- motivation
- goals
- degree of readiness
An excellent guide to writing this essay is How to Write a Winning Personal Statement for Graduate and Professional School by Richard J. Seltzer. Examining these issues in preparation for such a personal essay is a valuable experience in and of itself
If it is at all possible, even when not required, try to have a personal interview at the school. The interview will allow the admissions staff to question you and probe for the elements listed above, and it will provide an opportunity for you to explain your reason for seeking an advanced degree and to discuss your commitment to your education.
A Suggested Career Path to the Master's Degree
An ideal job for the math undergraduate contemplating graduate school would be a position of some sophistication utilizing your math education and providing you with opportunities to learn more, a reasonable salary, and the chance to gain the kinds of experiences that will help you if you choose to go on to graduate school. Such positions do exist. Typical position titles would be market analysts (MAs) or financial analysts (FAs) and research analysts or research associates (RAs). They may also be called business analysts, associate consultants, or just associates.
Most of these positions are in business consulting firms, financial services, or banking. Whether it is banking or consulting, the analyst's role is generally the same. Analysts help to provide the expert advice that will help their employer or their employer s clients to invest wisely with the best return on their money or solve business problems.
Market and Financial Analysts
Your work will involve evaluating the marketplace as a whole. You'll study information on shifts in the gross national production, the cost of living, personal income growth, rates of employment, construction starts, fiscal plans of the federal government, growth and inflation rates, balance of payments, market trends, and even indexes of common stocks.
But your job is even more complex than the above list would suggest because you need to be aware of national and international events that could precipitate some serious reaction in the marketplace. The United States is contemplating a possible action against Iraq-the effects of which would reverberate throughout the marketplace. International crises such as that, political actions, large scale tragedies all can cause the market to shift direction. So, you see, you need to keep an eye both on the data on your screen as well as on the pulse of the world. It's a fascinating job for a math graduate.
Several things are clear. There are high expectations for your performance, but the rewards are commensurate. As discussed throughout this corroborates, you need to know your mathematics, and this employer specifies a high GPA to ensure that. At the same time, there is a clear indication that working conditions are relaxed and interesting. Note the emphasis on communication skills and the fact that you'll be involved in client negotiations, public presentations, and a number of writing assignments as well. If your math courses have not demanded much research or analytical writing, you might want to consider a technical writing class in your English department or an organizational communications course in the business department of your college.
Research Analysts and Associates
Generally, you will be doing library research, collecting data in organized forms, and conducting some data manipulations. Research associates and research analysts assist in helping to put together proposals, case studies, or analyses designed to help the consultant's client solve problems, determine future strategies, or implement programs. As you gain expertise, some responsibilities will be added, in most cases having to do with additional and more sophisticated research capabilities, quantitative manipulation of data using computer software, and the presentation of findings to your work team.
There is a limit on what you can do, on the decisions you will be allowed to make, and in how far you can go on your own. These positions have been structured to work under more senior positions. Senior workers have those decision making responsibilities because important financial consequences may be the end result. The positive aspect of this supervision is that you'll work closely with true professionals who will have much to teach you, both explicitly and implicitly.
Now let's examine another actual research analyst position for someone just out of college to learn how an employer expresses the demands and qualifications of the position:
This position description shares some similarities with the market research position listed earlier. There's a real sense of high expectations about your performance, and like the previous advertisement, this firm also is demanding a specific level of GPA. Both firms have obviously decided that grades are as reasonable an indicator of your ability to master an environment as any other. Though you may disagree with this thinking, these ads are proof positive that for some employers, grades count.
This also emphasizes a higher degree of analytical functions compared to the market analyst position and specifically enumerates a number of kinds of analysis that will be part of your training. The emphasis on training is good news. Professional training by employers is often exceptional in its quality and stays with your career beyond any one job. It also is a guarantee of stability, as organizations that spend resources training employees have a vested interest in retaining those employees and seeing them grow and develop.
One final note here of importance is that the submission of resume and cover letter as e mail (with submission specifications) or as a "scan able" document means this firm is on the cutting edge of technology. If either thee mail submission or preparing a scan able resume is new to you, stop by your career office and get some assistance. Joyce Lain Kennedy has an excellent book on the market entitled Electronic Resume Revolution that addresses not just writing the best scan able resumes, but using electronic databases to help keep yourself visible. Another publication, the Guide to Internet Job Searching by Osserman, Riley, and Roehm and published by VGM Career Horizons, provides a good explanation of how to connect to the Internet and instructions for posting a resume electronically, as well as extensive listings of Internet sites with job ads and resume databases.
These positions are featured because they particularly appeal to graduates contemplating advanced education. There's a fairly steady turnover in these analyst jobs as people choose to return to school or are promoted within the firm. More people move on, however, than move up because an advanced degree is often de rigeur to move up in these kinds of organizations. So, since these positions are not designed to fulfill career aspirations in and of them, they should appeal to you if you're contemplating graduate school. Though they come with excellent salary and benefits, they have more in common with postgraduate internships than typical entry level positions because they typically involve so much education and training. In fact, these analyst positions are often part of special hiring "programs" for recent college graduates. Since the jobs do generally turn over rather quickly, many entry level candidates are recruited and hired. The training and mentoring involved for the new analysts is considerable. The responsibilities for training are generally located with one individual or centered in one office that manages the research associate/analyst "program." The defined boundaries of the experience and the structure of the internal training process should be highly acceptable to the mathematics student with a bachelor's degree seeking to gain valuable skills and experience before entering graduate school. Strategic advantages Job candidates applying for these positions do not have to misrepresent their intentions of leaving for a graduate degree. In fact, if you should desire to stay, you would find upon investigation that senior responsibility and authority is reserved for the higher degree specialists.
Many analysts do, in fact, return to the consulting firms and banks that initially hired them, after obtaining their masters in any of a number of majors, such as quantitative analysis or business administration. At this point they begin new career paths, in positions with titles such as associate to consultant, investment manager, perhaps chartered financial analyst (a designation similar to CPA received after passing equally rigorous examinations).
Whatever your choice upon coming to a decision following some time spent as a research associate, you are in a very different position of experience than when you graduated from college. You have significant, important business experience that will have transformed the value of your undergraduate degree. You are well situated to apply to one of the top graduate programs and feel confident about your ability to succeed.
Whatever graduate program you do enter, you arrive better prepared to make the most of the degree. When you do graduate with your new degree, you offer your new employer excellent justification for a responsible, decision making position with all the appropriate rewards of such a job.
