Scholarship Application

                                        Applicant： XXX
                                        Program： MPA program, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University

Instruction: Please submit a statement that indicates your eligibility and fit for the fellowship (500-600 words).

I believe I am fully eligible for your fellowship and there are several compelling reasons. As I understand, the essential meaning of issuing fellowship to students is to recognize their past endeavors and achievements and to stimulate them to make further efforts to pursue excellence and make achievements in their fields. If measured by those criteria, I believe I should be considered for the fellowship.

At the age of 7, I became a community volunteer. I became a volunteer in the wake of my father’s death. He suffered from a lethal liver disease and received a transplant. The donor was a volunteer who agreed to donate his organs to people in need after his death. By receiving the transplant, my father managed to survive one more year. Grateful for the additional one year in which I had the happiest time in my life with my father, and encouraged by my mother, I became a registered volunteer, the youngest in the community. I started by cleaning chairs and benches in the gardens, attending flowers and the lawn, keeping the roads clean. I told stories to the elderly people in the community center to keep them accompanied and amused. Over the past 15 years, I have been a devoted volunteer. As director of the Community Volunteer Service Team which is affiliated to the China Red Cross Society, I have led 35 volunteers in numerous important charity projects. Apart from that, I have been a member of the Red Cross throughout my undergraduate program, taking part in various volunteer services including interpretation services during the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and donating money to poor school kids to enable them to finish their education. Even after I came to Dublin to undertake my Master’s program, I have been a social worker at a local NPO and an Irish government department. For me, offering public services has been a habit.

As an aspiring student, I have been motivated to make important academic efforts to increase my knowledge. In order to acquire international experiences and perspectives, I have been pursuing graduate studies in management at University College Dublin. Apart from gaining knowledge and skills in management, which can be readily applied to public administration, I have become well-accustomed to English education, developed strong cross-cultural communication and become broad-minded. Although I have to finance my own education and for a Chinese girl the costs are expensive, I still believe the experiences I acquire are invaluable.

After I obtain your degree, I plan to create a non-profit organization aimed at providing comprehensive services to Chinese students in North America. With my commitment to public services since the age of 7, I have been engaged in selfless efforts to help those in need. In the future, I will remain as committed as ever, making public service my lifelong pursuit. Winning your fellowship will be a great pride and honor for me, a spiritual award that would give me further impetus to engage in this worthy cause of public services. In addition, it will give me great motivation to value the precious opportunity to be able to study at your outstanding institution and to develop into a well-trained public service professional. To me, your fellowship will be more spiritual than physical. I know that the fellowship carries with it a strong sense of responsibility. For this reason, I will cherish the value and meaning of this fellowship and always bear in mind the mission that this fellowship would direct me to.