UCL Personal Statement Example: Energy econometrics researcher to market design (Score 92)

During my third year, I spent several weeks trying to reconcile two sets of numbers that refused to agree: provincial electricity consumption data from China's National Energy Administration and the wholesale price signals embedded in regional dispatch records. The gap was not a data error. It was a structural feature of how the market had been designed, and no econometric correction would close it without first understanding the policy choices that produced it. That realisation shifted the centre of my work from estimation to explanation. My undergraduate major in electricity market econometrics gave me the quantitative foundation, but a research project in early 2025 forced a different kind of question. Leading the literature review and evidence synthesis for a faculty memo on how market design affects price formation under high-renewable penetration, I kept encountering the same constraint: a well-specified model applied to a badly designed market produces precise answers to the wrong question. A working paper from that project is currently under internal departmental review. A subsequent internship made the gap concrete. Tasked with translating econometric findings into a briefing note for a non-specialist planning discussion on market reform options, I had to decide what to foreground, what to qualify, and what to omit. That editing process — not the modelling — exposed how much policy work depends on the analytical bridge between evidence and decision, and how little my training had prepared me to build it. I want to study MSc Energy Policy at UCL because the programme sits precisely at that bridge. The combination of energy economics, regulatory frameworks, and applied policy analysis addresses the gap I have identified: I can model markets, but I need more rigorous grounding in the institutional and governance dimensions that determine whether market design works in practice. I am particularly drawn to modules such as Energy Policy and Regulation, which would let me examine the legal and institutional architecture behind the market structures I have been modelling, and to the programme's engagement with live UK reform debates. The proximity to Ofgem and ongoing discussions around the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements means I can test ideas against current regulatory questions rather than settled cases. After the MSc, I intend to pursue research connecting econometric market analysis to regulatory design — through a doctoral programme or within a policy research institution. The goal is not to stay inside the model but to make the model useful to the people who set the rules the model assumes away.