Admission Essay – Birmingham Foundation Academy
My decision to choose the University of Birmingham as the headquarters for my future education comes from a variety of factors. Having grown up in Nigeria, I have experienced a number of difficulties throughout my life, all seen through the lens of a young country that is still struggling to find its place in the world. The primary source of wealth in the Nigerian government today is oil, a substance which has caused quite a bit of strife and corruption in my country – the way it is refined, distributed and taxed still suffers from quite a few problems. To that end, I want to make a demonstrable difference in my home country by completing the Engineering degree program at the University of Birmingham. For this and other reasons, I believe the University of Birmingham has the ideal program for me to pursue my career as a chemical engineer.
One of the reasons I am most attracted to the University of Birmingham is the caliber and quality of the engineering programs this prestigious university provides. According to The Guardian, the University of Birmingham is the third best Chemical Engineering school in the UK, behind the University of Cambridge and Imperial College; this translates to higher-quality curricula, experienced faculty, and hands-on training with the tools required of a practical engineering education. Furthermore, the University of Birmingham allows you to find a specialization in Engineering, including international and industrial studies which permit their students to study abroad. This is of particular interest to me, as I am always looking to expand my own sense of other cultures and the way they conduct their own engineering programs. Furthermore, the Industrial study provides me with a practical, workable set of insights into the real-world workings of chemical engineering.
Independent of the specific benefits to my preferred field the University of Birmingham provides, I hope to take advantage of other attributes of this institution. For instance, Birmingham’s reputation for strong athletics in a variety of sports is something I am quite interested in. I absolutely love playing football, and have played since I was very young, so I would like to carry over my current abilities and experience in my current school to the university setting. As an avid fan of art, and someone who always wants to expand their horizons in the world of painting and sculpture, I would also love to take advantage of the university’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts; through this and other creative outlets in the University of Birmingham, I hope to become more art-literate and see some of the most treasured works of art in the world in close proximity to my place of study.
For these reasons and more, I would love the opportunity to take advantage of the high-quality education I would receive at the University of Birmingham. Between the stellar caliber of the chemical engineering program, the study abroad opportunities available, and the arts and sports culture on campus, the University of Birmingham would provide the expertise and training I need to fulfill my potential as a chemical engineer. These skills would, in turn, allow me to make substantial changes in my home country and culture (which is in dire need of direction and a way out of institutional corruption) through expert, ethical work in Nigeria’s oil industry.
