- Posts: 3
- Joined: Jan 06, 2016
- Wed Jan 06, 2016 2:42 pm
#21574
After much editing and a few rewrites, I think I am finally happy with my Personal Statement. I was wondering if you would read and give your opinion and any advice.
The day after my 19th birthday, I gained joint control of a stranger’s $1,000,000 investment portfolio. A sophomore accounting major, I was one of eight members on our school's Investment Team. That year, we shared the responsibility of managing the aforementioned portfolio and maximizing investments for our client.
Membership on the team was a full-time job without the pay. From day one, we were in charge of each transaction made within the portfolio. Brandishing only our amateur investment knowledge and the Wall Street Journal, we were thrown in the deep end and expected to swim. There were expectations. My team was expected to provide an investment opinion on the portfolio’s individual stocks at any given time. Each meeting brought with it the dread that I would be called on to give my opinion, and each statement I made seemed to serve a sole purpose: to open the conversation through which my mentors could find fault in my reasoning. There were almost always factors I hadn’t considered, reports I hadn’t read, and historical impacts I didn’t even realize mattered.
The first month gave way to the second and the second, the third. My mentors remained the same, constantly questioning and demanding only the best from our team. But I was different: I no longer dreaded being called on in our meetings, I didn’t flounder when trying to think of an answer, and I stopped failing to see the traps being laid in the questions asked of me. My frustrations gave way to victories. I became a better reader—no longer dreading the 100-page annual financial reports where the meaning was so often lost in the details, a better researcher—no longer taking the words I read at face value but examining how the facts gave way to larger meanings, and speaker—no longer allowing my opinions to be exploited because of a stray word or poorly composed phrase. I like to think that each member of my team experience that same kind of growth, and I know without a doubt that it contributed to the massive success of our investments that year. In the time that I was a member of this team we surpassed our original goal: to track the returns of the S&P500 through value investing decisions. After 6 years, the portfolio was fully recovered from the 2008 crash. Our team’s decisions provided our finance program with a $55,000 payout.
In a world where the entry level job requires work experience from an applicant, it’s amazing to me that someone would hand eight college students with zero relevant experience a $1,000,000 investment portfolio. It was a risk to trust my immature, undereducated teenage self with $1,000,000; it was that same risk that later molded me into a mature, logical student—able to research, think, and write for myself.
This risk continues to pay dividends greater than any monetary amount. I’ve realized that dividends don’t always show up on a balance sheet attached to a line item and a dollar sign, despite everything my accounting professors have taught me. Sometimes dividends can be confidence, knowledge, and ambition—fundamentals that I now take into every challenge I face in life. Yes, this team taught me about investments. But it also taught me how to thrive in high-pressure environments, research, write, and think: all skills that I can use in a law school classroom and beyond.
I do not want to broker stocks, prepare tax returns or financial statements, or audit a company. I have years of undergraduate and graduate education for these business skills, but my education and non-profit internship have taught me that my passion for business isn’t found in the halls of an accounting department, the desks of a CPA firm, or the center of Wall Street. It’s in the nitty-gritty details that allow businesses to make big decisions without fear of non-compliance. My passion is helping businesses thrive despite the laws and regulations that surround them, and hopefully I can one day further that passion into improving the regulatory environment surrounding business operations.
The day after my 19th birthday, I gained joint control of a stranger’s $1,000,000 investment portfolio. A sophomore accounting major, I was one of eight members on our school's Investment Team. That year, we shared the responsibility of managing the aforementioned portfolio and maximizing investments for our client.
Membership on the team was a full-time job without the pay. From day one, we were in charge of each transaction made within the portfolio. Brandishing only our amateur investment knowledge and the Wall Street Journal, we were thrown in the deep end and expected to swim. There were expectations. My team was expected to provide an investment opinion on the portfolio’s individual stocks at any given time. Each meeting brought with it the dread that I would be called on to give my opinion, and each statement I made seemed to serve a sole purpose: to open the conversation through which my mentors could find fault in my reasoning. There were almost always factors I hadn’t considered, reports I hadn’t read, and historical impacts I didn’t even realize mattered.
The first month gave way to the second and the second, the third. My mentors remained the same, constantly questioning and demanding only the best from our team. But I was different: I no longer dreaded being called on in our meetings, I didn’t flounder when trying to think of an answer, and I stopped failing to see the traps being laid in the questions asked of me. My frustrations gave way to victories. I became a better reader—no longer dreading the 100-page annual financial reports where the meaning was so often lost in the details, a better researcher—no longer taking the words I read at face value but examining how the facts gave way to larger meanings, and speaker—no longer allowing my opinions to be exploited because of a stray word or poorly composed phrase. I like to think that each member of my team experience that same kind of growth, and I know without a doubt that it contributed to the massive success of our investments that year. In the time that I was a member of this team we surpassed our original goal: to track the returns of the S&P500 through value investing decisions. After 6 years, the portfolio was fully recovered from the 2008 crash. Our team’s decisions provided our finance program with a $55,000 payout.
In a world where the entry level job requires work experience from an applicant, it’s amazing to me that someone would hand eight college students with zero relevant experience a $1,000,000 investment portfolio. It was a risk to trust my immature, undereducated teenage self with $1,000,000; it was that same risk that later molded me into a mature, logical student—able to research, think, and write for myself.
This risk continues to pay dividends greater than any monetary amount. I’ve realized that dividends don’t always show up on a balance sheet attached to a line item and a dollar sign, despite everything my accounting professors have taught me. Sometimes dividends can be confidence, knowledge, and ambition—fundamentals that I now take into every challenge I face in life. Yes, this team taught me about investments. But it also taught me how to thrive in high-pressure environments, research, write, and think: all skills that I can use in a law school classroom and beyond.
I do not want to broker stocks, prepare tax returns or financial statements, or audit a company. I have years of undergraduate and graduate education for these business skills, but my education and non-profit internship have taught me that my passion for business isn’t found in the halls of an accounting department, the desks of a CPA firm, or the center of Wall Street. It’s in the nitty-gritty details that allow businesses to make big decisions without fear of non-compliance. My passion is helping businesses thrive despite the laws and regulations that surround them, and hopefully I can one day further that passion into improving the regulatory environment surrounding business operations.
Last edited by mtgalloway on Thu Jan 07, 2016 6:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
