Industrial Organizational Psychology Personal Statement
I am confident that my multicultural background and international experiences will prove to be an asset for me as a graduate student in Applied and I/O Psychology and later as a practitioner of Psychology in the workplace. Many of the issues of our day are intimately involved with questions of multiculturalism; nowhere more so than in the workplace. I feel that I have the kind of background that will enable me to distinguish myself as a creative student and later a professional investigator in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
A Korean woman, we left our land of origin when I was 8 years old and I completed elementary school in Sri Lanka, high school in Dubai, and college in Indiana, USA, before settling down in the Silicon Valley in 2012. I have also learned a great deal about multiculturalism because of being privileged to visit Thailand, Belgium, Amsterdam, Switzerland, Canada, France, Turkey, China, and Egypt. I worked with corporate teams from Switzerland, Turkey, India and the UK; and I visited Switzerland and Turkey on business trips for workshops. I need the flexibility of an online program, and this is a central reason why UXX’s Master’s Degree Program in Applied Psychology is my first choice for graduate school. Since my father passed away 5 years ago, I support my mother and my developmentally challenged little sister in Korea. Thus, continuing my full-time employment is imperative.
As a professional I/O psychologist, I plan to continue to champion and promote ethnic, linguistic, and gender diversity in the workplace. I see the appreciation and celebration of diversity as the best way to promote a spirit of teamwork, always focusing on strength rather than weakness. Especially in consulting, one is always selling ideas so the more perspectives one brings to the table the better one can serve their company and clients. Following my graduation from Indiana University in Accounting and Finance, I went to work in the area of mergers and acquisitions, serving as an M&A operational consultant for several years until January of this year when I decided to accept a job offer from a real estate technology company as a monetization manager. This position has been challenging, helping a new company as it struggles to integrate a new start up it acquired in Austin, all in a time of vast economic uncertainty with what appears to be a recession looming, massive lay-offs – the CEO just up and left. Nevertheless, I continue to help our beleaguered company to survive, as I am not one to run from a challenge.
In preparation for graduate study, I first hired a career coach who recommended that I look inwards to find a directional passion and then look outwards to interview people to collect more information. I interviewed more than 30 people, many of whom graciously introduced me to their professional networks in fields ranging from social impact investing to human capital. Out of the programs that I researched, UXX had the best reputation for IO Psychology among online programs and a well-balanced, rigorous curriculum that speaks to all my major intellectual, academic, and professional interests and concerns. I am especially interested in macro-organizational behavior theories, and I also look forward to a thoroughgoing exploration of the fundamentals of consumer and employee psychology. I appreciate UXX’s cohort system where I look forward to building professional relationships with small groups of people. Since I will be able to study part-time, I will be able to continue to work full-time and fulfill my financial obligations to my family back in Korea.
Perhaps most of all, I really like the real-life focus of the Master’s in Applied Psychology Program at UXX. I can at once gain full exposure to the major theoretical work, and at the same time arrive at a better understanding of that theory through its application to challenges that we face in the real world, in real time and space. Ultimately, I want to contribute in some measure to the design of the next generation of organizations in response to changing patterns in the globalization of economic realities.
I feel strongly that we need to critically re-evaluate our organizational ecosystems so as to make them more effective to better confront many of the complex problems that we face today, especially climate change. I gravitate naturally towards a holistic approach in the evaluation of organizations in terms of both their online and brick-and-mortar identities.
Thank you for considering my application to Applied Psychology at UXX.
Industrial Organizational Psychology Personal Statement
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