Как писать мотивационное письмо в иностранный ВУЗ?

Примеры мотивационных писем и эссе

Ниже мы вкратце расскажем о том, как нужно писать мотивационное письмо. Motivation letter, personal statement требуется при поступлении в любой иностранный университет. Это самая важная часть вашего пакета документов. И единственная возможность показать себя как личность, а не безликого человека с набором публикаций и достижений. Известно много случаев, когда абитуриенты с несильным бэкграундом поступали университеты благодаря отлично написанному мотивационному письму. Уделите его написанию не меньше месяца.

В зависимости от программы, на которую Вы поступаете, в эссе нужно делать различные акценты.

Так, мотивационное письмо должно отвечать на вопросы: почему вы хотите учиться в этом вузе, чем этот университет привлекателен для вас, ваши сильные стороны.

Для поступления на юридические специальности в мотивационном письме должна четко прослеживаться логика изложения. Бизнес программы требуют лидерских качеств, умения быстро ориентироваться в нестандартных ситуациях и.т.п., что вы должны отразить в мотивационном письме.

Ответы на вопросы в мотивационном письме

В мотивационном вы должны ответить на следующие вопросы:

- каков ваш опыт, бэкграунд? У вас уже есть козырь – вы из России, а значит, уже отличаетесь от большинства студентов.

- почему ВУЗ должен выбрать вас? Расскажите о том, что делает вас уникальным или особенным кандидатом. Не стесняйтесь перечислить ваши достижения и успехи

- с какими сложностями вы столкнулись и как вы их преодолели? Это могут быть истории из детства, жизни.

- что вас мотивирует? Почему именно эта специальность?

- почему в хотите учиться именно в этом университете?

Для того, чтобы написать хорошее мотивационное письмо, необходимо:

1) Выделить ваше мотивационное письмо из числа других. Для этого тщательно продумайте вступление, чтобы оно «цепляло» глаз с первых строчек. Никаких ‘Hello, my name is…’

2) Указать достижения во внеакадемической сфере (музыка, спорт). Покажите, что вы не зациклены на учебе, а являетесь разносторонне развитым человеком.

3) Указать, как ваш опыт может быть полезен для университета, что есть у вас, чего нет у американских студентов. Расскажите, что сделало вас таким, какой вы есть сейчас.

А также:

- указывайте ваши достоинства и сильные стороны, а не недостатки

- не пишите в мотивационном письме о себе в третьем лице

- аккуратно пользуйтесь лексикой, не используйте слов, в значении которых точно не уверены

- не используйте сленговые выражения и профессиональный жаргон

- не пишете стихов и рифм - напишите и проверьте ваше мотивационное письмо на ошибки. Затем проверьте снова и снова

- отведите достаточно времени на написание письма. Не пытайтесь написать его за день. Отложите написанное эссе на несколько дней, затем прочитайте снова

- покажите ваше вашему другу или преподавателю. Свежий взгляд поможет вам найти ошибки или неточности

- не превышайте лимита отведенного для мотивационного письма. Это будет означать, что вы не можете выполнять поставленных перед вами задач

- не переводите эссе с русского на английский язык

- не копируйте мотивационные письма из Интернета. Приемная комиссия, которая читает более 1000 эссе в день без труда распознает такое письмо и отправит его в мусор.

Ниже приведем примеры успешных мотивационных писем.

Пример мотивационного письма для поступления на программу MBA

Write a candid description of yourself, stressing those personal qualities, assets, and liabilities that you feel will influence your graduate work. Describe what you consider to be your most important professional and/or academic achievement to date.

If one were to ask my friends to describe me they would describe me as a very pleasant, diverse, active and intelligent woman. I think one of my most distinguishing characteristics is the diversity of experiences I possess. I am a science student with a flair for the arts. I am a woman with technical aptitude and an interest in management I also have a passion for traveling and understanding different cultures of the world. AH these elements have given me a very broad outlook, with varying degrees of knowledge in a range of topics. I strongly believe that although some are not related directly, all these qualities will influence my graduate work.

