Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

Employ critical thinking and evidence-based problem-solving skills in making decisions.

The ability to solve a problem is a necessity in any profession. Without the use of critical thinking, solving most problems are impossible. Throughout my academic career and extracurricular activities at Texas A&M, I have had to solve many problems that require a great deal of critical thinking. Those skills have made me into a creative and resourceful leader.

In my senior year of my undergrad career, I had the opportunity to chair one of the committees of the MSC, our student union. I had to work with the chairs of the 18 other committees to plan and approve special programs for the benefit of the student body. I also led my specific committee of 8 executives and 40 general members in hosting our weekly programs. The committee I led was our campus film committee, where we facilitated film screenings on a weekly basis across campus. I was tasked with securing film rights, reserving rooms, and overseeing our marketing apparatus. When working with my executives, we often had disagreements about certain aspects of our program, and I had to exercise critical thinking in order to find compromises to these disputes. Constantly having to solve problems like these really helped me hone my critical thinking and mediation skills.

In this program, I had plenty of opportunities to strengthen my problem solving and critical thinking skills. By working in teams of people with different perspectives and having to work together to solve complex problems, I had to become very good at critical thinking. I demonstrated this in LDEV 661, where we had a project in which we conducted a site analysis for a 71-acre property in College Station. A portion of the property had to be dedicated to a detention pond, while another large portion was a greenway maintained by the city, which meant we could not develop on it. My team and I had to work together to make the most out of the space we could use. Click below to read my team’s report.