Personal Statement for Applied Neuroscience MSc at King’s College London

Author: Fadil Karim

February 16th 2021

This supporting statement is going to be very uncomfortable, but I’d like you to understand that this is my intention as I intend to impress by utilising your visual stimuli to activate Neural Pathways that lead to activation of your Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area and Angular Gyrus to trigger the release of Cortisol and Epinephrine from your Amygdala. I will analyse your Psyche while I speak to you from the past. I will also attempt to release some Dopamine and Norepinephrine, and, if I am perfectly honest, this is the most crucial aspect of this statement. Your mono-amine release will be associated to the visual stimuli at the time of the release. These visual stimuli are being used due to your task of selecting the best candidates to pass on your fine work and knowledge. Notice how your mono-amine systems triggered for a brief moment in that last sentence. You may have released some Dopamine due to my attempt at flattery. This is unlikely as you have probably read many attempts of flattery from potential students who’d like to associate your Dopaminergic release to their personal statement. The Neurons of your Dopaminergic system have probably undergone long term depression when personal statement-based flattery is aimed in your direction. However, as a Neuroscientist, the last few sentences have released a Dopaminergic response in your brain due to the strange nature of the claims. Hence, you have associated a feeling of pleasure to this supporting statement which you are reading for my application, therefore, the Dopaminergic release has been associated to me. This paragraph probably potentiated those Neurons. Hence, your additional AMPA Receptors may be used for the next few candidates whose statements contain attempts of flattery. If I don’t get selected, write their names down and tell them to send me a letter of thanks for increasing their chances of selection.

Now it gets complicated for normal people. We on the other hand, are not normal people considering that fact that we can conversate like this, assuming that you’re still following and have not thrown this statement away due to the strange nature of the first paragraph. Notice how your brain creates a feeling of suspense when I mentioned the “first paragraph” as your mind wondered if the style of the other paragraphs will change. You worry that it won’t be as interesting. Or maybe you believe that it will be an improvement. “How can it get better than this?”, you may ask yourself. I must admit that I have do not have the knowledge to explain a potential Neuroscientific pathway of this thought process yet. So, what complicates things is your Serotonergic system now comes into play. Most humans find a life purpose in their work. Or, at the very least, work forms a big part of their life purpose. For you, work is teaching Neuroscience and selecting the best possible candidates to learn. The better you perform in your selection process, the better your job satisfaction, due to higher performing of candidates, which equates to a showcase of your fantastic skills as a selector. The better your choices, the higher the chances of Serotonin release later down the line. High Serotonin levels equate to a greater feeling of dominance and freedom. Now you must decide if this Dopaminergic release needs to be suppressed to favour the future potential of your Serotoninergic release, as well as that of your colleagues, as I may not have substance beneath my charms as my potential failure may cause grief for myself and blemish the reputation of King’s College. The deliberate wording of those last few sentences may have finally triggered your Amygdala as the wording may have insinuated selfishness on your part. Personally, I am a realist and would not class the kind of thinking described in those sentences as selfish. I’d class that thinking as a requirement for the betterment of the student and the University. I should also add that this entire analysis is based on no prior meeting between us, hence a potential for mistakes.

Speaking of potential failure, I am sure your visual stimuli have processed my transcript in your Occipital Lobe. After that, I am sure the visual information was processed in the Neurons reserved for comedy. I am not yet sure of where this area is located in the brain. It is true that I failed miserably, but I have come a long way and have studied Psychology and Neuroscience intently on YouTube and Coursera. In fact, I am currently halfway through studying “Medical Neuroscience”, a 13 week course, on Coursera. And I have completed a course called “Introduction to Psychology” and another one called “Schizophrenia”. “Medical Neuroscience” is taught by Dr. Leonard E. White of Duke University. The course is equivalent in difficulty and duration to a post graduate Medical module according to Dr. White. Participation in these courses should explain my knowledge and my passion for the idea of bridging of the gap between Psychology and Neuroscience. Furthermore, having the borderline narcistic mentality that I have, I applied to MENSA as I believed that I could prove myself as a top 2% IQ individual. It turned out that I’m only a top 5% IQ individual. Hence, I didn’t qualify for MENSA membership. I scored 138 (5th percentile) on the Cattell B test and 116 (11th percentile) on the Culture Fair test. However, although my cognition was not good enough for MENSA, my relatively high cognition shows that I am competent enough for this course. Although I have the letter from MENSA with my scores, I’m sure you wouldn’t accept it as proof due to potential for forgery, but, you are an elite Neuroscientist, a conversation or a reading of a persuasive letter can easily show you how likely it is that cognition is similar to those numbers.

