Cover letter

 Since, I am going to apply for graduate school recently, I post a personal statement instead of cover letter.The function of personal statement in application of graduate school is similar to the cover letter in application of a job. However, the structure and formate of the personal statement is completely different.




Apply for School of Engineering and Medicine, Stanford

http://bioengineering.stanford.edu/education/admissions.html

Personal Statement: 

I often have “crazy ideas”.

Holding a glass tube of my own DNA extracted in the kitchen (learned from Youtube), I can’t help but think: it is this DNA that determines my characteristics and physical shape. However, is the trajectory of my life also defined by the sequences of nucleotides? The answer is obvious: No. Regardless how elegantly hereditary information is stored in DNA, it is not enough to convey all the identities of my unique personality.

I start to purify my DNA by tuning the concentration of salt (NaCl) to 0.14M. Suddenly, the tube becomes a timeless zone where my past, present my future appear spontaneously at different layers of liquid. Though different aspects of me are intertwined together in the tube, I see 4 floating words there which made me special.

Curiosity! I am constantly curious about mysteries of science and the beauty of nature. My father used to wonder: why did his son ask for an encyclopaedic book “Hundred thousand whys” at age of 9, instead of a fairytale book. My high school teachers don’t understand why this student spent most of his extracurricular time on investigating the influence of metallic liquid leaked from battery on moina macrocopa(a genus of crustaceans), which seems far deviated from what they taught in class. My project supervisor was surprised that her student worked until midnight on weekends to find out how E. Coli immobilized on graphene based sensor response to different external stimuli. I have a simple answer for those queries and doubts: passion for unknown. Finding a reason behind a phenomena or solving a knotty question fulfils my curiosity and motivate my further research.

     

Creativity! I think creativity frequently comes from incorporation of knowledge from different disciplines or research fields. It is especially true for bioengineering due to its multidisciplinary nature. During my internship in a research institute, I was involved in project related to cell enrichment using mircrofilters. One day, I had a crazy idea: following similar trapping mechanism, why can’t we use capillary flow in an open system so that we can isolate single cell and “fix” them in microtraps? With careful experimentation, my crazy idea turn into reality and I fabricated a prototype for high throughput single cell sorting platform for drug screening and other scientific studies. My creativity is not limited to research; I like to find new approaches and apply them in my daily life. For instance, I invented three interesting swimming styles: submarine style, jellyfish style and polar bear style.

Persistence! I developed a deep enthusiasm in the field of bioengineering. Even though I have encountered enormous obstacles and sometimes suffered huge pressure in pursuing my professional goal, my determination and persistence did not corrode. The most difficult period in my entire life was in my sophomore year in university. I had the privilege to write a critical review about graphene based chemical and biosensors. In order to make the review timely, I spent an average of 5 hours per day besides my heavy course load and extracurricular activity, investing into reading about 500 research articles, making notes for each paper, summarizing and discussing with my mentor. When I was frustrated by elusive concepts or lengthy paper, I switch the aspect of viewing problem. Similar to windsurfing, “storms” makes me stronger and advances faster. All my effort and persistence paid off in the end and the review paper was published in Chemical Society Review.          

Sociable! I enjoy talking with people with different background, especially about the topic of cutting edge technology. Learnt from 2 years of research experience, I believe effective communication plays the most important role in disseminating innovations and inspiring new ideas. I maintained good relationship with PHD students and my professors in school and my colleges and supervisor during internship in an institute. The good relationship in return facilitates my learning as they treat me as friend and hence are willing to teach me. In addition, many brilliant ideas come out during discussion with them in the laboratory. As the welfare director in the student union, I use soft leadership to unite people. Two of my committee members even tell me “you smile too much and you do not seem like a leader”. I like to smile and feel that it is the most beauty language connecting each other.

My DNA solution reflects iridescent color when I place the glass tube under the sunlight. There, my future reveals: after giving lecture to students, I come to my neurologic laboratory and experiment with assay containing in a glass tube, which is also a key to neurologic diseases.  

Interpersonal conflicts

I am a placid and friendly person and seldom had interpersonal conflicts with other people. However, When I was in my second year studying in university, I fail to maintain a good relationship with my roomie.

At first, we got along with each other very well. Gradually, I found that he seemed locking himself in his own world. Every time when I saw him, his brows were knitted. I felt that he was trying to distance me. In addition, I was busy with my CCA and school project at that time. Hence, I neither chatted with him much.

One day, he started to play video games until midnight. It was a kind of game similar to "Need for Speed" and it generated much noise. I am very sensitive to noise and can't sleep at all. What's worse, I had an important presentation the next day morning. Therefore, I told him to lower down the volume in a polite way and he did it. However, I could sense his unwillingness from his voice.

Since then, cold war break and we never talk to each other for a few month except  "please lower down the volume"

Deprivation of sleep is the most intolerable for a person with regular daily schedules like me. Once, he kept doing that even when I was sick. I was so pissed off and did something stupid by posting some attacking words on a local forum with his name specified.

Somehow he found out my post and we had a serious quarrel. During the quarrel, I found out that he played video game with loud noise to relieve his frustration accumulated from job searching. He was in bad mood every time when I ask him to low down his volume. In addition, he felt 12 o'clock is still considered early, so he think my complain is very annoying (he usually slept at 4am).  After emotional eruption,  we talked through and solved the problem. We found that the problem was amplified because we fail to think on other's side.

What would you do if you are in my situation?