Help fund Assyl's studies at Fudan, Shanghai! Xie Xie!

Assylbek Muratbek Start Date: Jun 21, 2018 - End Date: Aug 31, 2018
  • Shanghai, Китай

My Travel Story

by: Assylbek Muratbek Start Date: Jun 21, 2018 - End Date: Aug 31, 2018
Hi,

My name is Assylbek and I am from Kazakhstan. Thank you for taking the time to read my campaign.
     
Currently, I am a full-time student at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) majoring in Industrial and Systems Engineering. Recently, I have become obsessed by an idea of learning Chinese and thus applied and was consequently accepted by the Chinese Language Program offered by Fudan University in Shanghai. This is a first-class program aimed at teaching Chinese to foreign students and that is supported by highly qualified staff and decades-long experience. There is a program fee and when applying for the program, I knew that in case if I am accepted I would need to seek sponsorship, since it would be very difficult for my family to afford it. I thus aim at raising 5300 USD for covering the program’s expenses.

What I am interested in               

Throughout my entire school life, I was passionate about mathematics and physics and in fact, I earned my first money by tutoring these two subjects. When choosing a major, I was sure that it would be something technical, and thus I have chosen to study Industrial Engineering (IE), since it is a branch of engineering most closely related to management and interaction with people, and I like it too. Fortunately, I was once advised by a teacher of mine to apply to PolyU, and eventually I got in. It was a great option for me since it offered an IE-related major and I was awarded an entrance scholarship, and that has made the education possible for me.

Having arrived in Hong Kong, along with adjusting to local life, I started taking control of my university studies from the first weeks of classes, and that eventually resulted in me getting the highest possible GPA for the first semester. As a result, in my second semester, I, a first-year student, was selected for joining the University Exchange Program and was the only one from the Faculty of Engineering to be nominated for a place at the University of Birmingham, a top-ranked university in the UK.

In addition to scoring high marks at university, in my first year, I aimed at deciding on some fields I would concentrate on throughout the rest of my university life so that to maximize my potential and increase my competitiveness. I was still very passionate about mathematics and found the field of artificial intelligence very interesting, and thus, I have become particularly interested in Machine Learning (ML), mainly because of its interdisciplinary nature. I spent the whole summer away from my family studying ML and programming and as a result, I got even more interested in studying the field, since the idea of deriving essential insights out of seemingly chaotic data seems simply astonishing.

When beginning my studies in the UK, I took risks and was allowed to study three senior-level ML-related courses. Despite of the difficulty level of the courses, I managed to score a distinction and two merits for the courses, supported by a couple of recommendation letters from the professors. This would not be possible without the summer preparation and thus I believe this can demonstrate the efficiency of my self-learning abilities. In addition, I took a “Supply Chain Management” course, which I enjoyed very much and have consequently studied the field more in deep by myself. Here, the idea of taking a systemic approach when working with an entire chain of supplies and gaining competitive advantage through achieving synergies resulting from tuning numerous parameters throughout the chain seems exciting. As I discovered later, Machine Learning techniques’ application is crucial in optimizing the ways Supply Chain Management is performed, since it becomes more feasible to work with large amounts of data and identify complex relationships among numerous factors, and thus coming up with more insightful solutions.

My goal

I have a strong desire to contribute to the development of my country. When studying Supply Chain Management, I decided that to facilitate my future professional career I should narrow the scope of competence by focusing on a particular geographical area. Here, it was more reasonable to seize some competitive advantages of mine, and which are the knowledge of the culture of Kazakhstan and the opportunity of integration into the Chinese society and comprehending the Chinese culture. In other words, I decided to set a goal of becoming an expert who could contribute to the development of business relationships between Kazakhstan and China and set up favorable business environment through improving chains of supplies.

Why Chinese?

As a manager I will need to interact with different sorts of people, such as company customers and employees, vendors, and third-party providers, and since I see myself as working in China for some time in future, it is crucial for me to be able to speak Chinese so that to minimize the existing language barrier. This is the main reason for my desire to learn Chinese. As the saying goes, “the best way to understand a country and its people is to learn the language”, and thus I believe that learning Chinese will positively influence my thinking and perception.

Why a year in China?

Learning Chinese in China for a year:

* will enable me to focus on learning the language, since no other courses will be given except Chinese language and culture courses during the program;

* in Shanghai, unlike in Hong Kong, I will be immersed in the Mandarin Chinese speaking environment, and that will facilitate my learning, as I will be exposed to a wider range of words and dialogues;

* I will get extra motivation from learning Chinese together with hundreds of other learners coming to Fudan with the same goal as me;

* will enable me to build up high-quality social capital due to Fudan’s high selectivity.

I believe that this will kick start my learning of Chinese and will give me a strong foundation to keep on mastering the language in Hong Kong afterwards.

Where the money will go 

My family is working hard at turning this opportunity into reality, but we are seeking sponsorship to help offset the expenses. Regarding the amount requested, 3300 USD is needed to pay for the program tuition fee and the rest 2000 USD to partially pay for the accommodation expenses (1200 USD has already been raised). My family will take the responsibility for covering my daily expenses and plane tickets’ costs.

Why donate?

This might be an opportunity for you to ‘give back’ by making a donation. You can also get access to the knowledge and experience gained by me internationally and a network of connections made globally. I hope this could be of interest to you. I in turn guarantee complete dedication to the learning process and that I will make full use of the opportunity.

Thank you,

Assylbek Muratbek
  • Shanghai, Китай

More Travel Information