Personal Statement
Applied Program: Advertising

Among the 26 English alphabets, the one I like most is the capitalized D because this alphabet, simple as it is, is the most beautiful one. The two strokes, one vertical line and one curve, adumbrate two totally divergent trajectories as if serving as constant indicator of the psyche of the professionals in the advertising industry: to travel from one point to another, there is an infinite number of routes to choose; but ultimately speaking, there are only two routes: one is along a straight line, the other along a curve. While the general public may opt for the first, advertising professionals should decide on the second. A curved trajectory may well enable one to expand his horizon, enrich his experience of life, and cultivate his capability for excellent interpersonal exchange and communication. I maintain the conviction that the longer the journey of life that one travels, the richer the experience one can derive from life and hence the greater the novelty that he can create out of the apparently commonplace.

In 1998, I entered XX University with remarkable performance at the National College Entrance Examination (among the top 10 percent of the participants majoring in Humanities Disciplines). During the first year of my undergraduate studies, I majored in International Law but it immediately dawned on me that I was not meant for studies in this field and my real interest lied in advertising. Therefore, with extra efforts I audited all the major courses in advertising and in the second year, with a solid command of all the theoretical knowledge of the basic courses, I transferred to Advertising Speciality. Once I embarked on studying what really interested me, I made rapid progress and my GPA reached 3.5 (among the top three for 26 students of my class). In addition, I achieved the highest score of the class in four most important courses in the field: History of Chinese and Foreign Advertising, Principles of Advertising, Advertisement Planning, and Mass Communication.

As I delved deeper into my subject, I came to acquire an increasingly profound understanding of the nature of advertising. As a matter of fact, advertising is an art of persuasion, concerned with how the advertiser can influence the behavior and value orientation of the general public with his individually unique mentality and perspective. It is an integral branch of mass communication, inextricably intertwined with both art and economics. At the same time, it requires a framework of scientific management. In the course of my studies, I learned to exploit another form of language, my advertising designs, to conduct dialogues with my audience and to convey through those work my ideas and perceptions in order to achieve the objective of affecting the recipients' psychology and conduct and realizing the value of communication. But I ventur

ed beyond the mere designing of individual advertisements. I also attempted at a series of coordination work that included the planning, execution, solution and effect of advertising. This process helped me to perfect my framework of theoretical conceptions concerning such notions as personal communication, interpersonal communication and mass communication. I immersed myself in a wide variety of advertising courses. By studying advertising, I could feel the joy of thinking and the charm of knowledge.liuxuepaper.com