I would very much like to study toward the master's degree in psychology at XXXX University because I have my heart set on becoming a psychologist and I have profound respect and admiration for your program. I also have an enormous passion for the field of psychology, and I am incredibly determined to excel in your program. I am highly dedicated to my career goals, a strong woman, empathetic, compassionate, and an excellent listener. I ask for admission to your program because I feel that the most significant contribution that I might be able to make to society would be to provide guidance to others who are in need of support, a hearing ear, and sound advice on dealing with the myriad problems that arise in our increasingly complex world, especially problems related to sexuality as well as immigrant identity. I am especially interested in doing research in the areas of hypnosis, sexual behavior, and family psychology and I particularly look forward to helping immigrant women like me to overcome the many psychological challenges that they face.
I am a cosmopolitan young woman from Romania who appreciates diversity. I have spent several months each in Dubai, Hong Kong, and Seoul and this has provided me with an opportunity to study multicultural societies and to become savvier concerning the challenges faced by immigrants in a wide variety of settings. I come from one of the most underdeveloped countries of what was once the USSR and is now perhaps the least developed European country. I have overcome enormous personal obstacles in arriving where I have so far, this has given me great psychological and emotional strength, which I now wish to use to help others.
Romania, my country, my cradle, the land where I made my first steps and said “mother.” In that world where I was born, “we were all equals”, just that “some of us were more equal than others.” As a result of government repression that strikes the heart of all Romanians, I have learned to deal with conflict. Having long been fond of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” I dream of someday using my accumulated wisdom to write something that I would like to entitle: “The Art of Survival.” It is here that I would like to make my mark on society, helping other immigrant women to survive in a hostile world.
I have always been a powerful, determined woman, no matter what walls life would raise in front of me; I overcame every one of them. Each time life would push me over and make me fall, there was a strange inner force within me that gave me the power to get up every single time, shake off the dust and start all over again. By the age of 20, I was facing the decision of choosing a career, and that is when it hit me. Looking back at my life until that point, I realized I was born to be a psychologist. The many women that were depressed, beaten, in life situations that seemed without escape, struggling to find the will, the strength to move on, to pull themselves up, women that listened to me (even though I was still a child) and in doing so they managed to find the force to go on, to fight for their lives: this helped me to realize that I have a calling in life.
I was always a pillar for my own family, two lonely women, my grandmother a widow, and my mother divorced: I suffered greatly because of my so-called “father,” seeing him beat my mother so bad the doctor asked her if she had been in a traffic accident. I entered two years of therapy myself at only five years old to be able to sleep and eat. Thus, ever since I was a child, I have wanted to be able to do something with my life, something that would help women who have been victimized by men and patriarchal societies, women like my mother and grandmother. In high school, I volunteered to work in an orphanage. I was still a child, and I didn’t have the strength to cope with all that was going on there. Each Saturday we would take a few kids home with us to give them a little feeling of being loved, of home. We would cook them dinner and spoil them the best way we could. One Saturday, one of the kids told me that he would be a perfect child, he would never upset me if I would adopt him, and that he would do anything...
Under Romania’s communist regime, we were oppressed, starved, and not allowed to think for ourselves. When the revolution took place, everything we knew was turned upside down, and we had little knowledge of all the things coming our way. We had no idea what to do with our newfound freedom and power. We were tricked into voting for people who only pursued personal goals and had no intention of helping the masses. Within a few years, the country deteriorated beyond recognition, nothing good was done for the people, and we were faced with little alternative but to abandon our homes to survive. I escaped and came to the West. But ever since I arrived, I have been working through the baggage of a brutal past. I have done well and have found peace. I now ask for your help so that I might be able to help other women to do so as well after completing the MA in Psychology at your distinguished institution.