If you have decided to enter a European or American university, then we recommend that you take care in advance to write a motivation letter correctly. Even without a cover letter, it is often impossible to apply for a vacancy on a specialized portal – https://layboard.in/vacancies/jobs-in-uae.
A cover letter is not a guarantee that your resume will be opened and read. But a good letter can make a potential employer pay attention to you. Especially if your industry is highly competitive.
But there are exceptions. So, writing a cover letter often does not make sense if you are applying for a line staff position, such as a salesperson or cashier. As a rule, the flow of responses to such vacancies is large, and the recruiter may not have time to read the letters of all candidates. Whether or not to write a letter in this case is up to you. If you have extensive experience as a salesperson or cashier, it is better to reflect it in your resume. In this case, you can get by with a formal short letter.
A motivation letter is, in fact, your essay, in which you must tell in as much detail as possible about yourself as a person, as well as why you want to enter the particular university where you are applying. The task of the applicant is to describe as many of their interests as possible, to talk about the goals and real dreams that can be achieved through education, to describe those achievements and situations that make you feel proud of yourself. That is, this is your written self-portrait from the best angle. And it has practical benefits:
- Thanks to your detailed story, the selection committee gets the opportunity to get to know you better even without a personal meeting. In the process of reading the essay, the admission committee understands whether it will be comfortable for you to study at their university, what opportunities for development they can offer you, whether you will pull their program. On the other hand, they evaluate whether you are a good fit for them as a student;
- A motivation letter shows not only your ability to logically and consistently express your thoughts, but also your level of knowledge of the English language. That is, the selection committee, even without an international English test, already has the opportunity to assess your real level of knowledge of a foreign language.
So, if you don’t know how to write a motivation letter yet, we recommend that you study as many examples as possible in as much detail as possible, think about the structure and learn exactly how to create a really capacious essay that will show you from the best sides.
But before we show you the structure of a motivation letter, we recommend that you learn more about the purpose of this text. Before writing an essay, you should clearly answer the questions: “Why should I enter this university?”, “What is the value of this university as an applicant?” training place?
Accordingly, the entire text should have the main points:
Show you from those sides that the admissions committee appreciates in their applicants. To do this, you must draw up a portrait of a student who studies at this university. What is this student interested in? What are his hobbies?
- Reveal your sincere desire to study at a particular university.
- Show the features that make you a unique university.
- Indicate the places of previous studies, courses.
- Attach diplomas, certificates of participation in olympiads and competitions.
The style of the letter should be diplomatic, but at the same time confident and convincing. And now let’s move on to specific schemes that will answer your question: “How to write a motivation letter?”
How to write a motivation letter?
To correctly compose a motivation letter in English, you need to know what stages it consists of writing, as well as to know what the admission committee of European universities likes and what they absolutely dislike.
What are the steps in writing a motivation letter?
Preparatory stage
At this stage, it is important to think carefully about your real goals, dreams, ambitions and far-reaching life plans. Many students do not fully understand why they need higher education abroad. Their parents are ready to invest a lot of money, but at the same time, no one knows for sure whether a diploma will be useful in the future.
To prevent this from happening, each applicant must seriously weigh the pros and cons that relate to studying abroad. And if your true desire is really connected with studying, and then working abroad, then it makes sense to try.
It is also necessary to remember everything: important competitions and olympiads, your camp summer adventures, where you actively showed yourself as an organizer, your participation in school stand-ups or victories in competitions. Because when it comes to writing a letter, students do not know what to remember, what their merits to write, or how to conquer the admissions committee.
After you have found more than one diploma and victory in the competition in your memory, start writing. Of course, you do not need to immediately write about your emotions and send a letter. Need to prepare several test options, double-check everything, and give a motivation letter to read to someone from outside. And only after that start writing.
Stage of writing
When writing a letter, you must be guided by a lively style. No one will be surprised by the formulaic phrases that can be found in every textbook. Be original, write succinctly and interestingly, use the storytelling technique, divide the entire text into an outset, climax and denouement, as in a fascinating story. So you can evoke emotion, and you definitely won’t go unnoticed.
Editing stage
Of course, if you have a high level of English, you can immediately send a letter to the university. But we recommend playing it safe. You need to understand that such a motivation letter can be your chance to successfully enter. And, therefore, you need to use the help of a good tutor who can correct possible mistakes, correct the writing style, and make semantic changes.
It is better to choose a specialist who is not the first time working with motivational letters. You can easily find an English tutor who is preparing for admission to foreign universities on the BUKI website.
Mandatory topics that should be in a motivation letter
A motivation letter for admission should contain such important elements. You can take note of this list so you don’t forget anything:
- topic “About me”. Speak confidently about yourself, praise yourself, appealing with arguments, arrange the members of the selection committee with your special writing style, originality of presentation, description of situations that can tell about you better than the standard set of epithets;
- theme “Motivation”. A person without motivation is a person who stands in the same place for a long time. Show that you are ready to develop, you are ready to work for the result, you are ready to invest in resources, because you understand why you need it;
- Theme “The Ultimate Goal” If there is motivation, then it must move towards a specific goal. It is a mistake to consider admission to a foreign university as the goal. The university should be a springboard to a real goal. Where do you see yourself in the future? What are you going to do? Why do you need a diploma? Write about it in this paragraph. The admission committee makes a choice in favor of students who have far-reaching plans.
Important features of writing a motivation letter for admission to a university abroad
It is important not only to think over the plan of the motivation letter in detail, but also to take into account the features of what the admissions committee likes and dislikes. For example, it is important to be sensitive in the following matters:
- the presentation of the text must be original, but at the same time it is not necessary to allow a lot of humor, since in another country there may be other meanings of jokes;
- it is better not to use ambiguous topics and stories, everything should be as clear and simple as possible;
- you do not need to write about yourself on three sheets of text, it is important to adhere to the specified volume;
- It is important to adhere to a certain chronology in the description of events.
At the same time, the admission committee really likes it when:
- the letter is engaging from the very first lines, and it becomes interesting to read it;
- all facts, events, regalia are tactfully mentioned in the process of describing different situations, and are arranged in a logical chain, which demonstrates your analytical mind;
- there are no grammatical and spelling errors, and in general the text is succinctly divided into paragraphs and sections.
Good luck!
