Statement of Purpose

I am the first in my family who ever went to college. Coming from a low-income African American family, I had to overcome many challenges to graduate from college. My experience at the University of Texas at Austin has been tremendous. It has opened up exciting possibilities for my life, including the opportunity to get a higher degree. I have always believed in education. Growing up in a poor neighborhood in Houston, Texas I saw so many young men and women disillusioned, and never had the opportunities to experience a good college education. We need to make higher education more accessible to the urban poor. This will require concerted efforts both at the level of the educational institutions and the low-income communities. I want to be part of this effort.

I majored in ‘Youth and Community Studies’ with these aspirations in mind. As an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Austin, I worked in a number of education related capacities, as – middle school STAAR tutor, physical education teacher assistant, sports counselor at the YMCA of Greater Austin and as basketball coach for middle and high school girls. My job experiences have given me a wonderful opportunity to learn and work with people of different cultures, lifestyles, beliefs, and backgrounds. In particular, my teaching, tutoring and coaching experiences at Austin Discovery School and YMCA of Austin gave me a good perspective of how public and private schools operate, deepening my understanding of the field of education. Courses, such as “Sociocultural Influences of Learning”, “Individual Differences” and “Adolescent Development” [give the full names of the courses as they appear on your transcript] exposed me to the philosophies, techniques and ongoing debates on education. Among others, these courses have taught me to think in the larger perspective, to see how