing economies and its influence on population structure and growth. Understanding the economic factors that affect health of a population through the prism of biological sciences provides me with a unique background to join MSc programme at LSE. I believe that I have the potential to pursue this course and make significant contributions to help recognize that child survival and health outcomes across society are as much linked to socioeconomic policies that reduce inequality as they are to a country’s gross domestic product and systems of health care delivery.

References:

1.     Paus T, Keshavan M, Giedd JN. (2008) Why do many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence? Nat Rev Neurosci. 9:947-957.

2.     Economic Aspects of Mental Health in Children and Adolescents (2007) World Health Organization (WHO, Geneva).

3.     Bloom, D.E., Cafiero, E.T., Jané-Llopis, E., Abrahams-Gessel, S., Bloom, L.R., Fathima, S., Feigl, A.B., Gaziano, T., Mowafi, M., Pandya, A., Prettner, K., Rosenberg, L., Seligman, B., Stein, A.Z., & Weinstein, C. (2011). The Global Economic Burden of Noncommunicable Diseases. Geneva: World Economic Forum.

4.     Poverty Estimates in India. (2013) National sample survey organization, Ministry of statistics and programme implementation.

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What do we know about the writer from reading these words? We know he has done high level research, we know he has a passion for the field, and we know that his background as a student from India makes him particularly qualified for the programs he is applying for. His passion for helping others comes through; his work in the field demonstrates talent and future promise. It should come as no surprise that he was accepted to LSE (as well as to Oxford, King’s College, and the U. of Edinburg).

I would like to thank Himanshu Sharma for letting me post his essay here. It is clear he has a very bright future ahead of him.

His essay demonstrates his personal and academic interests. I bring this up as his words have also moved me to think about whether the questions colleges and universities in the US ask undergraduates to answer are useful to predicting academic success.

Currently, the prompts on the Common Application focus on the personal far more than the academic. Many would argue that the essay are intended to help admission officers discover if the student is a good overall fit for the school. I agree and have written many times about the importance of fit. It is far more important than the name of the school a student goes to.

On the other hand ,there are many in education who question if students applying to highly selective schools are judged too much on standardized tests, the number of APs/IBs they take, and the grades they earn. More and more schools are going test optional and more are questioning just how any APs a student need to take to demonstrate preparedness for a competitive academic environment. Given all the questions about selecting students via numbers, I wonder if the essay questions might be a way to determine not just fit but also academic success. I have yet to see a study that has examined admission essays furor students applying to undergraduate schools and whether they predict academic success.

I am not suggesting that students have to apply the same way as student applying to graduate programs. I am suggesting however, that some research take place that might examine if essays, as they currently exist in the US or in other parts of the world do predict success. If not, then should the topics be examined to see whether another set of prompts might help admission officers select students who have academic passions and perhaps some background in a field or major they have an interest in. Some selective schools ask supplemental essay questions that address this and perhaps these essays should form the basis of a study that might determine if these kinds of topics should replace the current set of prompts on the Common Application.

Asking more academically pointed questions tat all students who apply to Common Application schools might permit schools to use them in addition to the numbers that are all too often used as cut offs (although no school will readily admit this). It would perhaps permit greater latitude in selecting student through a holistic but academically focused process. What I am suggesting might be wrong headed, but in my professional experience in admission I always found that while reading applications to determine who were potential scholars  those who had something significant to say that addressed or was related to academics often did very well in and out of class over the following 4 years. I would be grateful to anyone to comment about this suggestion. Maybe I am alone in thinking this might help the holistic process of selecting ‘the best’ students from among many students who have all the numbers that predict success.