My obsession with Psychology and Neuroscience came from a self-help Psychology book. As a University failure passing through the world, I found that my journey through life was going to be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, considering that I had planned my life around having a degree and making millions in the years to follow; the delusions of children can be comical sometimes. I had to act. I decided to learn from the books that had been recommended over the years. Ironically, when I turned up to the noticeboard and saw my student number under the “pass” degree section, I was confused, then, I found that a “pass” is lower than a third-class degree. I then worried for a few minutes, stuck my earphones in, and strolled out of the Engineering building while my brain released a powerful set of emotions that were built on foundations of resentment toward the idea that not having a good grade is going to hold me back. I projected myself onto the world as a “conqueror of cash” and I set out to improve myself to a level greater than all that have achieved a better grade than me. This could be explained by the possibly than I may have the VMAT2 Gene, also know as the “God Gene”, the gene that has been identified as one that gives its host the proclivity to believe in religion or spirituality due to the fact that those who have this gene have extremely uncontrollable volatility with regards to their mono-amine release. My Dopaminergic, Serotonergic and Norepinephrinergic system lit up in that moment as I created a future of prosperity and enjoyed the hormonal victory in my mind. It is for this reason that I believe that the VMAT2 Gene is more than its simplistic nickname insinuates. I will take a DNA test soon; it will be interesting to see if I have this gene. If not, interesting questions will arise with regards to explanations of my behaviours. Over the next few days, reality sunk in as everyone else shared their grades and I felt a sense of intellectual inferiority. Though I claimed to have a second-class degree to save myself the embarrassment. Over the years I leveraged Psychology to maneuver my way through the world of Engineering. My goal was simple, become more financially secure than the others. Leveraging Psychology for the self as well as influencing powerful people is how I got there. Unfortunately, to prove this point, I must delve into numbers which may risk creating a perception of narcissism on my part, however, it’s the only way to explain whether my young goal was achieve using Psychology as I have claimed. I will use percentiles to illustrate my point. In mid-2015, when I got my first job in engineering, after months of work as a Personal Trainer and attempts to enter Recruitment, I was in the 99th percentile of salaries in the UK. By October 2019 I reached the 10th percentile. Based on this, we can deduce that my Psychological experience has some weight due to the fact that I effectively had no degree. Chasing status and getting closer to it increased my Serotonin levels which created more confidence going forward, hence, more audacious attempts at success became a norm of my life.

To conclude, I have plans in Neuroscience. I want to use this opportunity to express my new childish delusions of shaking up the entire educational sector. I want to use the knowledge of Neuroscience to educate the world on the subject of Neuroscience on a mass scale. The key is in the visualisation and interactivity of the education. Combining visual stimuli with motor control is pivotal for successful learning in my opinion. Whether this is factual or not, I do not yet know or fully understand, hence my application. I am learning Adobe software during this third lockdown to help facilitate my dream. I have many ideas, a few of which I am setting up as we speak. I am telling you this to show you the basis of my Serotonergic motivation to excel in this course. I hypothesize that students with high Serotonergic motivation, for example, having a long term goal with the subject, going into a course likely attain higher grades than students who simply have Dopaminergic motivation, for example, having short term goals of just completing the course/module without Serotonergic plans. I also have the cognition and plenty of prior education to prove my ability. Notice that your Amygdala wasn’t as active as I claimed it would be, however, it was at the moment where I envisioned your future discomfort that your Amygdala was triggered. The rest of the statement was built specifically for your Dopaminergic activation.

I hope that you enjoyed reading my supporting statement and look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards,

Fadil Karim