Sample Career Plans

In writing application essays, you will likely have to describe your career plans. Even if an essay question does not ask you to describe them, it is often a good idea to do so.

Describing you career plans is just another way of expressing why you want to pursue graduate education and why a school should accept you. In describing your goals, show how having a graduate degree will make attaining them possible. Your career goals can either be modest or very ambitious. They must be realistic. Ask professors or someone knowledgeable in your field if you career goals are attainable. If you describe unrealistic or vague career goals, graduate schools will take this as evidence that you do not clearly understand the field, you are uncertain about graduate study, and/or you lack maturity. Below are some different ways to express your career goals.

I. One way to make your career goals seem realistic is by tying them to a current pursuit.

Currently, I am the editor of Cyberspace, a magazine concerned with all aspects of the Internet. After visiting thousands of web sites, I consider hypermedia not only related to my undergraduate background, but also a way to realize my artistic vision. Some of the most popular web sites display delicate art works. After completing the graduate program computer arts, I will be able help to improve this area of the web.

With a thorough grounding both in the computer techniques of the electronic media and in aesthetic concepts of the field, after completing graduate studies I hope to be an art editor for an Internet service provider, helping clients create their own home-pages and meeting their graphic design needs. Later, I plan on opening my own studio and becoming a web master, integrating the artistic and the technology and sharing my knowledge and experience with those interested in computer art.

II. Detailing career goals also provides a chance to reveal your understanding of the current state of your field.

 After finishing my MBA studies in marketing, I plan to return to Taiwan and work in the marketing group of an international bank. I believe that by that time, Taiwan will be one of the biggest and most important financial centers in the Asian-Pacific area, introducing many new financial products. With the use of these products becoming a key for success in the international trading environment, financial institutions will need to be able to market these products to gain market share. I hope to focus my work on mid-sized companies, which contributed a lot to Taiwan's past economic miracle but are now losing their international competitiveness. Most of these mid-sized companies view new financial products as toys to gamble and play with rather than tools to help them hedge risks. I hope to educate and persuade mid-sized companies to accept and use financial products to regain their competitive edge.

III. Relate your career goals to your proposed study plan, the courses you plan on concentrating on in graduate school. If the course track you want to pursue is only offered at one or a few schools you can also relate your career goal to your reasons for applying to a particular school.

After earning a master's degree in genetic counseling, my goal is to help promote humane genetic counseling and develop embryo genetics in Taiwan in order to fight hereditary diseases more effectively in their early stages and so lessen their cost to society. I am especially interested in the following topics: risk factors of schizophrenia and human behavior, hereditary disease detection and family pathological history tracing, embryo gene theory, and pre-embryo gene diagnosis.

In order to reach my goal, after earning my master's degree, I plan on working in the genetic counseling department of a hospital or government unit. Then I hope to pursue a doctoral degree. Since hereditary disease research in Taiwan is still in its early stages, soon after receiving my doctorate I plan to lead my own work team at a research center focusing on formulating prevention plans, promoting gene screening, and reducing the occurrence of hereditary diseases.