Bachelor of Science In Administration personal statement example

Personal statement example

On market days the queue at the mobile money kiosk where I work on Saturdays can reach twelve people before nine o'clock. For months I assumed the problem was simply that too many people came at once. Then I began noting, in the back of a receipt book, what each customer needed. Most of the delay came from a few traders who wanted to withdraw large amounts before the float had been topped up. When I suggested to the owner that she collect cash from the bank on Friday afternoon instead of Saturday morning, the early queue became noticeably shorter. Nothing about the kiosk had changed except the order in which things were done, and that is what first made me curious about administration as a subject rather than a chore.

I studied the Business programme at senior high school, taking Business Management, Financial Accounting, Economics and Elective Mathematics. Business Management gave me a vocabulary for things I had already seen. When we covered Henri Fayol's functions of management, planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling, I recognised them in the kiosk owner's day, although she would never use those words. Accounting taught me patience. Reconciling a trial balance that refused to agree, and finding that the error was a single transposed figure, showed me that good records are only useful if someone checks them carefully.

My most substantial project was at school. In my second year, our class shared a limited stock of literature and economics textbooks, and they were often missing when needed. With our form teacher's permission, I set up a lending ledger in a hardback exercise book: each book was numbered with a marker, and every borrowing was signed and dated by the student and a class prefect. I added a simple rule that books had to be returned by Friday so they could be counted before the weekend. At first some classmates found signing tiresome, so I shortened the columns to name, number and date. By the end of the term we could account for all but two of the books, and the same system was used by the class below us the following year. The project cost the price of an exercise book and a marker, but it taught me that a procedure has to suit the people using it, not only look tidy on paper.

Outside school and work, I am responsible most evenings for making sure my two younger brothers finish their homework while my mother closes her shop. I have learnt to plan this around the electricity supply and our one shared table, which is a small administrative problem of its own. I also play draughts with older men in our area on Sunday afternoons. I am not the strongest player, but I have improved by watching how the best players think several moves ahead and avoid wasting pieces early, a habit I try to apply to my own planning.

I want to study administration because I have seen, in very ordinary settings, how much depends on organisation that nobody notices when it works. I would like to understand it more rigorously: how larger organisations, including public institutions, make decisions, manage people and resources, and keep accurate records at scale. I am particularly interested in learning how the principles that worked in a kiosk or a classroom change when the numbers involved are much bigger.

I bring reliability, careful record-keeping and the habit of observing before suggesting changes. I am used to balancing study with work and family responsibilities, and I am ready for the independent effort that university study requires.