SMU MBA Application Essay: Goals, Reasons, and Contributions

This essay is a submission for an MBA application to Singapore Management University (SMU). The student details their career goals, which include gaining international exposure and developing general management and financial analysis skills to advance in the financial sector. The essay highlights the reasons for choosing SMU, emphasizing its rigorous curriculum, international faculty, and diverse student body. The student also outlines how their experience in technical design, project management, and fintech will allow them to contribute to the program through leadership, sharing insights, and team collaboration. The essay references several academic sources to support the applicant's reasoning and claims.

Running head: SMU MBA Essay
SMU MBA Essay
Student’s Name
University Name
Author note

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Reasons to get an MBA
The primary reason to opt for MBA is to gain international exposure. I also aspire to gain
new skills and knowledge to fulfill my professional career goals. I have extensive experience in
technical designing, architecture, designing, and delivery of software products, henceforth;
pursuing MBA degree in Singapore will further increase my knowledge and help me to widen
my functional areas. Pursuing MBA will further develop my general management skills and
financial analysis skills which is highly essential in this competitive global environment and
advancement of technology (Aithal 2014). I believe that the financial sectors in Singapore are
growing and are highly in demand, thereby pursuing MBA, will help me to develop my career in
the financial sector. It has been identified that the business environment is fast paced and
challenging, hence, my performance and productivity hits the bottom line (Elliott and Soo 2013).
Since August 2014, I am working as a lead engineer in the Fintech division of Citibank, situated
in Singapore. The strong background that I have in technical field and my experience in
executing projects makes me ideally suited for the MBA programme. I have also engaged myself
in various extracurricular activities such as personality development and public speaking course.
This have influenced me to Pursue MBA. Most importantly, as the field of management and
finance is in demand, the MBA programme is appropriate for me to fulfill my career goals.
Reasons for applying to SMU
SMU is designed to help the students shape into versatile and dynamic leaders for the
business organizations (Business.smu.edu.sg. 2020). As I aspire to learn general management
skills and learn different business fundamentals with the rigorous curriculum. Therefore, I

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believe that SMU will be the best instituted for me to develop my career goals. Moreover, SMU
helps me to sharpen my edge and help me to advance in my career goals. SMU offers world class
international professors as well as highly experienced industry experts within the domain
expertise. Most importantly, there are 65% of international students in the institute with average
work experience from 5-7 years (Business.smu.edu.sg. 2020). This will help me to interact with
other international students and enable me to work with diverse students. I believe that I will
further increase my skills and knowledge from international professors which will help me meet
my goal of gaining international exposure (Kwan 2019). The multicultural experience will
provide opportunities to engage with other students professionally. I believe that pursuing Part
time MBA degree will help me to gain knowable from the class regarding leadership and
management. The learning’s and knowledge that I will gather from the classes will help me to
apply them in my work in future. I feel highly motivated and positive about my decision to
pursue MBA from SMU. Through this MBA programme, I will be able to improve my
convincing power and improve my self confidence level. It will be a great opportunity for me if I
am selected for the MBA programme by SMU.
Ways in which I can contribute to the SMU MBA programme
I come from a diverse range of experience, which will contribute to the MBA Programme
in a positive way. I believe that I have high level of professional maturity, which is considered to
be critical factor of any MBA programme. I have strong career goals and objectives to fulfill, the
positive mindset that I have, will be positively reflected throughout the course of my MBA
programme. I have wide range of skill set and work experience such as developing products,
setting up infrastructure, creating technical specifications and executing projects. This experience
will help me to lead events or significant projects that will be organized by SMU MBA

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programme (Peters, Smith and Thomas 2018). While working in Citi Fintech, I have collected
enourmous ideation and insights, product designing, design of UI and UX as well as a customer
centric approach. Throughout my employment, I have worked on the projects that included
natural language processors, machine learning, trending web technologies and cloud
technologies. I will furthermore have the ability to share all these learnings and exeperinces with
my cohorts that will actually be a major learning for them. It is Further, this will help to
contribute to team projects and other activities organized by SMU MBA programme. I am
flexible in approach and have team leadership skills among other virtues and skills. I have good
communication and my past experience will help me to contribute to various classroom
discussions, presentations, and team projects (Osman-Gani and Paik 2016).

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References
Aithal, P.S., 2014. Comparative Study of MBA programes in 3 Top Business Schools of USA,
Singapore & India.
Business.smu.edu.sg. (2020). [online] Available at: https://business.smu.edu.sg/mba [Accessed 5
Mar. 2020].
Elliott, C. and Soo, K.T., 2013. The international market for MBA qualifications: The
relationship between tuition fees and applications. Economics of Education Review, 34, pp.162-
174.
Kwan, J., 2019. Educational goals, assessment preferences and approaches to learning of MBA
and MPA students in Singapore. Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 2(1), pp.24-44.
Osman-Gani, A.M. and Paik, Y., 2016. Factors influencing the retention of international IT
talent: An empirical investigation in Singapore. International Journal of Human Resources
Development and Management, 16(1-2), pp.1-17.
Peters, K., Smith, R.R. and Thomas, H., 2018. Management Development (MBA, EMBA, Exec.
Ed.)', Rethinking the Business Models of Business Schools.