Step-by-Step guide to writing the Best Motivation Letter - PhD student — Transcript

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1. 0:00hi so i'm schlotte fraser a second year
2. 0:02phd in computational neuroscience at the
3. 0:05donders institute in the netherlands and
4. 0:07today i want to give you a step-by-step
5. 0:09method to write a motivation letter for
6. 0:12your bachelor's master's phd application
7. 0:16or perhaps a summer school or internship
8. 0:18you're trying to get into and i will
9. 0:20take you through my motivation letter
10. 0:22that will hopefully give you a little
11. 0:24bit of an idea how i wrote it how i
12. 0:26structure it and what i think about so
13. 0:28your motivation letter should be a
14. 0:30compliment to your cv so don't copy your
15. 0:34cv in your motivation letter it should
16. 0:36kind of show a combination of your
17. 0:38personality skills you acquired and some
18. 0:40hardships you overcame usually also in
19. 0:44applications for phd programs or master
20. 0:46programs they have specific questions
21. 0:49they want answered such as why did you
22. 0:51chose this master program or why did you
23. 0:54choose this phd and usually these
24. 0:56questions are in the description of the
25. 0:58program you're applying for so that's
26. 1:01already my first tip and that is to do
27. 1:03your research well know your audience
28. 1:06and know your own personal strengths so
29. 1:08with know your audience i mean know what
30. 1:11you're writing for and who you're
31. 1:13writing towards so for example if you're
32. 1:15writing for a specific professor in
33. 1:18physics or you're applying for a
34. 1:20specific phd program in physics i would
35. 1:22really emphasize on your physics skills
36. 1:24right whereas if you're applying to a
37. 1:26bachelor program and applying towards a
38. 1:28certain committee try to find out what
39. 1:31this committee is interested in hearing
40. 1:33or what kind of skills they want you to
41. 1:35have and before you even start writing
42. 1:38try to narrate your story such that you
43. 1:40fit this picture perfectly right and
44. 1:42then also know your strengths and with
45. 1:44this i kind of mean if you have certain
46. 1:47strengths for example in writing or
47. 1:49you're really creative i would try to
48. 1:51put this in your letter so we'll go over
49. 1:53my letter soon but my letter for example
50. 1:56is not very lyrical in how it's written
51. 1:58because i'm not a really good writer so
52. 2:01i try to put in way more emphasis on the
53. 2:04skills that i have instead of trying to
54. 2:06convince them with a beautiful narrative
55. 2:08but if you don't have that many skills
56. 2:10yet or you're just starting out in your
57. 2:12academic journey i would try to lean a
58. 2:15little bit more on your writing skills
59. 2:16and try to engage the people with the
60. 2:19story i also want to say there is a
61. 2:21difference between a personal statement
62. 2:23a motivation letter and a cover letter i
63. 2:25won't go into many details here because
64. 2:28usually for a phd these are kind of the
65. 2:30same and kind of combined into one
66. 2:33general purpose letter but for example
67. 2:35if you're applying for company or
68. 2:36applying for a certain program they do
69. 2:38usually ask for a certain type of letter
70. 2:41in a certain format so make sure you
71. 2:43have the correct one and i'll put a link
72. 2:45below that explains this difference in a
73. 2:47little bit more detail so first things
74. 2:50first you want your motivation letter to
75. 2:52consist of the introduction of course
76. 2:54then the body of the motivation letter
77. 2:56and as last a conclusion so i will grab
78. 2:59my motivation letter and i'll take you
79. 3:01through each of these sections and give
80. 3:03you some tips in between that hopefully
81. 3:05will help you write yours so first of
82. 3:07all usually in the netherlands we start
83. 3:10quite formally when we write our
84. 3:11motivation letter so we usually start
85. 3:13with dear doctor. and doctor. so i had
86. 3:17to write to two professors and this is
87. 3:19already my first tip trying to find out
88. 3:22who you are writing to so don't just
89. 3:24start with dear myths or dear sir try to
