PennState essay - CAREER GOALS

CAREER GOALS: Include brief statement of your plans for the field of study you wish to pursue. This should include your reasons for studying your chosen field, your intended area of specialization within this field, and a brief description of the career you plan to follow after completion of this course of study at Penn State.

As a transfer applicant, I intend to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography.

During my childhood I was full of curiosity about the maps on the wall and always enjoyed standing at the top of the buildings and observing my living environment from the bird's eyes view. It had always been my favorite holiday adventure to make trips to mountains and rivers and appreciate the scale and beauty of nature's creativeness in its landscape and scenery.

In high school, I was introduced to the basics of physical geography, human geography and economic geography. Through those courses, I grasped a basic understanding of geography. However, the basic introduction to geography gave rise to more questions that I was keen to figure out, such as how the cyclones formed, why counter-urbanization occurred and what the mechanism of geographic information system was. Therefore, I decided to major in geography at university, with an emphasis on the Geographic Information Science. GIS is an immensely challenging and exciting field for me to explore since I also had a firm foundation in computer science. Such a major offers me an excellent opportunity to combine my interest and strength together. Once I stepped on the road of studying geography, I found myself addicted to it. Therefore, exploring in the kingdom of geography has become a life interest for me.

In my first year at college, I took the GIS Applied Software course, where I established a simple geographical system of our campus by ArcView3.2. This course provided me a preliminary understanding of GIS software. I realized the main applications of GIS and learned to establish an applied system by the aid of the software. To my personal understanding, GIS assisted us to perceive the environment from spatial perspective. When the teacher showed us the distribution of the stores in Atlanta, the features of business circle emerged clearly to my mind. I was inspired to think about questions such as why the stores concentrated in the south of the city and why there was a dividing strip in downtown area. All these thinking could hardly be raised if I just read the statistical data. Therefore, I would rather ascribe these new thoughts to the introduction to GIS as it brought me a brand new way of thinking. Furthermore, I took five geography courses and I was one of the top 10 scorers in my class in four of them, which further convinced me that geography is the right choice for me.

As we know, the US stands at the forefront of geography science in the world while the geography department at Penn State is the leading faculty in this country. In particular, I am fascinated by your GeoVista project. I would love to become part of the academic excellence in this field of study I am attracted to, as well as to thrive as a person in the nurturing environment at Penn State. This is why I intend geography as my major and I am looking forward to achieving my academic potential and success in Penn State.

If I have the honor to complete my B.S degree from Penn State, I intend to find a job relevant to my major after graduation and work for half a year or one. By doing this I would like to put my knowledge from college into real world perspective and familiarize myself with what skill sets are demanded to work efficiently in the field. Then, I hope to further my education in graduate schools. With the precious working experience, I believe I can acquire academic achievement in GIS, especially in its applications.

603 words
------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------

Any opinion about my essay will be appreciated!!^^

1. Do you think my essay is too long? The print supplement only have 1 page for two prompts(the other one is Personal Statement), thought the admission counselor says I can attach additional pages to it.

2.The Career Goals & Personal Statement are not required but encoureged. So, do you think it will be better if I submit a list of activites instead of Personal Statement? I'm afraid that submitting two long essays is not a wise chioce.

3.Any opinion about my essay will be appreciated!!^^

I'm applying too but havn't written, but pretty sure the word limit was 300 words?
I think maybe reduce the reason and your journey of pursuing geography into one paragraph, I mean it's in 3 paragraphs at the momment I think it's a bit long. Note the word 'brief' in the prompt.
Not so sure about the 'as we know', but it's just my opinion.
Maybe submit a resume? I think you should choose the way that can present yourself the best, I wouldn't worry about submitting two long essays, as long as they are about different things.

Hope that helps, good essay btw :)

thanks for your advice~~
I also saw tha word 'brief' in the prompt, but just can't help to writing a long essay. ^^

I'm not sure about the word limit. Where did you see that?

Will it be better if I delete the 4th paragraph(college experience)?
And you mean that 'as we know' is not proper expression because few people know about that?

are these the topics you got?

CAREER GOALS Include a brief statement of your plans for the field of study you wish to pursue. This should include your reasons for studying your chosen field, your intended areas of specialization within this field, and a brief description of the career you plan to follow after completing this course of study in Penn State. (Within 250 words)

PERSONAL STATEMENT Please use the space below to tell us about your preparations for college. Explain any interruptions in your schooling, e.g., military service or employment. Please tell us about your important time commitments other than academic work (for example, school organizations, jobs, the arts, services, and athletics). (Within 300 Words)


because I got them with the word limit in the bracket? but I received it through an agent so the agent may have added it I'm not sure.



I'm just not so sure who you're talking about when you said 'we', but it may not be a problem at all.
It's good mentioning your strength in the 4th paragraph so don't delete all of it, I'd hate it if I'm wrong about it so don't take all my thoughts into account, wait for one of the contributors to read this :)

I only found errors in this part:

I was inspired to think about questions: Why are the stores concentrated in the south of the city and why is there a dividing strip in downtown area? All these curiosities could hardly be raised if I just read the statistical data. ...

Furthermore, I took five geography courses, and I was one of the top 10 scorers in my class in four of them, which further convinced me that geography is the right choice for me.

As we know, America stands at the forefront of the world's geography science, and the geography department at Penn State is the leading faculty in this country.

Nice job! They will want you as a student!

Kikozang, I get the forms directly from www.psu.edu
so, maybe the word limit in the bracket was your agent's advice.
So happy to get adivice from you~~ thanks

-------------------------------------------
kevin, thanks for your corrections.

do you think it's ok to write a 600-word essay while the prompt required 'brief statement'?
I can't decide which part to cut down.

Well, if they set no word limit, the choice is yours! I always would take it as an opportunity to call Admissions and make an impression (i.e. and ask if 600 words is okay); call and ask, give your name, ask for the name of the person with whom you speak, and be very appreciative. You can even write a little thank you note to that person and include it with your application, thanking the person you spoke with on the phone. This kind of tenacity and proactive approach is how to get the positions you want in life! :)