My Engineering degree has given a strong foundation to my analytical skills since civil designing involves a lot of long, complex and intricate calculations and the application of basic math skills. Over the past four years, I have been working part-time with my family firm, SnMTech Systems. I am also the co-founder and active member with FOE - Friends of the Environment I have assisted in the installation of Enterprise-wide Resource Planning (ERP) System at Biotech, a major Engineering Company. More than what I have studied in school and college, it has been these experiences that have shaped the person that I am today.

I believe that this unique blend of experiences has made me a woman with an original point of view. This blend has given me a broader perspective to and a good understanding of life and a goal to aim for. Among other things, I have this diversity of experience to offer Utah University. My most substantial accomplishment has been the success of the software upgradation project that I managed at SnMTech Systems Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, where I have been working as a part time Associate Intern - Management Information Systems since 1994.

During the first two years of my work at SnMTech, I had an opportunity to observe and work with the existing system being used. Some of the software packages being used were outdated versions. I have always been in touch with the latest software packages thanks to the powerful PC I have at home and am quite used to working with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) environment. At the office, there was great deal of chaos while preparing reports that involved use of more than one software since compatibility between packages usually posed a problem. The difficulty we faced putting different files together led to the final report appearing rather haphazard sometimes.

I believe in providing and maintaining non-negotiable high standards and service. I recognized that shifting to a newer GUI based software would not only dramatically improve our documentation quality, but also increase productivity at the workplace. Presenting the pros and cons to the management of the upgradation was a very challenging task. I was asked to prepare a proposal regarding the upgradation of the firm's software. Initially, I imagined this project would be rather simple but it turned out to be among the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life.

Through a firm-wide survey of operators and several one-on-one discussions of their own preferences and solutions, I found that while everybody wanted an upgradation, they had doubts since they would have to learn a whole set of new skills. In order to prepare a budget, I procured quotations from various vendors and analyzed possible combinations. I realized the necessity of a training course for the operators because most of them were not familiar with the GUI interface. I examined the various training classes that offered private in-house training for the employees. After a detailed analysis, I presented my report to the management in the next meeting. They were pleased with my efforts and pleasantry surprised at the cost of the project since it seemed to be comparatively less than what they had anticipated.

Once I was given the go-ahead, the next hurdle was to implement the proposal and coordinate the upgrading. To avoid any disturbance to the company's work, training sessions were planned after working hours. The upgrading took a week and the training of the operators took another two weeks. The really tough period started once the training personnel left. The management felt that it was my responsibility to see that the operators didn't face any problems once they actually started using the new software packages. I put in 60 to 70-hour weeks for the next three weeks before everyone was comfortable with the new system. While the benefits of using these packages were not immediately tangible, a few months later our clients acknowledged that the quality of the reports we sent them had improved considerably. In fact, a year later our firm decided to upgrade all of its software packages. I consider this to be a tacit compliment for my efforts.

This project required me to believe in myself and in what I thought was good for the company. I had to take a pro-active approach, take the initiative and play a leadership role in motivating people and executing the project to completion A good manager is one who can figure out where the problem lies, deal with it effectively by involving all the members of the company and improve the overall culture of the company. The problem I saw at SnMTech had to be resolved to sustain the company's image. The fact that I was able to pull off this task alone has boosted my confidence in my abilities.

Пример мотивационного письма для программы Фулбрайт (Fulbright)

On one hot late-summer day when I was in high school, my parents came back from a shopping trip with a surprise present for me: the legendary board game, Diplomacy. At first I scoffed at such an old-fashioned game. Who would want to waste glorious sunny days moving armies around a map of pre-World War I Europe pretending to be Bismarck or Disraeli? But after playing the game once, I became absolutely riveted by the nuances of statecraft, and soon began losing sleep as I tried to craft clever diplomatic gambits, hatch devious schemes, and better understand the game's ever-changing dynamics. As my friends and I spent the second half of the summer absorbed by the game, my parents grinned knowingly. How could I resist being fascinated with Diplomacy, they asked me, when I incessantly read about international affairs, and liked nothing more than debating politics over dinner? How could I resist being fascinated, when I had spent most of my summers in Greece (and, much more briefly, France and England), witnessing first-hand the ways in which countries differ socially, culturally, and politically?

