Dear Admissions Board,

I am Chen Yutong, applying for the International Bachelor Communication and Media for the September 2027 intake. I want to study communication because of one question: How public-interest information becomes a decision people can understand and act on.

My preparation began at Hangzhou No. 14 High School, Chinese-English programme, where I combined English-language coursework with social research and school media. In a bilingual school recycling campaign tested with 46 student interviews, I compared responses across three year groups and revised the message after the first version attracted attention but little action. The revised collection map and shorter instructions led to 128 additional bottle returns in the following month. This taught me to treat communication as a testable public tool rather than a decorative message.

I chose this programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam because the international classroom and active, self-directed learning model match my way of learning through evidence and discussion. I am drawn to learning with classmates who bring different cultural assumptions to the same communication problem. I also value a course that asks students to explain their choices, listen critically and connect theory with the world outside the classroom.

My cross-border preparation includes a six-week English-language youth media exchange with students from Finland and Indonesia. The experience did not make me an expert in intercultural communication; it made me more careful about checking whether the same message carries the same meaning for different audiences.

At university, I will keep a small research log, practise evidence-based campaign evaluation and join a student project on a social or environmental issue. In the longer term, I hope to work in public-interest communication in Asia, helping organisations explain complex issues without flattening cultural differences. This direction may develop as I learn more, but my immediate goal is clear: to become a careful communicator who can ask better questions, work with evidence and make space for different audiences.

Thank you for considering my application. I would welcome the opportunity to contribute a curious, collaborative and responsible perspective to the international classroom at Erasmus University Rotterdam.