Example Of Essay On My Academic Aspirations

An individual’s professional success greatly depends on the kind of education and training he obtains. Hence, pursuing knowledge in a reputed institution is of great significance in one’s life. At this point in my life, as a short term plan I want to pursue MS in Accounting Degree from a great Business School. I believe that Lubin Business School will be the best place to fulfil my educational aspirations. My educational background, experience, and life ambition will prove that I am well-suited to be a candidate for the course in your institution.
I have worked at the New York County District Attorney’s Office since 2004. Retrospectively, my desire to gain MS in Accounting Degree sprouted since 2005. My first position was as an investigative analyst at the Money Laundering and Tax Crimes Unit, and as I worked diligently with prosecutors and forensic accountants on many money laundering and tax crimes cases, I started developing a love, desire and drive to bring together a case. It was almost like a jigsaw puzzle to me. I could not wait to fit the pieces of the puzzle together until I saw the big picture. I loved to make a glimmer of suspicion become verified doubt through my findings. I loved to collect data, subpoena bank records, impatiently await for those bank records, read and analyze the data, place this data on an excel sheet and let this data speak to me.
However, what I found frustrating was that I would work on long excel sheets, identify patterns, but was not allowed to testify as an expert on my work in the Grand Jury or at trial because I did not possess a degree in accounting. It was at this point when I really started planning to apply to an MS in Accounting program. This goal was placed on hold after the Chief of the Trial Division of the New York County District Attorney’s Office asked me personally to work under her with a prosecutor to revamp the ancient way of storing case information at the District Attorney’s Office. Up until this point, all information gathered throughout the course of a case by any prosecutor at the New York County District Attorney’s Office was stored in paper boxes that were placed in a storage area. Information collected during one investigation that could be vital to another prosecutor’s investigation few years down the line was not readily accessible. The Chief of Trial Division asked us to manually feed and store all the information that was in boxes and in papers into a password-protected search engine. It was a very tedious job to go through hundreds of boxes, but very rewarding to see and hear the comments from the attorneys of how certain information that was found on the new system helped make their case.
In 2010, I was asked to join a new and exciting unit that focused on developing and implementing crime prevention strategies to address crime issues in Manhattan. The police precincts of Manhattan were grouped into five geographic areas with one prosecutor from CSU assigned to focus on and understand the criminal activity in that area. As a Senior Intelligence Analyst in the Crime Strategies Unit, I was assigned to work with a team of prosecutors, investigators, community affairs liaisons and police officers to focus on understanding, analyzing and documenting the criminal issues of a specific area. My job as an Intelligence Analyst was to synthesize all this information gathered into a compact narrative, an excel sheet when it came to crime statistics. All this information was searchable and available to the district Attorney’s office, and also shareable with other law enforcement agencies. CSU became a breeding ground for new technologies that would help the prosecutors to become more effective at fighting crime and facilitating the share of information between the District Attorney’s Office and Police Department. It was fantastic to be part of a groundbreaking new unit at the District Attorney’s Office. While I was still working in CSU, the Chief of Bureau Based Project at the time asked me to work exclusively with him on a large-scale drug investigation, a wiretap investigation. I was asked to work specifically with three prosecutors and Manhattan Narcotics North. It was a challenge but something different and exciting, and I was very willing to rise up to the challenge. There were 34 targets including their families and associates to be investigated and analyzed. To be specific, their addresses, bank accounts, previous arrest records, family members etc had to be analyzed. The wiretap was very paper intensive. There were hundreds of transcripts of phone conversations that were transcribed by the police officers at the plant, brought over in paper form and saved in a thumb drive. My job was to review the paper transcriptions, listen to all phone conversations for any red flags such as mention of names, nicknames of cooperators, addresses, banks etc. I would highlight this info and also place it in an excel sheet and forward it to the prosecutors and make my recommendations as to the next step to be taken. Very often that next step would be to subpoena bank records for the defendants or their family members. Biggest question mark in an all cash drug organization was where all the thousands of dollars of profit a day were being stored. I became very fascinated with that part of the investigation. I subpoenaed the bank records of all the defendants and their family members. I scheduled the bank records and forwarded them to the prosecutors and the prosecutors would forward them to the forensic accountants in the office. I became spellbound with the flow of money, the way the money was laundered. The drug kingpin had each family member deposit a very small amount, below the reporting threshold into different branches to avoid. Also how he had purchased cars and was using a hairdressing business as a front business for his money laundering. The investigation ended up in the prosecution of all 34 defendants for conspiracy and money laundering. I worked very hard for 6 months on the investigation and still I was not allowed to testify in the Grand Jury for the preparation of the schedules because I did not have an accounting degree.
Now I am determined and very much eager to study accounting so that I can be better qualified to run a money laundering investigation by myself from its inception to trial and be able to testify as an expert whether it is in the Grand Jury or trial. I assure you that if given the opportunity, I will prove myself a capable and dedicated student in your esteemed institution. I believe that I have the commitment and the determination to complete the Accounting classes successfully and fulfill my ambition to become a Certified Public Accountant at the end.