Interview: A 2024 Admit to Manchester's MSc Finance

📍 About the interviewee

Jessica

Bachelor's: National Chung Hsing University

Major: Finance

Average: GPA 3.7 / 4.3

IELTS: Overall 6.5

Admitted to:

Manchester - MSc Finance

Warwick - MSc Finance

——

📍 Why Manchester?

Once I'd settled on MSc Finance, I couldn't decide between KCL, Manchester, Edinburgh and Warwick. After reading every related article online, I finally saw someone say: ask 10 people this question and you'll get 11 answers, so you should ask yourself what you want. That's when I stopped digging through online reviews. After thinking it over, I decided it's unlikely an employer would reject me just because I went to Manchester and someone else went to Warwick or Edinburgh; what matters more is what I did at Manchester. So choosing a school you really like is what matters most. By comparison, I felt KCL was too expensive being in London, Warwick's location might be rather boring, and Edinburgh is so far north it seemed cold. A teacher at my school also told me Manchester has a lot of alumni in Taiwan, so after weighing everything, I chose Manchester.

📍 How to prepare your SOP/CV/RLs?

I think the best order is: CV --> SOP --> CV --> RLs

📍 CV

Start by listing everything you did in college, including competitions, internships, clubs and every project report you did at school. Think hard about the role you played in each one and what you got out of it, and write it down as bullet points. Don't worry about going over one page at this stage. Once you've listed everything, start writing the first draft.

📍 SOP

I think there are three questions worth thinking about before you start writing:

1. What foundation do you have that assures the school you'll be able to keep up with and understand the classes?

This should be fairly easy if your undergrad was in the same field: based on the focus areas the department lists on the school website, point to relevant courses you've taken and activities you've done. If you're coming from a different field, you need to emphasize and prove your abilities even more.

2. How can the school help you?

Explain why only this school, and no other, can do it: point out distinctive events the department runs, describe which course will build which skill you'll need in the future, and point to the careers of the school's alumni.

3. What can you bring to the school?

My take: from the school's point of view, they want people who could become distinguished alumni after graduating. So you need to show a positive attitude and tell the school who you want to become, which industry you want to go into and what role, so the school feels that admitting you will add to its reputation.

I don't think these three questions have a fixed order; they constrain each other. Ideally you'd answer question 3 first to understand your own goal, then answer 1 and 2 based on that goal. My own process wasn't that smooth, though. I kept revising all three answers, and every time I changed one, the other two had to change too. But I think that's all part of the process, and it made me much clearer about my future direction, my goals and why I wanted to go abroad.

📍 CV

After finishing the SOP, you can work what it mentions into your CV. People have different views on whether the CV and SOP can overlap. I chose to mention the items covered in the SOP only briefly and leave space for things the SOP didn't cover, because we don't know which document the school will read first. With so much material to read in so little time, I think the clearer and simpler, the better.

📍 RLs

Once your SOP/CV are done, you can ask your professors for recommendation letters. I attached my SOP/CV and organized the full list of activities from the beginning, including ones that didn't make it into the CV/SOP, for my professors. The more material they have, the easier it is for them to write. One of my professors even wrote about how I did in my club, and I think it comes across more vividly from a professor than if I'd written it myself.

📍 A few words for everyone

If you want to study abroad but haven't made up your mind: start preparing today! Even if you don't end up going, the process will improve your grades, your résumé and your English, which helps your career a lot.

If you're in the middle of preparing: I want to say, you're working hard, keep going, everyone. Once you choose this path, you may feel you're drifting further from the people around you, but I believe we'll find a group of friends on the other side of the world whose goals are closer to ours.

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