Statement of Purpose

The Reasons for Applying…

There are two major reasons for my application for a place in Masters Program in Operations, Project
and Supply Chain Management in Manchester Business School. The first reason is that I have chosen
teaching as my career. And this reason leads the reader of this statement to the question – “What is the
relationship between teaching and studying in this particular field?”. To clarify this question, here’s the
second reason - I have chosen this particular field because I have found out over my graduation studies
that one my strengths lie within this quantitative and analytical field of business studies, and am highly
fascinated by the topics of study and research opportunities offered.

In this statement, first of all I would like to elaborate on my choice of the degree and the course, the
choice of institution, and finally wrap it up by saying few things about me that the reader may be
interested to know.

The First Reason – Career Goal

My career aspiration is to become a teacher. Till this day I have had experience of teaching for four
years. I started taking classes in Mentors’( a reputed coaching center in Bangladesh) as an English
teacher for students who are planning to sit for the admission test in the Institute of Business
Administration of University of Dhaka. Eventually I discovered that not only did I enjoy taking these
classes, but the students thought of me to be a good teacher. I even have student evaluations to prove
that. The official evaluation of teachers is done by students marking a particular teacher on attributes
like subject knowledge, presentation and feedback. On those evaluations I was scored well, ranging
from a minimum of 96% to a maximum of 98%. Through the success of my evaluations, popularity
among students and my students’ successes, now I am taking classes of not only English for admission of
IBA, but also classes in Mathematics for IBA admission, Spoken English, IELTS, SAT English and
Mathematics.

This aptitude in teaching is not the only catalyst that makes me want to choose my career as an
educator. Teaching also gives me a certain pleasure that I cannot derive from some other activity. Let
me refer to a situation in my life. I was in my third year in my BBA program. My father had discovered
that he had some blocked blood vessels. The news came as a shock to my family and it had been one of
the most difficult times in my life. During then one of my colleagues had to stop taking one of the classes
and I had been requested to fill in for him. At first I was reluctant to take up the proposition as I was not
at the right state of mind and also I thought it would hamper my academic performance. To my surprise
I realized taking the class actually shifted my mind from the catastrophic situation. It seemed that when I
entered my class, my worries could not follow me in through the door. Hence I would say teaching has
been a salvation for me at my worst time hence I would like to pursue myself in that particular area.
And this elaboration of my teaching capabilities has pursued me to apply for a master’s program. For
one thing, the program will give me in-depth knowledge on the field I want to teach. Also, a masters
degree will make me qualified to apply for a teaching post in universities. I prefer to teach students in
universities because, at that level, the students are mature and inquisitive, and also because as a
teacher, one can use innovative and out of the box methods to teach the students.

Reason Number Two – Fascination for the subject

Now, we come to the second reason that I gave for specifically applying for Masters Program in
Operations, Project and Supply Chain Management. My grade average till the last semester was 3.57
which earned me the 7th position in a class of 84 students. If only the grades of the economics, finance
and accounting related courses are considered, then my position would be among the top five. My
transcripts show that all through my academic life, I have attained higher grades in most of the
quantitative subjects (including operations). Of all these quantitative subjects, Operations interest me
the most. Deriving the economic order quantity, creating a task allocation model or finding out the
critical path, were few of the tasks that kept me involved and entertained. I enjoyed the operations
course so much that I wanted to do a minor in Operations, as our institute had finance, marketing and
human resource as the only majors. However teachers for Operations were unavailable so I ended up
doing an Economics minor instead. But now that I know that Manchester offers an Operations course, I
am eagerly looking forward to doing my Masters in it.

Why Manchester Business School?

Now that I have given my reasons for applying for a particular masters program, let me answer the
question – “Why have I chosen MBS?”. The answer is that I have been browsing for universities to apply
for my masters for last six months. I chose my destination as UK because of the one year length of the
masters program, and also because I always wanted to go there as a child, having my education
completely based on GCSE system. So I have been ordering for prospectuses from different universities
and University of Manchester University appealed to me the most. The prospect of being a student in
the university which has graduated legends in the likes of Rutherford and Jevons and to be able to
attend classes by few of the most accomplished professors of our time are tempting enough to make
anyone apply for a position here. Other than this, the brand essence - “Original Thinking Applied” – has
been a very strong motivation for me.

Personal Qualities

There are few things that set me apart from others. The first would be a strong believe and dedication
to follow a career in a profession which I am interested in. Having physics, chemistry and mathematics
for my A level examinations, I had the option of going for career as a science graduate. Nevertheless, I
sacrificed those options to apply in a business school as my interest was always in this line. Similarly, last
December, when the classes in our institution came to an end, most of my classmates got offers from
different corporate bodies to join them as management trainees and other related posts. Being the only
one from our batch to apply for masters abroad, I had to turn down a number of such opportunities,
never to my regret.
Another quality that I value most in me is the ability to take the mantle of leadership whenever it is
required and then let go of it as the situation is dealt with. For example, in an event in our institution,
five of us friends were given the task of packaging foods. The task was simple, but only a minor setback
created a major hassle. Instead of the food arriving at afternoon, it came well after the evening, and we
were supposed to handover the packed foods by eight at night. At this point, when tension was building
up, calling the group entire to a room, I asked them to form an assembly line through which the packets
will be passed and each member will be placing a particular food item into the box. Surprisingly,
everyone kept on following my directions, and finally we succeeded in meeting the deadline. But later,
when the organizing committee wanted to thank us by presenting a bouquet, in the face of continued
retort from my group members (who wanted me to go and receive the bouquet, as it was my idea which
made meeting the deadline possible), I managed to bring them all up to the stage, as I believe, still now,
that their contributions were equally as important.

Few Final Words…

All these being said, I think that I have made it clear why I want to study Masters Program in Operations,
Project and Supply Chain Management in MBS. I also believe that I have given reason enough to be
ranked as a competitive applicant. So I hope that the admission committee finds my strengths and
qualities appropriate for a place in this course.