Environmental Science Personal Statement Example 7

Standing on the football field, watching as the smoke cloud from a nearby wildfire swept over the hill and headed for directly above us, is a picture I will never forget. The sun became a small red dot, ashes covered our cars and the sky became one giant dark cloud. I'd never been so terrified in my life. This moment made me realise how truly important it is that we take care of our environment. Our planet consists of many unique ecosystems with thousands of species that can only survive in certain conditions, and so many yet unknown things to be discovered.

As we're still learning all these things about our planet, we're also starting to destroy it. In the last couple years, the environment has been on the news almost constantly. From icecaps melting, to volcanoes erupting, to wildfires burning and to animals being classed as endangered. The list of disasters doesn't seem to end. To add on to all that, de-forestation on mass scale and the burning of fossil fuels are increasing our carbon dioxide emissions on a global level rapidly, leaving us with less time to make a change.

All of the things mentioned above are why I chose an environmental course. I want to be able to learn about how this world works and about how we could make it better. That could go from figuring out new ways to clean our oceans to working to preserve a species on the verge of extinction. The earth we live on is very complicated and some things we can't even begin to understand, but I want to be a part in figuring it out.

Sciences and mathematics have been my main academic focus in school for the past four years. I've been able to establish a wide base for biology, chemistry, geography and physics while also receiving six hours of advanced math class every week. Studying an environmental course at university would allow me to apply all of them in real life situations and to use them to solve various issues, which is exactly what I want to do.

Not only have I been able to get a wide knowledge about each of these subjects, they also helped me develop useful skills like how to properly research information, process it and extract the key ideas. They further showed me how to efficiently communicate and organise projects with others.

For example, this year, all of the graduating students got the opportunity to conduct their own research project in pairs on a topic they want to investigate more. We chose chemistry and are researching the influence of different kinds of fats in our diet. This project has given me the chance to apply everything I've learnt, from sciences and team working skills, into my own research. It has taught me the proper steps needed to get accurate results, write lab reports and how to draw conclusions out of them. Just like I will need to at university.

Living abroad with my family and by myself over the past couple years, gave me the chance to get to know and fall in love with different cultures around the world. Both the international school in Latvia and the public high school in California, have made me see the world in new perspectives.

This was a very important milestone in my life: having the possibility to meet and work with students from many different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. While I love my home in Belgium, I am eager to discover more places in the world. Wanting to continue my education in English, I've chosen to study in Scotland for 2 reasons: it has some of the best universities in Europe and I feel attracted to its great culture, history and citizens.

To summarise everything I've said above, I believe myself to be a very capable and valuable student to join university. I've grown up speaking multiple languages, achieved great academically and I've got the motivation to keep going. Most importantly, I'm sure of what I want to do in the future; I want to be part of making our world environmentally stable again.

Applied to:
University of Strathclyde (offer)
University of Edinburgh (not accepted because of insufficient documents)
University of Dundee (offer)
University of Stirling (offer)
University of Aberdeen (offer)