How I Landed a Full Scholarship with Copenhagen Business School

I’ve always known that I was going to apply to a Master’s program at some point.

I graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) back in 2017 and majored in economics. My interests lied in the intersection of quantitative and applied economics — applied econometrics, time series analysis, financial economics… all that fun stuff. But despite my interests, I’ve never had an affinity for any particular industry. I liked finance but I didn’t mind joining the Singaporean public sector; I wouldn’t mind a job in retail customer analytics, but research in labour market outcomes could be fun too. So two things became clear to me:

1. if job opportunities that involved rigorous data-related work were to come around, I’d most likely take a second look, but
2. my training in economics was insufficient for such work in the business/ commercial realm.

So I had to study again but more importantly, I also wanted to study again.

What, when and where to study?

“What” and “when” were in fact pretty straightforward: I knew I wanted data science or business analytics, and I would ideally like to enrol ASAP. “Where” on the other hand, was trickier considering tuition fees, and many other additional costs if I were to enrol abroad, which I was actually very inclined towards.

Master’s programs available to a Singaporean like myself are prohibitively expensive. So programs, schools and geographies aside, I also had to consider funding options and opportunities. I considered the US, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong… but my options quickly narrowed because very few schools offered partial scholarships, much less full ones. At the time of my application, the only other school besides Copenhagen Business School (CBS) that I had found to offer full scholarships for Master’s is Stanford. But with more research, DTU, ITU and KU in Denmark in fact also offer full scholarships for non-EU/ EEA students.

This then begs the questions:

Why CBS and what did I do for the scholarship?

Master’s programs have (nuanced) differences between them even if they have the same title. This depends on the school that’s offering the program. An engineering or technical school offering data science will likely focus on theoretical content with heavier emphasis on research, while a business school is likely to deliver with more focus on application and industry collaborations. I knew from the outset that my interest was in the application of data tools in the business realm so CBS was a clear choice for me.

CBS structured their Master’s application such that the motivation for your program choice and your scholarship application are all written together in a 2-page document. Full details of the application steps and guidelines are available here.

Tip 1: Optimally structure your personal statement

While CBS provided a list of pointers to help you craft your personal statement — which meant that you should minimally answer every point on the list — I was relatively clueless about how I should structure my statement. As advised by my mentor (thank you, Jessica!), because candidates usually apply to multiple schools, the first half of my statement should be a personal story and this part should be independent of the school that I was applying to. I would only need to amend the latter half of my statement for every application I sent.

With her advice, I was able to first focus on writing a personal story that led to my choice of studying data science, before justifying why each school is a good match to my profile and how I could contribute. If you are writing multiple personal statements, this will increase your efficiency.

Tip 2: Distill your personal story into actionable points

It is my personal take to always highlight key points in a clear, numbered manner. This is perhaps even more pertinent in the case of writing a personal story, where the likelihood to ramble on is higher as we might prefer to squeeze in as many achievements as possible.

My approach was then to simply structure my story such that it led into 3-4 actionable points that enrolling in my desired Master’s program will achieve for me.

Tip 3: Research, research and research

When explaining how each school, program and even geography will suit my goals, I sought to substantiate my points using information from course and program outlines, faculty members’ publications and background, alumni and seniors’ career choices and even the country’s macroeconomic indicators (I indicated my intention to seek employment in the country that I applied to).

My intention was to demonstrate my impressions of the program and the school were based on a comprehensive set of information, and to signal that I was firmly certain of my choice after conducting (what I thought was) extensive research.

Tip 4: Write in LaTeX

Besides your undergraduate transcript and degree that you submit to prove that you’ve met the prerequisites for your desired Master’s program and to show your GPA, CBS does not ask for any other qualifications. They also do not consider GRE and GMAT results. Because I was applying to data science, I had imagined the quickest way for me to signal some form of “code literacy” and to hopefully boost my credibility was to write my statement in LaTeX. This is ultimately not a requirement.

Logistically speaking however, the official CBS requirements ask for a 2-page personal statement, with no specific instructions on margin widths and line spaces. Writing in LaTeX gave me better flexibility (imo) to shape my text into the 2-page limit, while ensuring enough white-space in my document to aid comfortable reading for the selection committee. 🙂

Writing my personal statement was the biggest step in my application to CBS. There was no admission interview and the rest was just administrative work. Overall, if it has always been on your mind to apply for a graduate program, I hope the above will help you. If you have questions regarding other specificities, feel free to reach out in the comment box below. Good luck! 🙂

N.B. At the time of publishing this (February 2021), it is unfortunately too late for non-EU/ EEA folks to apply to CBS for this year’s enrolment. But do check out the other Danish universities or consider the following year if you’re keen!