hello friends hello nerds welcome everyone to this video now tis the season for applications so I’m assuming you clicked on this video because you need to write a personal statement slash motivation letter slash letter of intent for university that you’re applying to and you don’t want to just read any letter but you want to write the best behemoth greatest everything that has ever come out of your brain maybe you don’t consider yourself the best writer because you’re in science or engineering or whatever but that’s why I’m here for you and that’s what I’m gonna help you because I’ve done it I’ve done it too many times more than I can count I was gonna say I’ve done a hundred times but that would be a clear lie but I’ve done it a lot and I’ve written some really really great motivational letters so today I’m gonna share with you how to write a personal statement now in this video this is gonna be a lot of information and actually I have a lot more information to share that will not fit into this video so I made a freebie that you can download it’s at the end of the video so if you watch to the end I’ll tell you how to get that freebie and in addition to the freebie at the end of the video vlog missus just started today and I’m gonna be doing vloggers I’m gonna be doing vlogmas this month and everyday when I published my vlog I’m going to include a question answer about a personal statement so throughout the month of December feel free to write on the video feel free to email me at Jessica at stubborn and calm feel free to DM me on Instagram with your questions and if it’s a question that I have an answer in this video and that isn’t in the freebie to follow then I will be sure to answer it in one of my daily vlogs for vlogmas so I know what your first question is it is what is the difference between a personal statement a letter of motivation or motivation letter or letter of intent blah blah blah you’ve scoured the Internet you hundreds of different blog posts that all give you different information one blog post says that a personal statement focuses on your past projects whereas a motivation letter focuses on your future goals but then you go to a university website and they say write a personal statement and make sure to include your future goals then you’re like okay well is that supposed to be a motivation letter because I’ve written a motivation letter but they said I think want a personal statement so is that different or sometimes they don’t give you any guidelines at all so what’s the answer the answer is that there is no strict format to a personal statement or a letter of intent or motivation letter it’s not like a persuasive essay or a poem where there are strict rules for how to write them okay and in my mind they’re all different and they’re all the same and you’re like just why do you have to make things so complicated it’s because we’re writing the best letter ever the way we approach writing a personal statement and a motivational and a motivational letter will be the same so in that sense you don’t need to worry about what the difference is but even though the approach is the same for all of the letters that doesn’t mean that all of your letters are going to end up being the same you’re not just gonna write one generic letter that could be sent as a personal statement as a motivation letter as a letter of intent because let’s be real you want to get accepted to the top University so you need a top notch letter that means you can’t send the same letter to every University a letter of motivation a personal statement a letter intent they’re all the same because your best application letter will contain elements of all three of those letters that’s how you write the best application ever so with that out of the way this is how you’re going to write your best personal statement letter of motivation letter of intent most important part the research before you can start writing you need to know what you’re gonna say okay you can’t just your way through a personal statement especially in science and engineering if you’re just gonna be writing frivolous sentences full of fluffy smart words the admissions committee is literally gonna pick up your letter rip it in half and throw it in the trash you need to know what you’re gonna say before you write or else they’re just gonna end up writing so how do you do that how do you figure out what you’re gonna write research that’s the first step so what are you gonna research well first go to each University you want to apply to check what their requirements are maybe one University says oh we want to hear about your goals then you’re like okay that’s a good thing I know now I know kind of what I’m gonna start writing another University says to pick which professors you want to work with the next thing I want you to do and this is definitely going to be the longest part of your research journey and of writing your entire personal statement it’s going to be research the institution and the different labs so that’s what I did for every single University I applied to I went through their different fields you choose what fields you like but we’re not done now what you do is you go through the different labs within that field so there’s not just gonna be one lab in the fluid dynamics thermodynamics subset there’s gonna be another 20 labs oh okay this professor is doing droplets okay that’s kind of cool oh this professor is doing water splitting okay that’s pretty cool and just find some research that sticks out to you why are we doing this because first you need to know what you’re gonna write and then you need to be specific about it schools don’t just want to let anyone into their school they want to let people that are motivated driven and know what they want so you need to demonstrate that in your letter of motivation so that’s stuck 1 out of 4 but trust me it’s gonna it’s the longest step out of the 4 the second step of writing your personal statement is plan now you’ve done the research for the institution you know exactly what you want and you know why you want it now you need you frame that research to fit into your personal statement so like I said earlier there’s really no correct way to write a personal statement but in general you should have an introduction some middle body paragraphs and a conclusion now we’re not going to worry about the introduction or the conclusion in this section we’re just going to worry about the middle paragraphs so in order to figure out how to frame that research that you just spent like an entire day doing think about using that research to answer the following questions why do you want to study a masters how will this program benefit you what are you aspiring to do in the future and how will this master’s program help you achieve those goals how can your work contribute to the department and university so for example how oldest master’s program helped you achieve your future goals well my future goal is to cure cancer using I don’t know lasers good example because it’s specific and attending this University and working under the supervision of Professor X what helped me achieve my goal because as you can see from this paper Professor X does work in laser technology applied to cancer and I believe that his knowledge will help me further my goal or something like that if you want to be specific and you want to be able to answer these questions using the research you’ve already done in the previous section the next step step three is going to be to write now start with your body paragraphs and just start writing take your questions and answers from the plan part and try to fit them together to create like a cohesive story so it might start off with like here’s my past qualifications here all the projects I’ve done moving into your goals and aspirations and how the school will help you achieve those so try to fake those answers together and create a cohesive story don’t worry so much about having the perfect letter on your first draft just start writing to avoid writer’s block to have your creative juices flowing and then you can always go back and edit later after you’ve written your body paragraphs move on to the conclusion it shouldn’t be really more than two sentences so don’t really don’t worry about it too much pick one of your strongest points that supports your argument your argument being why you should be the one to attend this school program or whatever maybe it’s because of how motivated you are to reach your goals and how this school helped you achieve your goals that’s the one I picked but pick whichever one you like and then finish off the letter and that’s it now after the conclusion move on to the introduction the introduction I like to leave for last because I don’t want you to just sit down to start writing the introduction and already get writer’s block after the first sentence it’s nice to have a little anecdote at the beginning if you can to hook the reader about why you want to be an engineer or scientists or blah blah but if you really can’t think of one then just move on get straight into specifically why you want to study at this university finally we’ve reached the last step number four and that is review I have created a checklist which you can just click the link below in the description enter your email address and this perfect personal statement checklist will get sent to your inbox so the checklist it says things like do you have any cliches wipe that off of your personal statement and check it over the checklist there’s like a lot of different things on the checklist so in the review section just go through the checklist and apply the edits to your personal statement finally get three different people to review your personal statement and at least one native speaker if you can now I know I’m a native speaker but please do not send me your personal statement I do not have time to go through it by on Wednesday I we’ll be doing a live stream on YouTube so if you have any questions about the personal statement bring them to me if you’re working on your personal statement this weekend or throughout the month of December you can tag me on Instagram and I will share that on my story so then we can all suffer together and laugh at how we have no lives and we are just spending the month of December applying to universities just a quick recap research plan write and review click the link in my description and enter your email and I will send you a checklist that will help you in your review process tag me on Instagram I will share your struggle with the entire community and join me for the YouTube live on Wednesday if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you have any questions about the personal statement leave them in the comments below I’m sure everyone would love to hear about it if you want to see more then please subscribe