good morning if you're new to this channel hi it's really nice to meet you my name is melena and if you're a returning subscriber well how you doing there hottie what's up welcome back if you need to write a motivation letter and you're thinking to yourself well i probably need motivation for this one and you think that you have absolutely no motivation to do anything then first of all you should probably hit up your therapist so before we continue on with this video i want all of you to know that motivation doesn't look the same for everyone not everyone is motivated by the same things or for the same reasons or even the same goals so the reason that you're motivated to do something might be completely unique so why not express that in your motivation letter and to be honest if you truly think that you don't have any motivation you're probably underestimating yourself i mean you've gotten to this point where you're thinking about even applying to something and that shows motivation already so here i am just trying to help you out and let's see what we can do with your motivation and slap that on a piece of paper so that you can get in wherever the heck you're trying to get in so a little disclaimer before continuing on with this video i don't work in admissions nor have i ever worked in admissions so my tips and my opinions on how to write a motivation letter are fully based on my own experiences but hey i've gotten to university so i guess i guess they can't be too bad am i right but either way if you are for example in high school i always recommend that you reach out to your student counselor so first let's start with the definition what is a motivation letter a lot of people skip this part and go straight to writing it and uh that's foolish foolish i tell you so your motivation letter is a compliment to your cv it supports your cv what your cv is is facts and figures where did you study for how long did you study what grades did you get there they only want to know facts and then in your motivation letter you show them your personality so at that point you show them how everything you wrote about in your cv made you who you are and that led you to want to apply to again wherever you want to apply to uh in a way you could say it's like an academic vibe check i should i should really patent these things these are good make it into a poster in most cases universities or other institutions to which you are applying to they specify what questions they want you to answer and so your motivation letter should be obviously tailored to answering the questions that they want to hear the answer to for example if you're a student applying for university and let's say you want to study economics then in your motivation letter they probably want to ask you about why you chose to do economics and specifically why did you choose that course out of all the economics courses why was this course the one that really stood out for you so those are the types of questions that you can expect when you're applying to university but they are completely different for if you're applying for a job or if you're applying for a position that they're looking for in that case the questions that they ask for the specific situations will obviously be tailored to what they want to hear and what they want to know about you okay so i thought the best way to do this is if i just split it up into steps of how to write a motivation letter the first step is as i mentioned outline the questions they want you to answer those are your guidelines those are the things they want to hear and if they're not included in your motivation letter you might as well not apply because that just means that you can't follow instructions they ask you a question and you couldn't answer it but i'm just saying i'm just saying if i were reading through someone's motivation letter and they for some reason avoided all the questions i'd be a little suspicious i'd be a little suspicious and potentially confused because if they don't have answers to the questions like why do you want to study at this university then you're not really convinced that they want to study at your university see your motivation letter as an academic tinder you know like the questions they ask like oh i don't know what do they ask on tinder like what's your favorite color imagine if tinder asked you what's your favorite color and you answered with florida so what you want to do is you want to answer each question individually because if you were to answer them all simultaneously i assure you your answers would overlap and with these bullet points you should be able to make your trail of thought as simple as possible what these bullet points represent is what you want them to remember when someone reads your essay or your motivation letter they remember certain things about what you wrote and it's specifically what you decide to make clear and so when you're making these outlines and you're making your bullet points decide what you want them to know do you want them to know that you are a hard-working person do you want them to know that you had a specific experience which now led you to want to apply it's those little things that you have to make clear in your motivation letter or else they literally have no way of knowing by doing these bullet points you avoid rambling as well so what i used to do is i start answering the question straight away and it was just like a flow of thoughts you know so it was just me writing what i thought was in here right but whatever is in here needs to be organized on your piece of paper so by having these bullet points you are able to clearly construct your arguments or your points so that they actually come across as reasonable by avoiding all the rambling you also show the institution that you're a critical thinker that you can prioritize things that you don't just write out of impulse but you think about what you're writing and you actually care about what your writing says about you and so these bullet points become the heart of your essay these are the things that you want to make clear to whoever you're applying to and those are the things that they'll remember about you after doing these bullet points you need to figure out how to put them together after all this is a letter so it has to flow like one with regards to the format you usually have the date and your personal information and then you go into a salutation like dear sir or madam or anything of the sorts and then you have your opening paragraph which is like your introduction and it really kicks off your essay and then you have the body of your motivation letter where all the good stuff are in all the bullet points you made those are those are in the body and after that you conclude so your conclusion should wrap up everything you said in your essay it obviously shouldn't repeat everything you just said but it should pick out the overarching theme of your motivation letter so what's one thing that kept popping up you know for example if you want to make clear that all of your experiences have made you to the person that you are all of these things that you mentioned and then lastly you have your complimentary clothes which is your goodbye you say okay have a nice day bye bye but obviously in an academically acceptable way usually you use things like sincerely or kind regards and then you sign it with your full name and some people like to add their signature your motivation letter should always be coherent which means that you should use connectors like however or therefore in places where you feel like you want to link ideas but don't shy away from starting a sentence with i back when i was writing my motivation letter for erasmus i avoided using i with everything i could my essay became poetic but it wasn't straight to the point and it wasn't clear it didn't make it clear what i was trying to say don't shy away from simpler more clear sentences because at the end of the day what you want to convey has to be understandable and a bonus point is that by writing your essay you're showing them you can write yay they like to see when someone can write academically you know when they can actually put their ideas in a concise and simple and understandable way and by writing your essay that's what you're showing them then the final step is your conclusion your closing statement you've told them a bunch of things and now you have to summarize what all those things mean do you intend on learning more becoming knowledgeable or becoming a better person understanding yourself better understanding others better there are so many things you can learn university pick one pick something you want to learn an important thing to remember is that you have a limited amount of words right if you're writing a motivation letter you usually have one to two pages to explain your motivation of course the word limit is there so that the people who are reading all these motivation letters can actually get through all the motivation letters but it does mean that you have to be extremely concise also don't forget to keep a close eye on your language because no one will believe that you are a detail-oriented person with vast experience in writing if you can't spell so make sure that there are no spelling mistakes always ask for someone to read over your essay because there are things that after looking at the same essay for hours and hours you just don't pick up anymore subscribe if you found this video helpful and also comment down below what you're writing a motivation letter for i think that's so interesting that everyone's writing a motivation letter for different things and uh i hope to hear from you but till then take care stay safe wash your hands social distant bye