Graduate school application, statistic and actuarial science related
Admission essay
"199 RMB (31.5 dollars) in a lump sum today; you and your sweetheart will get 10,000 roses if you get married on any day less than 10 years after 3 years" –Love Insurance
The experience of purchasing “love insurance” was amazing and gave me the chance to get access to insurance services. I learned about this insurance to know the probability of getting these roses. I got to know that this was the work of the actuaries. How can the actuaries "deceive" us to purchase insurances which seems to be more favorable to consumers but bring insurance companies huge profits? I learned that their "weapons" were mathematics and statistics. It shocked me that mathematics and statistics could be applied to unleash such a marvelous potential.
The summer of 2017 changed my life and directed me deeper into the world of actuaries. I joined a study tour in which I had a chance to communicate with actuaries face to face on Wall Street. At that time, being a qualified actuary has planted seeds in my heart.
Becoming an actuary is no easy job, but I have the confidence that I will excel in actuaries with my perseverance and dedication. Faced with intense research assignments, I could only spare weekends to prepare for the actuarial exams. Self-studying actuarial knowledge is a time-consuming procedure, as a full-time student, I was always on a tight schedule. The hardest time for me was that the deadlines for submitting a professional paper and sitting Statistical Methods examination coincided. I learned to use time more efficiently and motivated myself to keep high morale, even kept running every day to release pressure. Thanks to my perseverance, I created one miracle after another. I passed the Finance and Financial Reporting, Statistical Methods, and Economics examinations.
With the advent of big data and artificial intelligence, I realized that a qualified actuary needs a strong data analysis capability in addition to a solid professional foundation. Therefore, I participated in an internship in the marketing department of China Telecom, which is promoting the Bestpay service. The manager handed me raw data of 90 million users of China Telecom. In the face of variables of more than 100 dimensions, I used the model selection methods such as Information Criteria and Lasso for factor screening and obtained more than 10 most important factors through screening. I found that the user's monthly recharge amount, recharge amount and recharge time have a strong correlation with the user's use of the Bestpay service. Therefore, I propose to the manager to send more coupons to attract more target people to recharge, thereby further increasing the use of the Bestpay business. After further improvement of this program by other team members, the activity of the Bestpay business has increased by 30%. This experience ignited my passion and strengthened my determination to explore data one step further.
To become an outstanding actuary in modern society, I need more professional actuarial training, analyzing data skill, practical experience, and broader international perspective. The master of Actuarial Science at J. Mack Robinson College of Business is perfect for me. I am deeply attracted by the specialized curriculum for Society of Actuaries Exams, the strong faculty group with significant professional and academic experience, dual degrees program for MAS/MSA, and more important, collaborating with partner firms on data analytics and machine learning in Robinson’s fintech lab. All of these will arm me with a solid actuarial knowledge as well as analytics skills. Additionally, as the only school accredited by the SOA as a CAE in the Southeast, Robinson will benefit me tremendously when hunting jobs, especially in Atlanta, which includes a lot of insurance companies. Overall, I think this is the best training program for me to become a qualified actuary.
After graduation, I would like to be an actuary in an insurance or reinsurance company. Meanwhile, I will continue to take the rest of the Society of Actuaries Exams. Challenging works in the insurance company will only speed up my progress in the profession. As the Chinese capital market continues to reform and liberalize, I convinced that the insurance industry will flourish in China. The time is ripe for, I will come back to China to establish my insurance consulting firm and provide professional guidance and personal insurance consultancy for more Chinese people.
