¶ … civil engineering student, I am attempting to apply for the engineering management program, and although my grades are not as high as they could be, I am convinced that they do not adequately reflect my overall professional abilities and skills. For the longest of time, I have thought that grades are not such an important factor when compared to being able to apply the knowledge obtained at school to real-life experiences, such as one might find as a gainfully-employed professional civil engineer.

I would like to point out that despite the fact that I did not have a really high GPA, something above 3.5 or better, I was selected during my time as a sophomore to participate as an engineering intern at the State of Massachusetts Highway Department. Considering the number of other highly-qualified applicants for this position, I thought of myself as rather fortunate to have been chosen. Therefore, I decided to confidently apply what I had learned at school to this internship; I also decided that if I ever had any questions about something or felt a bit confused regarding my duties, I would not hesitate to ask one of my supervisors. These decisions certainly paid off, for during the summer of my junior year, I was asked if I would like to return as an engineering intern at the Massachusetts Highway Department as a result of my performance the year before.

Outside of my current academic work, I recently participated in a number of campus activities, such as Relay for Life. I also traveled abroad to the city of Beijing to study and take courses unrelated to my current field of studies; I was also an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and Alpha Phi Omega as a volunteer in the city of Syracuse, New York. Thus, because of these and other experiences, I have become a very well-rounded person and am confident that I can successfully complete all of the courses at the graduate level for the engineering management program.