The personal statement component of your application to the MSW Program at the University of St. Thomas
1. What personal, educational, volunteer, or professional experiences led to your interest in pursuing a master’s degree in social work at the University of St. Thomas? What are your professional goals, and how will a master’s degree in social work help you to achieve them? (1000 words or less)
2. The below statement from the Council on Social Work Education is a description of one of the nine core competencies, “Engage in Diversity and Difference in Practice”. After reading the statement, please answer the following question: What experiences, knowledge, or values have prepared you to engage in learning about justice, diversity, and difference in practice? (500 words or less). *
- Social workers understand how diversity and difference characterize and shape the human experience and are critical to the formation of identity. The dimensions of diversity are understood as the intersectionality of multiple factors including but not limited to age, class, color, culture, disability and ability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status, marital status, political ideology, race, religion/spirituality, sex, sexual orientation, and tribal sovereign status. Social workers understand that, as a consequence of difference, a person’s life experiences may include oppression, poverty, marginalization, and alienation as well as privilege, power, and acclaim.
- Social workers also understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination and recognize the extent to which a culture’s structures and values, including social, economic, political, and cultural exclusions, may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create privilege and power. Social workers:
a) Apply and communicate understanding of the importance of diversity and difference in shaping life experiences in practice at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels
b) Present themselves as learners and engage clients and constituencies as experts of their own experiences
c) Apply self-awareness and self-regulation to manage the influence of personal biases and values in working with diverse clients and constituencies