Calling 4000 generous people to donate $11.75 to fund graduate school

Backstory

I have been blessed enough to get into University College London (UCL) for my graduate studies in Systems Engineering Management.

I would like to request 4000 people to donate $11.75 towards my tuition. This small donation will go a long way to help me pay for school.

The Passion

I chose to become a systems engineer because it is a profession that demands being able to fully characterize and understand the purpose of the system. I wanted to build something incredible – something with a purpose and value to the world; something that highlighted the frontiers that STEM pushes and explores every day. As a 90s kid, I was in school when calculator watches were considered nerdy. Today, all the cool kids wear Fitbit and Apple watches. I wanted to oversee such an evolution myself. I was particularly fascinated by the space industry, which combined two of my great fascinations – space and large, complex systems. I loved the novelty and innovation that the space industry respectively provided and demanded. I loved the irony of being able to build a complicated system, and yet not fully understand or predict it. I loved being able to work in an environment where I am characterizing a system and realizing that a system is not a sum of its parts.

I worked hard for three years in this position at a major aerospace/defence company paying off undergraduate loans as well as gaining as much experience as possible. In light of my efforts, I was promoted within a year and given performance awards on five occasions over 2.5 years.

I have also been part of Women in Engineering (WIE) to encourage women to enter Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

The more I worked in my field, the more I came to firmly believe all that I had I dreamed of was within my grasp. Now, after much reflection and careful study, to formalize my education in specializing in Systems Engineering was the clear next step in what I had always seen as a career of upward ascendance.

The Need

Although it is clear that I have begun to realize my long envisioned hope of specializing in graduate school, largely due to immaturity and poor planning, my funding plan was not linear. Unfortunately, time has not been on my side. By the time I applied and was accepted, many of the scholarship applications had closed. Moreover, many of the applications were for PhD or postdoctoral students, not for Master’s. As a Canadian student applying to a university in the UK, my scholarship options were even more restricted.

I was naïve enough to believe that scholarships would be secured easily and overwhelmed by all other actions I had to take in order to embark on my studies to the UK. Still, I have not given up and I will continue to apply to as many funding opportunities as possible. I will take on a student line of credit from Canada to help fund my studies.

I have some savings ($10,000 CAD = 5957 GBP) from my three years of work, but it's not enough. Any help you provide will go towards my UCL tuition and rent. My expenses are as follows:

UCL Tuition: 28000 GBP (46998.31 CAD)
London Rent: 14280 GBP (23969.14 CAD)

Although I will have a student line of credit, I need to make a deposit for my tuition ASAP to reserve my spot.

I would like to ask you to help pay for my tuition. A donation of $11.75 from 4000 of you will help cover my tuition fees.

I believe this graduate school opportunity will provide me with the tools I need to design better systems and continue the upward ascendance from my previous employment. I believe that better systems engineering practices in any industry allows raw data to be converted into actionable intelligence – something that can be processed by a human in time to make policy and progress change. I will try my hardest to get through this financially. I will not give up on applying to scholarships and contests (whatever I find that I am eligible for). However, any assistance that I am provided will be a sigh of relief. I can’t promise what I will do with my graduate degree except pursue excellence in engineering.