90. 3:27find out the names of the people that
91. 3:29will be judging you this just shows that
92. 3:31you did your research and you know
93. 3:33exactly what you're applying for of
94. 3:35course if you're applying to some
95. 3:36general master program this is a little
96. 3:38bit harder to find out but if you're
97. 3:40applying for a specific summer
98. 3:42internship or a specific phd program
99. 3:45usually you can find this information
100. 3:46online okay so the first paragraph of
101. 3:49your motivation letter is usually your
102. 3:50why or your real motivation why you
103. 3:53apply to this project so i am writing to
104. 3:56you to apply for the phd position in
105. 3:58dota dot and the one tip i have for this
106. 4:00is to make it as personal as possible so
107. 4:02don't just say i'm interested in the
108. 4:04brain because i find it super
109. 4:06fascinating or something general along
110. 4:08those lines because there's a hundred
111. 4:10percent chance that most of the people
112. 4:12have written something very similar to
113. 4:14that so try to find something that
114. 4:16motivated you to apply to this project
115. 4:19that's very specific to you so i'll read
116. 4:22the one that i wrote so this project
117. 4:24interests me due to its focus on
118. 4:26depression and its underlying
119. 4:28neurocortical substrates depression
120. 4:30comes quite close to me as i have seen
121. 4:32multiple people in my environment
122. 4:33struggling with its devastating rips it
123. 4:36is hard to make predictions about the
124. 4:37trajectory of depression as it has
125. 4:39proven to be different for each patient
126. 4:42therefore i found the method proposed in
127. 4:44this study extremely impressive as it
128. 4:46makes use of the data from mri gti fmri
129. 4:49and genetics and combines these into
130. 4:51newly developed methods so yeah this was
131. 4:54my real motivation at that time i do
132. 4:57have some people in my environment that
133. 4:59have dealt with depression i didn't want
134. 5:01to go too much into detail because i
135. 5:03kind of felt that was not really any of
136. 5:05their business but i did want to show
137. 5:06that i had a strong motivation to apply
138. 5:09for this project and that i had
139. 5:11something personal that linked me to
140. 5:13this project so then the next three
141. 5:16paragraphs i wrote were on the skills i
142. 5:19had so usually the body of your
143. 5:22motivation letter is written in a
144. 5:24certain format and my postdoc actually
145. 5:26taught me this at that time and it's
146. 5:28kind of written in the star method
147. 5:30format and if you don't know the star
148. 5:32method i will go over it real quickly so
149. 5:35star stands for situation task action
150. 5:38and results so the situation is describe
151. 5:40the event or situation that you were in
152. 5:42the task is the task that you had to
153. 5:45complete the action describes the
154. 5:47specific actions you took to complete
155. 5:50the task and the results close with the
156. 5:52results of your efforts so this is
157. 5:55usually a technique for interview
158. 5:57questions during your application but i
159. 6:00also found it a really good technique to
160. 6:02write parts of your motivation letter
161. 6:04because usually they ask for specific
162. 6:07soft skills and specific hard skills so
163. 6:10soft skills are more personality skills
164. 6:12so things like i am determined or i'm a
165. 6:15friendly co-worker or things like this
166. 6:17and if you write it in a manner i am a
167. 6:19friendly co-worker you just state that
168. 6:21you are usually people don't believe it
169. 6:23so i would recommend to write these kind
170. 6:25of skills in the star method format and
171. 6:28i will read one of the paragraphs i
172. 6:30wrote such that you will get an idea of
173. 6:32how i did it currently i'm in my final
174. 6:35year of the cognitive neuroscience
175. 6:36master i'm working together with dr.dodd
176. 6:39to set up a new analysis technique to
177. 6:42uncover small distributed differences in
178. 6:44brain imaging data between two groups
179. 6:46during this period i have not only
180. 6:49learned to build a pipelines from
181. 6:50scratch for analyzing this data but also
182. 6:53took the study a step further towards a
