MS Cognitive and Decision Sciences

MS Cognitive and Decision Sciences Personal Statement of Purpose

My first choice for graduate study is the M.S Program in Cognitive and Decision Sciences at ____ Collage in London due to your innovative curriculum as well as location. I look forward to living and studying in a city with such vast international and cultural resources, ideal for the student of human behavior and decision sciences, learning from some of the world’s most engaging and creative scholars in my field and other closely related fields.

I see your program as the optimal location for the student that places top priority on building a career assisting people to make better decisions. I strongly believe that many aspects of our individual and communal lives can sustain colossal damage as a result of bad decision making. By systematically understanding the cognitive processes that determine how we perceive our surroundings and make inferences based on our perceptions, we can better understand how and why people tend to make the kinds of decisions that they do, as a result of acting upon their perceptions in certain ways. This avenue of thinking helps us to at least potentially live our lives to the fullest and, at the same time, make the world a better place for everyone. Ever since I was a child, I have felt strongly that every single human being has come into existence for some purpose, with the potential to contribute to an improvement of the life of their community as well as themselves. Thus, nothing excites me as much as uncovering the mysteries of human cognition and behaviour.

In particular, I see your program at ____ College as the best option for advancing my skill as a researcher in decision-making, and I would relish the challenge of joining your especially rigorous program focused precisely on what interests me most. In this way, I hope to lay an excellent foundation as a Master’s Degree student for undertaking doctoral level studies in the future in either Psychology or Management, always with a special, sharpened focus on decision making.

As an undergraduate, I first studied International Economics and Finance for two years and then transferred into an Arts and Contemporary Studies (ACS) honours degree program so as to achieve a rigorous, interdisciplinary introduction to the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, highlighting interrelationships between History, Sociology, Philosophy, and Psychology. By the time I was half-way through my class entitled “Psychology of Thinking”, I already had a growing awareness that this would be my field, what I most wanted to study, and the area in which I hope to build a lifetime career as a professional.

Scientific method as applied to the field of Psychology stands at the center of my intellectual world and professional dreams and form the core of what I see in my professional future, developing my expertise in all areas that overlap with the study of decision making: models of thinking, learning and inference, memory and knowledge, etc. The writers that have made the greatest impression on me throughout my studies in these areas so far are Dan Ariley, Jean Pieget, Dan Gilbert, and Daina Khunamen. I especially look forward to paying close attention to their work as a graduate student.

In addition to the courses that I have taken in Psychology, I have also taken classes in Statistics and Research Methods. Since further, more advanced courses were not available to me at the time, I also studied Linear Algebra and Modern Mathematic, which will be helpful to someone seeking as much engagement as possible with the quantitative side of research. Finally, I have experience as a Research Assistant for 2 different studies, one devoted to language, culture, and cognition; the other HIV prevention.

I particularly look forward as a graduate student to an in-depth examination of the relationship between life satisfaction, on the one hand, and general performance on the other, with a special focus on self-compassion and wellbeing. I look forward to analyzing student scores on the following scales: Self-Compassion, Self-Efficacy, and Mental Health Continuum, testing hypotheses and developing correlational comparisons, building on my research thus far for my undergraduate thesis.

My central goal in life professionally is helping individuals to make better decisions. I believe that many negative aspects of our lives as individuals and as a society result from bad decision making. Born in Iran and permanently immigrating to Toronto, Canada in 2006, I am now 24 and pleased that my multicultural background will help me to better understand and appreciate multicultural perspectives on decision-making. Since my family chose this time to leave Iran, when I was 10, I was old enough to have become fully bicultural as well as bilingual and young enough to learn to speak English as a near-native speaker. I will be graduating this year, 2020. Psychology, in particular, has stolen my heart, especially the prospect of ongoing scientific research in this area. I hope very much to have the privilege of devoting my lifetime to the study of decision-making, in particular, cognitive systems and processes, and behavioural economics, exploring the complex relationships between knowledge, learning, and inference. I anticipate finding the greatest possible joy as a full-time researcher for decades to come, serving in either an academic or industry position.

Thank you for considering my application to ____ College.

MS Cognitive and Decision Sciences