Though my passion for foreign policy and international affairs undoubtedly dates back to high school, I never had the chance to fully develop this interest before college. Once I arrived at Harvard, however, I discovered that I could learn about international relations through both my academics and my extracurricular activities. Academically, I decided to concentrate in Government, and, within Government, to take classes that elucidated the forces underlying the relations of states on the world stage. Some of the most memorable of these classes included Human Rights, in which we discussed what role humanitarian concerns ought to play in international relations; Politics of Western Europe, in which I learned about the social, economic, and political development of five major European countries; and Causes and Prevention of War, which focused on unearthing the roots of conflict and finding out how bloodshed could have been avoided. Currently, for my senior thesis, I am investigating the strange pattern of American human rights-based intervention in the post-Cold War era, and trying to determine which explanatory variables are best able to account for it.

Interestingly, I think that I have learned at least as much about international relations through my extracurriculars in college as I have through my classes. For the past three years, for instance, I have helped run Harvard's three Model United Nations conferences. As a committee director at these conferences, I researched topics of global importance (e.g. the violent disintegration of states, weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East), wrote detailed study guides discussing these subjects, and then moderated hundreds of students as they debated the topics and strove to resolve them. Even more enriching for me than directing these committees was taking part in them myself. As a delegate at other schools' conferences, I would be assigned to represent a particular country on a particular UN committee (e.g. France on the Security Council). I would then need to research my country's position on the topics to be discussed, articulate my view in front of others in my committee, and convince my fellow delegates to support my position. Trying to peg down a country* s elusive * national interest,' clashing over thorny practical and philosophical issues, making and breaking alliances--Model UN was basically a simulation of how diplomacy really works.

Thankfully, I have also found time over the past few years to cultivate interests and skills unrelated to Model UN and foreign policy. One of the most important of these has been community service. As a volunteer for Evening With Champions, an annual ice-skating exhibition held to raise money for children with cancer, and as a teacher of a weekly high school class on current events and international affairs, I have, whenever possible, used my time and talents to benefit my community. Another more recent interest of mine is the fascinating realm of business. Two years ago, my father’s Christmas present to me was a challenge rather than a gift: he gave me $500,but told me that I couId keep it only if I invested it in the stock market-and earned a higher rate of return than he did with another $500. Since then, I have avidly followed the stock market, and become very interested in how businesses interact and respond to strategic threats (perhaps because of the similarities between business competition and the equally cutthroat world of diplomatic realpolitik). A final passion of mine is writing. As the writer of a biweekly column in the Independent, one of Harvard's student newspapers, I find very little as satisfying as filling a blank page with words — creating from nothing an elegant opinion piece that illuminates some quirk of college life, or induces my readers to consider an issue or position that they had ignored until then.

Because of my wide range of interests, I have not yet decided what career path to follow into the future. In the short run, I hope to study abroad for a year, In the process Immersing myself in another culture, and deepening my personal and academic understanding of international affairs. After studying abroad, my options would Include working for a nonprofit organization, entering the corporate world, and attending law school. In the long run, I envision for myself a career straddling the highest levels of international relations, politics, and business. I could achieve this admittedly ambitious goal by advancing within a nonprofit group, think tank, or major International company, Perhaps most appealingly, I could also achieve this goal by entering public service and obtaining some degree of influence over actual foreign policy decisions — that is, becoming a player myself in the real-life game of Diplomacy.

Как видно из этих примеров, мотивационное письмо не перечисляет ваши достижения и регалии, а представляет собой рассказ о себе, своих сильных сторонах, планах, мотивации и.т.п.

Удачи!

^{* эссе предоставлены Американскими Советами по Международному Образованию.}