Discuss below in a 500 words:
Explanation of requirements:
Merit-Based Scholarship Available to Incoming Students
(U.S. citizens and Permanent Residents only)
Your work experience, leadership and overall admissions profile can qualify you to receive financial assistance to help offset the cost of your MAS degree. Each year multiple merit awards will be given out that cover up to 50% of tuition expenses per recipient.
To apply for the award, please send the department a detailed description of your career and personal accomplishments, and why you feel you are deserving of such an award. This can include academic successes, professional successes, and personal achievements and stories.
Please include information about how you plan to use the degree to further your career, and share what you would like to be doing in five years. (Max 500 words - one page).
Include any and all materials that support your case. Be specific and persuasive in your document. The committee will be inclined to give awards to those applicants who best communicate their merits, accomplishments and future plans.
My statement:
I asked many questions about the life stories my parents would share:
Why didn't you have shoes to go to school?
Why did you have a dirt floor in your house?
Why did dad follow his sisters into the girl's bathroom on his first day at school?
Why didn't the two of you finish high school?
My mother did her best to explain but they did not know there was a world that existed beyond the empty fields in front of them. They didn't graduate high school or go to college but against all the odds they gave their children more than they ever dreamed possible but there were things they could not give. They did not speak with me of their dreams of college, internships or academic awards because they did not have them. Therefore academics did not become a part of my life until far too late. It took me many years to realize the importance of academics and what education can do for a person's life. I knew there was something more than having a roof over my head and food on the table so I strived for more in spite of everything. It has not always been easy and I have not always done it correctly but I have tried.
I found my way to Arizona State University (ASU) where I fell in love with psychology and neuropharmacology. I won an award for Outstanding Senior in Biopsychology and was then accepted into the Doctoral Program at ASU in Behavioral Neuroscience. In my first year, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease so I took a leave of absence from graduate school and cared for him. As the first in my family to graduate from high school let alone college, leaving graduate school was a difficult decision. Although I greatly valued my education at ASU, personal obligations altered my academic pursuits as well as my career. Years later I became caretaker to my mother when she was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma.
Through the challenges of taking care of my parents, I learned the benefits and detriments of our healthcare system for seniors and became impassioned to enhance the quality of care. When considering my future with a master's degree in the LHCO, in 5 years I would like to be at the forefront of well-organized home health programs as a consultant to healthcare organizations to guide them in better utilization of cost-effective preventative and post-acute care strategies within the senior population.
I ask for the merit scholarship so I may begin and end my M.A.S. in a timely manner. Am I deserving? I'm unsure. What I do know is I am resilient, hardworking, passionate and caring. I believe it is time for me to take time for myself to follow the career path I know I am meant to pursue, albeit somewhat later in life, so seniors other than my parents benefit from a high standard of care they all deserve and I can create.