183. 6:55higher order analysis which uncovers the
184. 6:58smallest distributed changes between the
185. 7:00groups the results at the beginning
186. 7:02pointed us towards negligible
187. 7:04conclusions however we were able to
188. 7:06solve the problem at hand by working
189. 7:08together with dr tottentot this
190. 7:10experience has taught me persistence and
191. 7:12the importance of collaboration so i
192. 7:16wrote for every skill they asked i've
193. 7:18wrote a paragraph like this and
194. 7:20sometimes they don't ask for specific
195. 7:22skills or specific soft skills and then
196. 7:25you just kind of have to think of what
197. 7:27you think they will think is important
198. 7:30and you can sometimes find this online
199. 7:32but you can also think of it yourself
200. 7:34right then lastly i want to go to my
201. 7:36conclusion i don't think my conclusion
202. 7:38was the best i think the best way to
203. 7:40write it personally now that i've read a
204. 7:43few more motivation letters also have
205. 7:45friends is to write it kinda in this
206. 7:47model where you start in the beginning
207. 7:48with something and you point back
208. 7:50towards this in the ending so you get a
209. 7:53really nice well-rounded letter i didn't
210. 7:56do that in this letter but i still think
211. 7:57my conclusion is very okay it's decent
212. 8:00so i'll just walk you through it in
213. 8:02conclusion i've worked both in groups
214. 8:05and independently on a multitude of
215. 8:07projects and through these have become
216. 8:09notably efficient in time management and
217. 8:12flexibility i am confident that i can
218. 8:14work on this project and apply the
219. 8:16skills i have learned to bring it to a
220. 8:18comprehensive solution i firmly believe
221. 8:20that this project will make a
222. 8:22significant impact on the future
223. 8:24developmental trajectory of patients
224. 8:26with depression due to this reason this
225. 8:28is the phd project i want to work on and
226. 8:30i would be honored if you considered me
227. 8:32for the position and so the last few
228. 8:34tips i have is to try to keep it short i
229. 8:37know people that write really long
230. 8:39motivation letters if there's no strict
231. 8:42words count or something but usually the
232. 8:45max i would say is two pages but even
233. 8:48that i would try to keep it on the
234. 8:50shorter shorter amount and go even
235. 8:52towards one page because usually people
236. 8:54that have to read it don't have any time
237. 8:56so the shorter you can keep it the
238. 8:58better also i would show it to as many
239. 9:01people as you know so professors if you
240. 9:03know them teachers fellow friends even
241. 9:05your mom because they all have relevant
242. 9:08input and can kind of see or kind of can
243. 9:10give some little tips so the more people
244. 9:12you can show it to the better it becomes
245. 9:15i think and lastly the thing i want to
246. 9:17say is a lot of people think they don't
247. 9:18have relevant experience but actually in
248. 9:21the motivation letter this is not really
249. 9:23very necessary because usually if you
250. 9:26already passed with your cv you already
251. 9:28have the relevant experience for them to
252. 9:30even reach your motivation letter so in
253. 9:32the motivation letter they usually just
254. 9:34want to see some soft skills or a little
255. 9:36bit of your personality or how did you
256. 9:39overcome adversity and these can be
257. 9:41super specific events that happened in
258. 9:43your life so they don't even have to be
259. 9:45related to university it could be that
260. 9:48you worked in a healthcare center or
261. 9:51that you worked with children for
262. 9:52example and usually these kind of little
263. 9:55glimpses into your life leave a lot more
264. 9:58impact than the formal education written
265. 10:01style things so yeah these were the tips
266. 10:03i have for writing a motivation letter
267. 10:06if you think anything is missing i would
268. 10:08love to hear it down below and also if
269. 10:10you're gonna apply soon i wish you the
270. 10:12best of luck and hopefully you get into
271. 10:15any summer school bachelor master or phd
272. 10:18that you want to thank you for watching
273. 10:20this video and see you next time bye