There is no right or wrong in writing a motivation letter. In this post, I merely show you how I wrote mine which got me a scholarship.
First things first: Who am I & why should you trust me?
I was granted an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in SECCLO, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
I followed these guidelines you are about to read and I got the scholarship. But feel free to disagree!
When you are writing a motivation letter to apply for a scholarship, try to think as the committee. Ask yourself, why should they give you the scholarship?
Big things first
The more prestigious the scholarship is, the more competitive it will be. I mean, who says no to a free ride?! In other words, there will be numerous motivation letter that the committee will have to read. Your letter should entice readers on the first sentence so that they will not get bored instantly and just skim through the whole writing, giving them less chance to understand the whole picture of your motivation.
I would recommend bringing forward big things in your topic on the opening paragraph. For example, my topic is cyber security. My motivation letter begins with a recent case of data leak in the Indonesian social security agency (BPJS Kesehatan). I emphasized why this was a very crucial problem that needs fixing and why learning cyber security with the help of the scholarship will allow me to achieve that.
This way, the reader will be more interested to continue reading through the motivation letter. Not so difficult, is it?
Play to your strength
Fun fact: nobody’s perfect. You can try to emphasize your capabilities, focus on your strong points. To the best of my knowledge, every scholarship has provided some details about what qualities you should have to be granted a scholarship. From that list, make a list of which qualities that you have and start from there.
Don’t be lazy!
In my case, there was this criteria “The time spent on the previous studies will also be considered”. The fact that I finished my bachelor a semester earlier than usual, I realized I could take advantage of this. I emphasized this point in my motivation letter, and you should do likewise.
Be concise
As the header suggest, just get to the point. There is no need to include obvious things such as your name or where & when you were born. They already know those information from the application form. I don’t see any case where those information would be helpful, but please do correct me if I’m wrong.
Instead of telling those things, use the remaining space to tell other achievements or your big dreams for the future.
Show qualities others do not possess
You graduated your bachelor with a Cum Laude honor? So do lots of other applicants! Try to be unique by finding some of your achievements that others are less likely to have achieved.
For example in my case, I manually went through the data of my fellow students in my graduation period. As it turned out, I was one of only 7 out of 92 graduates in my faculty (in that same graduation period) to finish the study in 3.5 years AND to acquire a Cum Laude honor as well.
Try to be clear and don’t use ambiguous sentences like “I was one of the best graduates”, what does that mean? Is there any data to support your claim?
Show that you are genuinely interested
They want to give scholarship only to people who are actually interested in their programme. To show that you really are, tell them informations that will prove to them you truly want to pursue this study.
In my case, I wrote that SECCLO caught my attention as it was the only EMJMD programme focusing on computer security (not anymore now). I also included how I was interested to undertake the mandatory internship in of their industry partners. Stating these will also help assure them that you know what you are going to do if you were given a scholarship.
Conclusion
Simply put, your motivation letter should answer the million-dollar question: why should they grant you a scholarship? Do you really think they should? Why?
Thank you for reading :)