Motivational letter for master in finance

Hello everyone, I'm applying for a master of science in Bocconi. English is not my first language so I came here hoping that you can revise and correct my letter as far as grammar and spelling is concerned. Thank you in advance . There is my letter:

Dear Professor XXX,

My name is XXX and I am a second-year student at Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi. I am currently studying “Economia Aziendale e Management” and I wish to apply for the Master of Science in Finance starting in September 2018.

Since I was a child, if someone asked me what I would want to do when I grow up I have always said in a very naïve yet spontaneous way that I wanted to work in a bank. This desire initially came from the great admiration and esteem I have of my grandfather and my aunt, who have always told me that “they worked in a bank”, as probably they thought I couldn’t understand anything more specific at that age: later I learned that my grandfather had been the CEO of XXX and my aunt is currently working for XXX, which has been recently acquired by the XXX.

Growing up, I have always kept this idea of “working in a bank” in the back of my mind and around the fourth year of High School I realized that it was time for me to set things in motion if I wanted to make my dream come true. I gathered information on Bocconi and on the recruitment process and discovered that I would need very good grades to have a chance of getting in. Since that moment, I turned my life around: my grades were really low as I wasn’t really studying, I had already failed my first year in high school and I only had one year and a half to try and apply for Bocconi. In just two years, I went from being the worst student in my class to be among the best ones, I took the admission test and was the only one among my schoolmates to make it in, despite the odds.

At the time, I didn’t have a clear and specific picture of what I would want to do so I choose the Bachelor in Economics and Management as it seemed to me that it was the one which would give me a taste of all the areas and disciplines that later I would be able to choose as a Master of Science. However, my initial inclination was confirmed, as even if I liked all my courses, Financial institutions and Financial mathematics were my favorite ones and realized that a Master in Finance was my final goal. As a consequence, I decided that I needed and wanted to study finance on my own and I attended several MOOCs on websites like Coursera, where among others I attended Bocconi’s “Private Equity and Venture Capital” taught by Stefano Caselli, and EdX to satisfy my interest, which further reinforced my belief as I really enjoyed subjects like corporate finance, risk management and investment management. In the meanwhile, like I did in high school, I gathered information on the Master of Science in Finance and I discovered that was one of the most competitive Masters to get into as far as grades are concerned, so I strived to get very good grades in these two years, reaching a GPA of 29.5 just before the last exam I took in June, which was Private law. This allowed me to participate in the early session for the admission in Bocconi’s postgraduate courses and hence the opportunity to write this letter and explain my story, my journey and my goals.

I choose to stay in Bocconi as the past two years have been truly challenging, fun and exciting and of course because of the phenomenal reputation that Bocconi has in Europe, especially its Master in Finance. This course covers all the key areas of Finance, which is just perfect for me as of course I’m still discovering and deciding in which area I would want to work between corporate finance, investment banking or consulting for financial firms. Secondly, I really like the fact that all the alumni say that this course has a good balance between theory and practical application, which I believe is what will really make a difference in my future career and because, during these two years, I often felt the need to gain more practical knowledge on what I studied. Also, I can't wait to be able to use all the opportunities that Bocconi University is famous for offering its students in terms of meetings, seminars and networking opportunities with leading firms representatives.

I hope you will consider my application to your Master as I consider myself an extremely motivated and ambitious student who turned around his academic life and attitude with the aim to get in Bocconi and then in your postgraduate course. As I understand, this course attracts highly motivated students who are very competitive: recently I have read an interview of your predecessor, Stefano Caselli, in which the interviewer asks about the competitiveness among the students and, when asked to give some advice to future and actual finance students, he said that it is very important to strive for cooperation and teamwork. I believe I would be able to cooperate, as I did during the past two years: just a couple of weeks ago a member of my class called me to thank me for the notes on Financial Institutions that I gave him back in October saying that he got the maximum grade thanks to them. It really made me happy and smile as he was very happy and it pleasantly caught me off guard, since I had forgotten about it. I’m always happy to help my colleagues because I was always denied help in high school by my schoolmates and I am confident enough not to fear that my colleagues will do better than me.

Thank you in advance for considering my application.

Yours sincerely,

XXX